[Blade of the Flame 01] - Thieves of Blood

by Tim Waggoner - (ebook by Undead)

  Diran knew what goddess Erdis Cai had found on Farlnen.

  “Vol,” Diran whispered.

  Tresslar nodded. “The closer we came to Farlnen, the more frightened I became. From some time I’d been concerned about the change that had come over Erdis, but whenever I tried to speak to him about it, he’d wave the matter aside. So many of the crew had perished during those last few months, and I began to fear this would be the final voyage for Erdis Cai and the Seastar. I decided I had to jump ship, but when I spoke to some of the other crew to see if they felt the same way, they hinted that I was talking mutiny. I rigged a longboat for myself, attached firestones to keep me warm, a lodestone compass, and bound a small water elemental to the stern for propulsion. Then one night I took some food and water, got in the boat, lowered it over the side, and watched the Seastar continue northward while I began slowly heading south. That was the last I saw of Erdis Cai.

  “During the voyage back to the Principalities, I had time to think. I knew that if Erdis survived, he might come after me one day to punish me for deserting him, and that he might be… changed. I decided to come to Dreadhold and offer my services as an artificer. Luckily, the warden at the time took me on. I never told him or anyone else on Dreadhold about my time with Erdis. I honestly never expected to remain here for so long, but one year led to another, and now I’ve served on Dreadhold longer than anyone else. Forty years.”

  Tresslar shook his head as if he couldn’t quite believe it.

  Diran felt sorry for the man. What was it like to be so afraid of something that you would isolate yourself from the rest of the world—in effect, sentence yourself to exile—for four decades?

  “Tell us where Erdis Cai is,” Diran said, “and I promise as a priest of the Silver Flame that I will slay him, and you will never again have to live in fear.”

  Tresslar leaned back on his bed, palms on the mattress, arms held straight to prop himself up. He smiled in amusement. “While he was mortal, Erdis Cai was a legend. Now that he’s immortal, no one can stop him. If I tell you where he is—or at least, where I think he is—he’ll know who gave him away, and then he’ll seek me out for certain. That’s something I’d prefer to avoid, if it’s all the same to you.”

  As Tresslar spoke, his left hand had inched closer to his pillow, and now he reached under it and pulled out a metal wand with a golden dragonhead on the tip. The dragon’s eyes were made from red rubies, and its teeth from glittering crystal.

  “Now maybe you people are who you claim you are, and maybe you aren’t.” Tresslar’s gaze flicked back and forth between them, and a line of sweat beaded his forehead. “Either way, I can’t risk having Erdis find me, especially if he’s become—” Tresslar shuddered—“what you say he’s become. I’d prefer not to hurt any of you, but I will if I have to. If you’re sincere about rescuing those people from Erdis, then I wish you luck. I truly do. Now go, before you’re discovered. You don’t want to spend time with the master interrogators in the dungeons below Dreadhold, believe me, and that’s where they’ll take you if you’re captured.”

  “We can’t leave,” Diran said, “not until we know where we can find Erdis Cai.”

  He felt his frustration beginning to edge over into anger. Emon Gorsedd taught his students many ways to extract information from someone who was reluctant to talk. When Diran had made the decision to become a priest, he’d vowed never again to use such aspects of his training as an assassin, but he was sorely tempted to return to them now.

  Ghaji took a step forward, hands raised to show he wasn’t holding any weapons. “Look, whatever that stick of yours does, why don’t you just put it down? We don’t want to hurt you, and you don’t want to hurt us, right?”

  Ghaji took a second step forward, and Diran knew his friend was getting ready to make a grab for Tresslar’s wand, which Diran thought would be a terrible and quite possibly fatal mistake. Before Diran could intervene, Tresslar’s eyes widened in panic as he realized what Ghaji planned, and he aimed the dragonwand at the half-orc. Diran drew a dagger and threw it hilt-first at the artificer’s wrist. Tresslar managed to keep hold of the wand, but his hand was knocked to the side, spoiling his aim. A crackling bolt of miniature lightning blasted out of the dragon’s mouth, sizzled through the air past Ghaji, and struck the stone wall with a loud booming sound. The stone blackened where the lightning hit, and the room filled with the acrid smell of released ozone.

  Diran knew he couldn’t give the artificer the chance to use his weapon again. The priest drew another dagger and hurled this one hilt-first toward the space between Tresslar’s eyes. The dagger hit, Tresslar let out a soft moan then fell back onto the bed, unconscious, but even though he was knocked out, the man still retained his grip on the dragonwand.

  As Diran retrieved his two daggers, Ghaji said, “Thanks.”

  Hinto had cringed when the lightning blast erupted, and now he lay on the floor, curled into a ball and shivering uncontrollably. Ghaji looked down at the terrified halfling and rolled his eyes. “Great. Now what do we do?”

  “We take Tresslar and Hinto and get out of here before—” Diran was interrupted by a loud pounding on the door. “That happens.”

  “Tresslar, what’s going on in there? Are you hurt? You’re not experimenting in your room again, are you?” Whoever it was tried to open the door but found it locked Diran motioned for Yvka to unlock and open the shutters covering Tresslar’s window, and the elf-woman nodded and hurried to do so.

  “Of course I’m fine!” Diran called out, imitating Tresslar’s voice, and more importantly, his perpetually irritated tone. “Just had a little mishap is all. Nothing someone of your limited intellect would understand.”

  As Diran talked, Ghaji bent down to pick up Hinto, but the moment the half-orc touched the shivering sailor, the halfling let out a shriek of terror. In response, something slammed hard into the door, and a splintered crack appeared in the middle of the wood.

  “Over here, Ghaji!” Yvka shouted now that there was no longer any point in remaining silent. The shutters were open, and she held out her arms. Ghaji scooped up the shrieking halfling and tossed him to Yvka. Despite her slender frame, the elf-woman caught Hinto easily, then she turned, and still holding onto the halfling, did a forward flip through the open window.

  Another impact struck the door, and the crack widened.

  One more blow, and the door would surely fall. If it hadn’t been built on Dreadhold, it probably would’ve collapsed at the first strike, Diran thought.

  “Get Tresslar outside!” Ghaji said, drawing his axe. “I’ll slow down whoever it is!” He took up a position to the right of the door and flattened himself against the wall.

  There was no time for Diran to argue with his friend. He pulled Tresslar off the bed and began hauling the artificer over to the window, the man still holding tight to his dragonwand with a death-grip. Diran laid Tresslar on the windowsill, half in and half out of the room, but before he could do anything else, the door burst inward in two large pieces and a shower of splinters. A dwarf stepped into the room, dressed only in a breech cloth and carrying an axe wreathed in flame. The dwarf, whom Diran assumed was one of Tresslar’s neighbors, laid eyes on the priest.

  “Who are—” was all the dwarf managed to get out before Ghaji swung the flat of his axe hard into his face. The dwarf stood there for a moment, smoke curling up around him from the charred remains of the door. Then he pitched forward, releasing his grip on the axe as he fell. The flames surrounding the weapon extinguished as both it and its bearer hit the stone floor.

  There was shouting out in the hall now, and Diran knew their time had run out.

  “Ghaji, move!”

  Diran could no longer afford to be gentle with Tresslar. He shoved the man the rest of the way out the window and climbed through after him. Outside, Yvka and Hinto were nowhere to be seen. Diran guessed the elf-woman had already started back to the Zephyr, carrying the halfling with her.

  Diran ben
t down and started to lift the still unconscious artificer, but then Ghaji leaped through the window and landed beside them. He took Tresslar and threw him over his shoulder as if the man weighed nothing. Then the priest and the half-orc started running toward the shoreline, heading for the spot where they’d left the Zephyr.

  As they ran, Diran said, “I notice you’ve got two axes tucked into your belt now.”

  “I figured that if we’re going to be walking into a nest of vampires soon, I could use a flaming weapon. Think Warden Gizur will mind that I borrowed it?”

  Diran grinned.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  Sunlight glittered off the waves as the Zephyr sailed beneath a clear blue sky. Tresslar stood at the railing looking out over the water.

  “I never realized how much I missed being on a ship.”

  Ghaji and Diran stood nearby. They’d been keeping an eye on the artificer since he’d awakened several hours ago. Despite having been struck between the eyes by the hilt of a dagger, Tresslar had no bruising or swelling, for Diran had healed the man’s minor wounds while he’d slept. Yvka sat in the pilot’s chair, Hinto at her side, attempting to show her a card trick that he couldn’t get right. The halfling laughed with good humor as he struggled to complete the card trick, showing no aftereffects of the panic that had seized him in Tresslar’s room last night.

  Taking the artificer’s statement as an invitation, Ghaji and Diran joined him at the railing, Ghaji standing on his right, Diran on his left.

  Tresslar ran his hand over the smooth soarwood surface of the railing. “This is a most impressive vessel indeed. Oh, I could make a few alterations to it here and there, improve the efficiency of the runners, increase the elemental’s output by a few knots, but still, she’s quite a ship. If the Seastar had been an elemental vessel, who knows how many more places we might’ve been able to travel to, how many more wonders we might’ve discovered?”

  “It must’ve been difficult for you, being landbound all those years on Dreadhold,” Ghaji said.

  Tresslar smiled. “I didn’t think so at the time, but now…” He let the thought go unfinished. “I suppose my wand was left behind.”

  “No,” Diran said. “You held tight to it all the way to the ship.”

  Tresslar nodded. “Then you’re hiding it from me. Can’t say as I blame you, considering I used it against you last night.”

  “What is it?” Ghaji asked.

  “A spell collector,” Tresslar said. “It’s able to absorb and store magic until the user wishes to release it. I made it myself. Considering how mobile we needed to be on the Seastar, it came in handy on more than a few occasions.”

  “I apologize for abducting you,” Diran said. “I fear it makes us no better than the raiders we seek.”

  “You did what you felt was right at the time,” Tresslar said. He grinned. “Just like we used to do on the Seastar.” He then turned back to gaze out across the sea.

  “Forty years is a long time to be afraid,” Ghaji said.

  “Yes, it is,” Tresslar agreed. He was silent for a time before finally saying, “The place you seek is called Grimwall. It lies within a hidden cove on the northern side of Orgalos.”

  Diran’s face betrayed no emotion, but Ghaji could hear the repressed excitement in his voice as he said, “Thank you, Tresslar.” The priest then hurried to inform Yvka that they needed to change course.

  Ghaji said, “That was a brave thing you did.”

  “Perhaps,” Tresslar said, “or very foolish. I suppose we’ll soon find out which.”

  Ghaji nodded. “I suppose we will.”

  They felt the deck shift beneath their feet as the Zephyr began to tack northward. Ghaji went off to attend to the sails, leaving Tresslar looking out at the waves, alone with his thoughts.

  * * *

  While Ghaji took care of the sails, now with Hinto’s help, Diran returned to the railing to stand once more beside Tresslar.

  “Why has Erdis Cai been abducting people?” Diran asked.

  Tresslar shrugged. “Since you told me that he’s become a vampire, I assume he’s been gathering them for food.” The artificer grimaced.

  “That’s what I thought as well, until you told us the location of Grimwall. There’s a sizable population on Orgalos. If all Erdis Cai needed was food, he could find it easily enough there. Vampires tend not to range very far from their lairs. They have great difficulty crossing running water, except in a craft of some sort, and even then it isn’t comfortable for them. Can you think of any other reason Erdis Cai would need to abduct so many people?”

  “Maybe he’s creating an army.”

  “I’d considered that possibility, but as I mentioned before, while vampires possess great power, they also have a number of weaknesses that make them less than effective warriors. Sunlight, silver, running water, holy symbols… and while as their ‘father’ Erdis Cai would be able to dominate and control his army, vampires tend to be solitary predators, preferring little to no competition for prey.”

  “Then maybe Erdis is training his captives to be a mortal army. Presumably, that’s how he came by his Black Fleet raiders in the first place. How am I supposed to know? I haven’t seen the man for forty years, and the last time I saw him, he was a man! Now that he’s a vampire, I don’t…”

  Tresslar broke off his rant, eyes widening as a new thought occurred to him. “No, it couldn’t be that… could it?”

  “Couldn’t be what?” Diran asked.

  “It happened several years after we’d discovered the abandoned underground city and took it over as our base. Whenever we were home, I’d spend my spare time exploring the city and the levels below, trying to uncover its secrets. One day, I found a hidden door that led to a chamber we’d never seen before. It was a burial chamber of a sort that held the desiccated bodies of hobgoblin warriors … two thousand of them. There was a large depression in the middle of the chamber with a stone dais rising in the middle. Runes had been engraved into the dais, and I translated them. The runes explained who the warriors were and why they had voluntarily chosen to die and be interred in the catacombs. There were also instructions for reviving them.”

  Diran felt a cold emptiness in the pit of his stomach. “Let me guess what the main ingredient for reviving the warriors is: blood.”

  Tresslar nodded, his face had gone pale. “And lots of it.” So Erdis Cai was trying to create an army, but not one comprised of vampires or humans. He was raising an army of undead hobgoblin warriors. Once he’d resurrected the goblinoids and they were under his control, he would use them to wreak havoc throughout the Principalities and beyond in his mistress’ foul name. Their rescue mission had just become far more complicated and the stakes infinitely higher. Erdis Cai had to be stopped before he could resurrect his undead army—no matter the cost.

  * * *

  Jarlain opened the door of her bedchamber, intending to check on Makala. She hadn’t been thrilled when Erdis had commanded her to give over her room to the unconscious woman. After all, the other two candidates for tonight’s sacrifice—both of whom Erdis had also entranced—were sleeping on the cold stone floors of separate cells. What made this woman so special? Despite her feelings, Jarlain had smiled and agreed to give up her room. Erdis was her master, after all. She was glad the bitch was going to die tonight, though. Erdis had displayed entirely too much interest in the former assassin. As far as Jarlain was concerned, there was room for only one woman in Erdis’ inner circle, and that was her.

  When she walked into the room and saw Erdis sitting next to her bed on her dressing table chair, looking down at Makala slumbering beneath her silken sheets, Jarlain experienced a surge of jealous anger.

  “How long have you been here?” The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them.

  “Since I woke from my day’s rest,” Erdis said without taking his gaze from Makala. “I’ve been thinking.”

  His voice held that distracted, dreamy
tone she’d heard too often of late. She feared that there was less and less within him of the man Erdis Cai had once been, but what that personality was being replaced with, she didn’t know.

  “About what?” Jarlain asked, though she wasn’t certain she wanted to hear his answer.

  “Whether it might not be better to sacrifice the other two worthy ones tonight and save this one for… other purposes.”

  Erdis reached down and brushed a lock of blond hair off Makala’s face. Jarlain didn’t need to ask what those “other purposes” were.

  “You’ve worked four decades to reach this night,” Jarlain reminded him.

  “So what will a few more weeks matter?”

  Jarlain ground her teeth together in frustration, knowing that with his enhanced senses, Erdis would hear but not caring if he did. Ever since Onkar had captured her during a raid fifteen years ago on Lorghalan, where she’d been using her mental powers in the employ of a minor Lhazaarite prince, she’d served Erdis Cai and served him well. With her abilities, they’d been able to identify worthy sacrifices far more swiftly, thus speeding up the timetable for the completion of Erdis’ plan. If it hadn’t been for her, he might still be struggling to reach his first thousand sacrifices, instead of being on the verge of two thousand.

  “When one nears the culmination of such a long project, it’s only natural to start having second thoughts.”

  Erdis Cai’s head snapped around so fast that if he’d been mortal, he might’ve snapped his own neck. “I’m not having second thoughts. My mistress shall have Her undead army soon enough. But it would be a shame to allow this woman to die. She is a warrior with a spirit of fire and determination—a spirit strong enough to match my own.”

  Jarlain couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You’re not thinking about turning her, are you?”

  “Why not? You saw how she handled herself in the amphitheater.” He turned back to look at Makala with an expression that was almost tender. “She’d make a magnificent vampire, an immortal consort to spend eternity by my side.”