“Of course, My Lord.” Carlile shifted his burden to pull a large ring of keys from his pocket and open the door. He stepped away from the opening and bowed, allowing Kesh to precede him.
Kesh managed not to dash into the vestibule—barely. Carlile stepped in behind him, shutting the door carefully and setting down his burden on a convenient table. “Are you quite well, My Lord?” Carlile asked, folding his hands before him and adopting his usual attentive pose.
Carlile was not wearing his customary serving garb, instead opting for common clothes adopted by the street vendors and others going about their daily tasks. His feet were clad in sturdy boots, and the pants, shirt, and jacket all fit well, though the cloth was simple cotton. The near scuffle in the street had failed to soil even a cuff, and suddenly Kesh became aware once more of his own tattered state.
Kesh itched to be free of the soiled clothes Banlor had produced for him to wear to the court, but if he was going to survive, he couldn’t stay here. He needed to disappear into the city, and to do that, he needed his money. He left Carlile in a rush, nearly sprinting for the wooden stairs to his second-floor study. He called over his shoulder as he ascended. “I will need a change of clothes, immediately. I won’t be here long. Hurry your lazy bones, man!”
“Yes, My Lord. Will you require—”
Carlile’s response was lost as Kesh hauled open the massive winewood door and slammed it closed behind him. He rushed behind his finely crafted desk and fell to his knees. He shoved the heavy, plush chair to one side and cast the ornate woven rug to the other.
A simple brass ring, set flush to the floor, was exposed in the center of a finely milled board. He stabbed his thumb into the tiny bowl that cradled the brass circlet and pried the lever upward on delicate hinges. He twisted the ring several times in one direction, and then several more in the other. On the final turn, a soft click sounded under the floorboards and several boards came free as a unit, exposing a small dark cubby. Kesh reached into the gloomy recess and seized the familiar soft leather pouches he found there. There were six of them, all burgeoned with gold coins. He breathed a sigh of relief. The money would buy him a room somewhere within the Citadel, regardless of how many cursed visitors were here for the ongoing wedding celebrations. Once he was safe, he could begin to work on the problem of Jagger’s continued existence. Perhaps Micount…
The door to his study clicked shut, and his breath caught in his throat. He had closed the door behind him, hadn’t he?
“Carlile?” Kesh asked, still kneeling behind the desk.
“No,” said an unfamiliar voice. “Carlile will not be joining us.”
Kesh cringed but rose slowly from behind the desk, fearing what he might see. His mind painted pictures of Banlor’s tamed horror or Jagger’s minions. Even the dead Mitchum, and his leering, black smile managed a haunting appearance.
He found none of those things, but a peculiar-looking man was standing in front of the closed door to his study. Flesh, pale as freshly bleached bed sheets, shone brightly in the shadows beyond the window’s light. Black clothes swathed the tall frame, and hair as dark as his outfit hung well below his shoulders, framing his pallid features.
The ensemble was quite ghastly and had no regard for the season. Kesh shook his head with displeasure. “And who might you be?”
“My name is Vinnicus.” He stepped away from the door toward Kesh. “I would like to inquire about your travels of late.”
“Usually visitors are announced and invited.” Kesh thrust his chin forward even as he took an involuntary step backward.
Before Kesh could take another breath, Vinnicus was directly in front of him. There was no sign of the intruder’s movement—he had just disappeared from one spot and materialized in another. Kesh choked in panic and tried to back away for the pale man.
“Calm yourself.” Vinnicus’s eyes glowed solid red.
Kesh’s shoulders relaxed from their hunched and defensive position, and he could feel his stress melt away. Of course he should relax. This is my home, after all, he thought. No harm could come to him here.
“Tell me of your travels to Pelos. Start with your departure from Waterfall Citadel.” The words of the command seemed to come from the red orbs themselves. The color fascinated Kesh, and he relayed his story to the man in black. Every detail. Every plot.
“I see,” Vinnicus said when Kesh finished his tale. “This Banlor Graves—he is the architect behind all of the scheming?”
“All but the kidnapping,” Kesh replied. “That was my doing. I would have had Princess Sacha for my own.”
Vinnicus smiled. “Your information has been helpful to me. Do not fret about those who hunt you now. You will be under my protection. I will require only your servitude in return.”
Kesh pondered the offer. Vinnicus seemed trustworthy enough. Wait. Had he just used the term “trustworthy”? Kesh rubbed at his temples, struggling to clear his clouded mind. “I may need time to think on your offer.”
“It is not a choice, Kesh Tomelen. You will serve, or you will die.” Vinnicus placed a delicate, long-fingered hand on Kesh’s shoulder. “It is not my hand that will end you, however, but the hand of your benefactor, Banlor Graves. What you have described can lead to no other conclusion.”
Kesh stared at Vinnicus, knowing the truth of the intruder’s words. His confidence in his own ability to gain back Banlor’s good graces was a lie. Depression began to swirl about him.
“Tell me, Chancellor Tomelen, wouldn’t you prefer to sleep in your own bed this evening?” Vinnicus’s dark brows rose. “Safely?”
The stress of the past weeks crashed down on Kesh like a physical weight. Exhaustion threatened to fell him where he stood. He swayed in place, shoulders slumped, thinking that there was nothing he wanted so much as to stay right here, safe and protected from his enemies.
“Would you not like to see your dreams realized... the success you crave to be granted in full?” Vinnicus persisted.
A spark was kindled in Kesh’s mind. He did long to be a man of stature, of power. He had never lost those desires. One day, men would grovel at his feet and women would be his—as many as he liked, doing whatsoever he should please... Sacha. His head began to nod as his almost-drowned dream of power filtered through the pain and suffering that had seemed to become his only due.
“Then look into my eyes, Kesh Tomelen, and it will be so.”
Kesh hesitated for only a moment. Thoughts of free will fled to the deepest recesses of his mind as he looked into the pale man’s glowing red eyes.
Vinnicus perched on the railing of Minister Graves’s balcony. He peered in through the windows at the aged mortal.
Banlor’s posture spoke of power and influence, but his body was becoming weak. Deep lines were etched into his weathered skin and grey was the dominant color of his hair. Mortality had stained this man from head to toe.
Decades ago, Vinnicus had contemplated making Banlor part of his property, but there were other things to distract him. He had underestimated this man’s potential, it would seem. He had been aware of the minister’s dealings, both legitimate and illegitimate, but it was surprising, even to him, how extensive the man’s reach had become.
Questions of motive and direction were what Vinnicus considered as he watched the man sit in a large, plush chair and begin to thumb through a large and aged tome. Vinnicus slid off the railing and moved to stand in the shadows beside a set of glass doors that would give him entry to Minister Graves’s library. The minister’s scheming had very nearly upset decades of carefully laid plans, and though it appeared coincidental in the light of the chancellor’s tale, the event could not be ignored. Vinnicus needed the human nations to be bound together, and this man’s apparent desire to wrench them apart had to be understood. If it came from the man, a simple death could rectify matters. If it came from elsewhere, then other avenues would have to be pursued.
Vinnicus stepped up to the doors but froze as he reached for a c
urved handle. That smell...
He backed away from the doors, deeper into shadow, and forced his dead heart into motion. His will sank into the dark fluid that was his blood and his senses came to life as no mortal’s could.
The smell that had arrested his motion blossomed. A powerful, pungent stink overwhelmed the odors of the garden below the balcony. It was not a physical smell that emanated from this man’s study, despite its subsuming effect on the world around him, but an almost psychic stink. And it was a smell that he knew.
The door to the minister’s study opened, and a lovely young woman entered.
Vinnicus narrowed his eyes. This woman was not human.
She sauntered across the room toward the greying old man. He was too engrossed in his reading to notice her. She came to a stop not far from him and gazed down with affection.
So, they have finally come, he thought. Chancellor Tomelen will be of more use than I had previously anticipated.
Vinnicus stepped to the railing and leaped over the side. The arrival of the Skinner had made it too dangerous to act directly. If the creature were to discover his presence, its master would know as well. The Skinner, and Banlor Graves for that matter, must never know of his existence.
He touched down on the wet cobblestones below the minister’s patio and sped away to the outer walls of the city. Once he had reached the city’s perimeter, his thoughts drifted back to Chancellor Tomelen. It had been long indeed since Vinnicus had thought of a power beyond himself, but it was akin to divine intervention that the foolish little man had developed an infatuation with Sacha. Had he not altered the assassination, the loss of the twins would have been devastating to his plans. Perhaps irretrievably.
Vinnicus slowed as he approached the southern gates. The high walls kept out most of the moisture from the Tanglevine on either side of the city. Mist from the churning water beyond settled heavy on the streets here. Over the years, the populace had decorated the inner walls with colorful mosaics that depicted scenes of fisherman, ancient battles, and old kings. A mark of their history. A way to prove to the future that they had existed. A complete waste. One day, this city would be gone—worn to dust over time, along with all of the other great civilizations of Orundal. One day soon, should I fail...
As he flowed with the populace and through the open gates, a burning sensation grew in the back of his mind. His lips curved slightly in satisfaction. His minions had returned.
Vinnicus separated from the flowing masses of humanity and stepped to the edges of the cliffs that the mortals had named “The Cliffs of Judgment.” How little they know, he mused as he stepped off the edge and plummeted into the boiling mists of the falls. Will infused blood into his limbs to support him as he landed heavily on the rocks below and turned back to face the massive cliffs.
The familiar long crevice that crawled its way up the rocky surface looked like the silhouette of a dying tree in the moonlight. The fissure was wide enough at its base to accommodate a single person and was located across one of the many swirling pools that collected at the bottom of the falls.
Vinnicus jumped from his stone perch to the entrance in one great leap. Mentally, he changed his focus of will from strength of sinew to clarity of sense, and the darkness before him parted like a veil. The twisting tunnel stretched beyond even his senses into the darkness beyond.
The practice of centuries eased his path almost as much as his supernatural grace. Each turn and twist of the tunnels he moved through had been traversed by him hundreds of times. He barely noticed the desiccated corpses of the explorers he passed as he rushed to his minions’ call. If a human was prepared to face what existed in the dark, then he must face the consequences of what he found—even if the consequence was Vinnicus himself.
The passages eventually let into a chamber much larger than the bleak oubliettes he had passed, wherein lay the husks of those he had disposed of. A pungent odor emanated from the green and blue moss that covered the shores of the dozens of small, shallow pools. The moss was luminescent, but the dim light only highlighted the deeply alien character of the two creatures he had summoned from Dausos.
Their many legs rose and fell randomly and thick mandibles rattled against hard carapaces as each monster became aware of his presence.
Vinnicus stepped forward. “You have succeeded?”
In response, the giant, arachnid-like creatures danced about. Long arms reached back and sliced through strands of grey silk to free cocoons from where they had been fastened to the bulbous abdomens. Two mummified forms were laid carefully on the floor of the cavern, pillowed in the glowing moss.
Success! Vinnicus smiled and waved the monstrous demons of the otherworld away.
They rattled loudly with discontent but disappeared into the shadows as commanded.
He knelt beside the two bodies and rested his hands upon them. “Rest now,” he said. “There will be much to do when you awake.”
BLOOD ran down Walina’s clawed hand as the heart trapped in her iron-like grip still pumped with life. The last of Lord Soren’s guards, however, fell to the floor and lay there unmoving. Dark crimson fluid poured freely from the hole in his chest onto the white marble, and several streaks had painted the walls—and even the ceiling—of the grand room.
A dozen men had fallen before her as easily as wheat before the scythe. There had been two guardsmen for each of the assembled nobles currently sitting at Banlor’s table. Now the bodies of the men lay sprawled across the floor like some morbid art display.
The nobles at the table were the last group in a long line of men and women Banlor had had to master before his plans could truly be realized. The stunned silence in the room was satisfactory indeed.
Excitement had pricked Banlor’s skin as he watched his minion do her horrible work. The power and grace of the creature was awesome to behold, and it was his to command. He sat back in his chair at the head of the table and beckoned Walina back to his side with an indolent hand. He still thought of the thing that approached him as Popin’s daughter, despite the absolute knowledge that there was nothing left of the woman but her physical form. What really existed in the core of that body did not bear thinking about. Besides, he comforted himself, all that really matters is I am in control.
She sauntered toward him with a lascivious rolling of her hips. The solid black eyes were fixed upon his own. He still found himself fascinated as the chestnut brown of Walina’s “human” eyes replaced the soulless black.
A careless flip of her hand deposited the extracted heart onto Soren’s plate as she passed by his chair. The lord jerked away from the bloody lump as it rolled, flinging droplets of scarlet into his face and across the tablecloth. Several others around the table gasped as though they hadn’t just witnessed the dismemberment of a dozen men.
Banlor reveled in his guests’ discomfiture, but with the practiced patience he had honed in his years as a politician, he remained silent, waiting for Walina to return to his side. Letting a moment develop was an art. His guests’ eyes were riveted by the heart as it stopped its spasms, and the young woman who had performed such casual mayhem.
Walina reached the head of the table and turned to face the guests, laying one supple, youthful hand upon Banlor’s shoulder. The other had transformed into a monstrous, clawed weapon. The six nobles watched in horrified fascination as her arm changed back into a normal human appendage. Bones popped and snapped under her writhing skin. The sickening sound echoed through the dining room and across the adjoining forum.
Blood still coated every inch of that newly formed limb, and Mistress Callahan began to retch as Walina began to lick the thick liquid from her skin, never taking her eyes off those assembled.
Banlor cringed inwardly from the thing’s touch. Apparently, each of the doppelgangers had retained certain emotions that they interpreted from their victims. The creature that wore Walina’s skin had apparently come to the conclusion that the young woman had been enamored of Banlor, not just subservien
t. It was forever watching him and would act on any opportunity to touch him with adoration on its face. He had been forced to lock himself away when they were alone, lest the creature’s “affection” lead to more than touching. Even so, the price of his near imprisonment was worth the victory. These nobles were his. He could see it in their eyes.
Looking at each of the assembled in turn, Banlor leaned forward, increasing the weight of his presence. “It is good that we are all in agreement that Prince Alexander’s marriage to the barbarian wench of Pelos is folly,” he said over the sounds of Walina’s smacking and that weakling Callahan, who was still on the verge of sickness. “Our common goals reside in war, not peace. Our common interests should be united. One front. An indomitable force of progress and power. This is the true heart of Basinia.” He stood to draw the attention of his shaken visitors away from the purring monster by his side. “I believe I have just proven that I am the one to lead this... union. Are there any further objections?”
All of them, even the “great” Lord Soren, shook their heads in silence.
Banlor beamed. “Wonderful. Now that’s settled, please give your attention to Sir Dammer.” He gestured to the creature that was Dammer Gornella. The man’s imposing form had been standing in the archway between the two adjoining rooms during Walina’s magnificent display of butchery.
The old knight’s arms were filled with rolled parchments. The old soldier showed no emotion as he stepped over several bodies, handing each guest his or her personalized agenda, which Banlor had painstakingly put together over the past few months.
Banlor took his seat once more as they opened their scrolls, then cleared his throat. “Take note of the items marked ‘Primary’ on your list of assignments. Those items must be completed immediately. Time is short, so do not dally. Our timing must be perfect, and when—”
The front doorbell chimed, interrupting his speech. His guests looked at each other with concern etched on their faces. Lord Soren, the group’s self-elected spokesman, turned to Banlor. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. “If we are discovered it will mean our deaths!”
Dark Fate: The Gathering (The Dark Fate Chronicles Book 1) Page 42
