Every one of those she'd held dear was turning on her. Where was Fryda now? There'd been no sign of her for two days. Edoma feared that Fryda, too, had ventured outside the safety of Indham.
Her mind a whirl, Edoma removed herself from the other-realm.
A knock on the door startled her. She threw a blanket over the crystal, not wanting to touch it again while her hand still bled. She grabbed a scarf from her wardrobe and wrapped it around her hand, and then opened the door.
"Kipp," she said, confused by the acolyte's presence. She stepped outside.
"It's best we speak in private."
Still confused, Edoma took him into her room, and shut the door behind them.
"I have a message for you. From Hiroc."
Edoma's eyes widened. "Please, sit." She held out her hand toward her stool beside her desk.
"I'd rather not. I won't be long." He swallowed. "Hiroc said that you're to go to Lady's Lake. He is with your mutual friend. He wishes to speak about what's to be done for Aernheim."
Edoma's stomach coiled. Hiroc sounded like a willing party in whatever Peoh was planning. "When did he tell you this?"
"Earlier today." Kipp's hands kneaded each other. "I'm sorry for what I did to Hiroc. I wouldn't have done it had Ealstan not threatened me. Hiroc said he won't be bothering us anymore. I think he killed Ealstan. Something's different about him. I'm worried. Will you help him?"
"I will," Edoma said. "Now don't say a word of this to anyone."
Kipp swore an oath and left.
Why had Hiroc trusted Kipp with this information? He must have known that Kipp's guilty conscience would seal his lips.
Edoma took a horse from the stables of Enlil's Temple and galloped through the gates toward Lady's Lake.
15
Alfric
"He is your friend," the bar maiden's voice came from behind Alfric.
He was frozen to the spot, too caught with indecision to tell her to go back inside the cellar. He knew that Bradir was stronger than him, but the bar maiden was right—he couldn't leave his friend. For that was what Gos was, despite their common calamity.
"Go back inside the tunnel," he said, steeling his resolve.
The bar maiden’s mouth thinned in a line of determination. She'd seemed to have grown bold, though Alfric didn't know from where this hidden reserve had come. She certainly hadn't appeared brave two nights ago. Perhaps the way he looked, now less a monster and more a beast, wasn't so frightening.
When she'd retreated back into the cellar, Alfric bent down to grab the book. It still intrigued him, and Bradir had already found them from its scent, so he slipped it back into his bag and ran outside.
Bradir still gripped Gos by the throat. He turned his head, looking at Alfric with blood-hungry eyes. "The old man whispered to you, didn't he? His devious planning brought you back here."
"It was my idea to come back to Urd."
"Why? Why abandon the pack?" Bradir seemed genuinely offended. "Eosor chose you, and he chose me as leader."
Gos's face was quickly turning purple. He kicked futilely, each kick weaker than the last. Alfric knew he should keep their plans secret, but Bradir was about to strangle Gos to death.
"I could control my body while we were here."
Bradir tilted his head. "After nightfall?"
"Yes!" Alfric yelled. He ran to Bradir and grabbed his arm, trying to force him to release Gos.
"Nonsense." In a single motion, Bradir jerked his wrist. Gos's neck snapped before he dropped to the ground, limp.
Alfric cried and drew back his arm to slash Bradir, but the other man knelt on one knee and slit the back of Alfric's legs with five talons. Alfric fell, pain searing the back of his thighs. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn't obey.
The wind ruffled Bradir's fur, and the light of sunset bathed it in an auburn glow. He looked like a demon aflame.
"No!" The sound of the bar maiden's cry broke Alfric's heart.
Even as she raced toward them, he could hear her heart's rapid thudding. Yet he could not move. Bradir shot forward like a crossbow bolt and swept her off her feet. His giant hands clamped her arms to her sides. Though she squirmed and screamed like a banshee, she couldn't rid herself of his grip.
"Bradir!" Alfric clenched his teeth. With every ounce of effort, he tried to stand, but he couldn't.
"A courageous bar maiden," Bradir said, studying her as she writhed like a trapped animal. "The second I've met in two days."
"Leave her be," Alfric said. His vision grew hazy, the life quickly leaving him. His body would repair at nightfall, but he needed to be conscious if he was to have any hope of stopping Bradir. For some reason, Bradir seemed intent on sparing Alfric. Why? He had seemed to break Gos's neck without any reticence. Yet Gos, too, would heal after the change.
For now, the most important thing was stopping Bradir from feeding on the girl.
Alfric moved toward Bradir but fell onto his face. Forced to crawl, he inched forward, mud clumping his chest fur.
"I have better plans for her," Bradir said.
As Alfric tasted Urd's filthy gutter waters, he knew that he couldn't stop Bradir. Helpless, he watched as Bradir held the bar maiden to him with a single arm and slid a claw across her throat. He tossed her away. Her body kicked up mud as it bounced.
Alfric used his elbows to drag himself through the mud, every move bringing him closer to unconsciousness. He came to the bar maiden and pulled her into his arms. Her pale flesh was cold. Even in this most terrible of moments, Alfric saw the blood dribbling from her throat wound, and the thirst compelled him to drink. He cried out to the open sky. Fury abated and feeling weaker than ever, he looked down as she tried to speak.
"Why did you leave?" Alfric said, holding her head up as blood bubbled down her front. He wasn't expecting an answer.
"You were brave," she said. "I wanted to be brave, too."
"No more speaking," he whispered, cradling her head in his lap.
He barely knew her, and yet they'd shared a connection. They'd both been foolishly brave. The one person he'd been able to save through all the horror was dying. All because he'd thought himself capable of using the traveling pylon. In that moment, the mysterious reliquary and the silver scepter that had allowed him to wrestle control from the wraith seemed a fantasy. Nothing more than his imagination playing tricks on him.
"This is not a time for mourning!" Bradir leaned against the tavern’s outside wall, arms folded over his chest. A grin widened his face like a wolf's rictus as he strolled over to Gos. "It is a time for celebration!"
The bar maiden's breathing softened, Alfric's enhanced hearing only picking up the slight tremor of a heartbeat. With a cold fury, Alfric let her down. He forced himself to stand, clenching his teeth as agony burned. Unable to put more than the slightest weight on his legs, he stumbled toward Bradir. Still, sheer determination brought him forward, each step laden with hurt.
Bradir stood beside Gos's crumpled form. "The girl's not dead, you know. I made sure of that. She'll live. As long as we're quick."
Alfric dropped to one knee, his left leg refusing to obey. He jerked it forward using both hands, but it refused to move.
"You have heart," Bradir said. "It's why I keep you around. The pack is stronger with you. Eosor appreciates perseverance. You're young, so you lack wisdom, but you'll gain that quickly enough. We'll meet the beacon soon, and then you'll come face to face with the Guardian who seeks us."
"There isn't a Guardian at the end of the beacon," Alfric said. "Eosor hasn't chosen us for anything. Can't you see this is a curse?"
"One man's curse is another man's blessing." Grabbing Gos's hair, Bradir dragged his unconscious form toward the bar maiden. Alfric could just discern Gos's breath, slow and measured in the throes of death.
Bradir said, "There was another I planned to bring into the fold, but this one shall do finely. Eosor has seen fit to grant us another blessing."
When Alfric realized what
Bradir was about to do, he roared. The effort drained all his energy, and he toppled. With his cheek resting on the mud, he watched the horror unfold, time sedated.
Holding Gos upright by the hair, Bradir thrust his other hand into Gos's chest. Claws carved a clean path as he pulled downward, cutting Gos from his collarbone to his groin. Gos awoke from unconsciousness, golden eyes bursting, meeting Alfric with a gaze of pure terror. Blood gushed from between the folds of skin until Gos's head dropped. Bradir lifted Gos above his head like a bloodied sacrifice, both hands submerged in Gos's torso. As he rent Gos in two, pulling his rib cage until it unfolded like a blooming flower, his organs fell onto the bar maiden with a wet slapping. They coiled like wet serpents. With a final tearing, a crimson mist slithered from Gos's split corpse.
The mist crawled through the organs, up and down like a worm, devouring lifesoul. Covered in Gos's remains, the bar maiden's wide eyes captured the writhing mists until they entered her mouth.
She bolted upright, eyes rolling to the back of her head. Her neck twisted and jerked, turning full circle before snapping back, like a bowstring drawn and released. Her head dropped and her shoulders slumped.
"Eat," Bradir said. "The lifesoul is tainted, but it is enough for now. Later, you will dine well. Welcome to the pack."
Like a child commanded to eat, the bar maiden took the entrails in her hands. She entwined intestines in her fingers, studying them as her tongue flashed across her lips. The cut in her throat trembled as air passed through it, yet no blood leaked from it.
Alfric closed his eyes. Unable to bear the horror, he wished to be somewhere else. He pictured Fryda's face when he'd won the dueling match against Oswin. Her fiery red hair bounced on her shoulders whenever she turned to look at him with her green eyes flecked with gold. Bradir urged the bar maiden to feed, and Alfric gritted his teeth and bunched his fists, ignoring the talons piercing his skin.
He wanted to be anywhere else but here. Something tugged inside him, and he felt himself grow weightless.
The sound of chewing hauled his mind back to reality. He concentrated again on memories of Indham, thinking about Hiroc and Fryda and where they might be now. A second time, he felt elsewhere. A peace flooded his mind—until images of wraiths invaded it, entering Indham and taking hosts for themselves. Fryda felled before a skinwalker's talons, Hiroc's back broken as a skinwalker folded him in two.
Alfric lay in the mud, disabled. Visions of terror, the most horrible things his imagination could conjure, flashed before his eyes.
When night soon came, another nightmare began.
This one he accepted readily. He no longer cared. The worst had come. He accepted the visions of a destroyed Indham as fact. Why should he suspect otherwise?
The traveling pylon hadn't worked, and his only friend, Gos, had been killed before him. The bar maiden he had saved two days ago, the one person who he'd prevented from becoming another number on the skinwalkers' death toll, was now a skinwalker herself.
He gave his body freely to the wraith, a willing host to whatever would come that night. Joining the pack and Bradir's unholy campaign to find the beacon was all he had now.
That night, surprisingly, was not a success for the wraiths. They ran through a small hamlet, their victims no more than a handful. The lack of prey served to bring them closer to the beacon, covering more distance than they had on any other night. Alfric was sure that they would reach it the next evening.
Bradir thought it a message from the Guardian, Eosor. Gos had thought that something devious lay behind it. Alfric's thoughts were simpler. The wraiths were the spirits of beasts. He'd seen the dogs in Indham barking at torches in the night. Just like those dogs, the pack followed a fire in the night.
Yet something lingered in his mind. Even to see a bonfire from leagues away, every night, seemed impossible. Why would someone burn a bonfire every night?
This question echoed in Alfric's mind as his body collapsed next to Bradir and the bar maiden. Dawn's light touched his eyelids as they closed.
16
Fryda
Darkness shrouded the tunnel. The faint glow of the active wards on Fryda's face illuminated a small circle around her. She'd been running for what felt like hours. Always, Velmit was only a short distance behind. No matter how hard she ran, which direction she took, he followed her.
She didn't know how Velmit could see in the darkness. He'd probably found a torch. No, he was a beast. He'd be able to smell her. He'd said he could smell her fear. The realization that she'd never be able to escape strangled her.
The thought of what he might do should he find her sped her onward despite her unrest. The tunnels now seemed to slope downward. The further she pressed on, the hotter the air became. She grew more cautious about the direction she took. She traveled down whichever path felt cooler, thinking that the less hot a tunnel was, the less likely it would end with a dragon. The heat had confirmed her worst fears—this was the dragon enclosure.
"You're slowing down," Velmit's voice came from behind her. The story he'd told her felt like something so distant now. The man who might once have loved his pregnant wife was gone, a monster taking his place.
Further into the tunnels, the wards' glow flickered before vanishing completely. She gasped and her stomach sank. The darkness closed, swallowing her whole.
Velmit's laughter seemed to come from every side. Forcing herself to continue, Fryda placed her left hand against the wall and used her sense of touch to guide her. The jagged rocks cut into her palm. In her other hand, she held the suppression stone.
The wards should have remained empowered at least for another four days, but now they were dull. Peoh had said dragon blood would last a week. What happened?
The question would have to wait. Even now, she could hear the steady footsteps behind her. Velmit was close. With no time to make a decision, she turned left as the tunnel's wall veered in that direction. She was met with an intense heat.
Something brushed against her shoulder. Jettisoning any thoughts of a dragon, she began to run. More laughter came from Velmit.
"So close now. I only had a taste, but now I want the whole thing."
In the darkness, she couldn't see where she was going, and she stumbled a number of times. The memory of Velmit's tongue on her skin energized her. She stumbled into another tunnel and collided into a wall. A dead end.
The wall felt strange to the touch. It was hot, but it seemed there were lines etched into it. Runes, perhaps. She pressed on the door, and suddenly the lines illuminated. Runes glowed along the iron door’s surface as it shifted open.
She was immediately bathed in light. Rather than a welcome change, it brought on nausea. She ran through the doorway, her arm warding off the light. When her eyes grew accustomed to the change, she saw that the tunnel fanned out into a massive room. At its center lay a dragon. Giant chains bound its neck and limbs. The thickest chains were wrapped around its snout. It appeared to be sleeping.
A few more steps and she would have bumped right into it.
A small archway lay behind the dragon, the only exit beside the entrance she'd come through. With Velmit so close behind her and a dragon in front of her, she was trapped.
"Now I've got you."
Fryda snapped her head around. Velmit, mere inches away, reached for her, and she stumbled backward. She fell onto her back, and he was upon her.
She clawed at his face, his neck, and his eyes. Still, his hands clamped around her neck and squeezed. She gasped, and her eyes bulged as she fought to breathe. Then his hand slackened, and he rolled off her. A guttural sound burst from his mouth. His face shifted and elongated, becoming more like a wolf's snout than a bear's. He grabbed his fur and pulled out clumps of brown hair, as though something crawled within it. He tore flesh and fur, leaving behind pale, leathery skin. On his head grew twin horns like those of an aurochs. He bellowed and jerked, his back arching.
Before Fryda could run, Velmit lurched to his feet.
Night had come. He was now a monster. A true skinwalker.
He stared at her with black pits for eyes, and a forked tongue flashed across pointed teeth.
The dragon remained curled up. Fryda decided it would be better to run past the dragon than face the skinwalker.
Fryda bolted toward the other entrance, skirting around the dragon. All the while it remained with its eyes closed. If it weren't for the steady snorting from its nostrils, she might have thought it dead.
A deep roar came from behind her, and she risked a glance. She stopped in her tracks. The skinwalker was lifted from its feet, the dragon's tail wrapped around its midsection. Another roar came from the skinwalker as the tail squeezed. The tail’s pointed end slashed across the skinwalker's stomach, even as the rest of the tail constricted. Velmit's intestines spilled out, collapsing in a heap onto the floor below with a wet noise. A crimson mist floated from the entrails.
Without empowered wards, the wraith would possess Fryda. She was thrown from her feet as something rushed past her. A green dragon no larger than a horse flew above the red dragon. It opened its jaws, and crimson flames poured from its mouth. The flames enveloped the mists until gray ash fluttered to the ground, the mists no more.
The iron door slammed closed. The runes on its surface dulled again.
The red dragon lay down once more and closed its eyes, as if the incident had been a mild annoyance.
The green dragon floated to the ground and stalked toward Fryda. It had appeared to save her by killing the wraith with dragonfire, but she couldn't be sure. She held her hands behind her back so the dragon couldn't see the suppression stone. She didn't know how to use it, but she could feel it grow warm in her hand.
Fryda shuffled backward, unable to take her eyes off the dragon. Something opened in her mind, as though it had expanded. Her vision wavered, and suddenly she could see two places at once. With one aspect of vision, she stared at herself, and the other, she looked at the dragon.
The Dragon Soul (Vagrant Souls Book 2) Page 10
