The Nuthaanian clenched his fists. “Not. Another. Word.”
“At any rate, you are unpredictable. That’s why the Sylph wanted your seed—so your chaotic nature would be passed on to your daughter.”
“You bloody well know how to flatter a man. I hope you plan on cooking me dinner after.”
Marsais was in no mood for banter. He looked to the silver moon and its faithful red companion. And in the distance, far into the night, was another, more ominous outline. A dark circle, growing closer, speeding the realm towards the Shadowed Dawn. “The Sylph,” he explained, “is trusting in Chaos. She is sailing blind through uncharted waters. That is insanity.”
Feeling the weight of the ages settle on his shoulders, Marsais walked away with only a vague plan that involved drinking himself senseless.
Chapter Ten
He was blind. His melon had cracked open and his eyes had burst, Zoshi was sure of it. Only when he carefully probed his head, there was no leak. Eyelids, eyeballs, all there. Plus a swollen knot under his tangled hair. But the real pain came from his ankle.
A ruffle of feathers alerted him to another’s presence. The crow gave a demanding croak.
“I can’t see,” Zoshi whispered. His voice echoed in the space, thrown back at him, all hollow and lost. A swish of feathers and a distant flapping told the boy that the crow had abandoned him. Fear crept into his heart. He was alone in the pitch black unknown.
Think of what you have; not what you don’t. That’s what his mum always said. He’d told his little brothers the same. It was fine advice, only he’d never get to tell his brothers again.
Fighting back a wave of grief, he felt the ground, trying to make sense of the dark. The stone wasn’t frozen, so the ice monster couldn’t reach him here—there was that to be thankful for. When he discovered a wall, he put his back to it, and turned his blind study onto his ankle. It was swollen and thick in his boot. He quickly undid the laces, and eased his foot out of its confines. His ankle throbbed, all hot and angry.
Pip had injured his ankle once before, and their mum had bound it tight with bandages. Zoshi unwound the scarf that Morigan had given him and wrapped it snuggly around the limb.
First things first, now on to the second. He tied his boot on to his belt, and began exploring this new world with questing fingers. Stairs going up, and stairs going down. Keeping one hand on his wall, he stretched out with the other, but didn’t feel another wall.
Zoshi took a deep breath, and edged along his stair, feeling his way like a blind man in an alley. The stone dropped from beneath his hand, and his fingers touched emptiness. He scrambled back, away from the edge. The stairwell wasn’t very wide.
When he got his breathing under control, he found a pebble, and moved towards the edge. He stretched out his arm, and dropped the stone, listening hard. More nothing; not even a faint clack of its landing.
A dim, bluish light entered the blackness. It moved quickly. Closer and closer, bobbing in the dark. Zoshi scrambled back to his wall, and quickly scooted up the steps. But the blue light kept coming. A breath later, the crow landed, its feathered-face aglow. Zoshi squinted at the brightness. The light came from a tangle of glowing moss. Crumpet had brought him light.
With a breath of relief, Zoshi picked up the plant and cupped it in his hands like a treasured jewel. It illuminated the stone stairs; he could see one step up and one step down, but not much else. A fine layer of dust covered the stone steps. Wherever he was, no one had come here for a very long time. Even the stone looked old.
Zoshi rooted around his sack, but he didn’t have a jar, or anything to hold the light except for his waterskin, which wouldn’t help anyone. Keeping the moss cupped in one hand, he started scooting up the stairs, one at a time, back the way he had fallen.
The crow rattled and clicked its disapproval.
“I’m not going down there,” he said. But the stone said otherwise: the top of the stairs was blocked.
Zoshi shone his meager light over the obsidian surface. Smooth and unmarred; the stone sucked the light up and swallowed it whole. There was no sign of a door. How had he fallen through? He pushed against the stone, but nothing happened this time. When further attempts failed, he tried to slide it, right and then left. Then he stood on his one good leg, on his toes, and felt as much as the slab as he could. Still nothing.
Desperate, Zoshi punched the wall. That was a mistake. He sucked in a breath, and clutched his hurting hand.
The boy put his back against the barrier and melted to the ground in defeat. Something tugged on his trouser leg, and Zoshi raised his light. Crumpet was nipping at his clothes.
“Is there a way out, then?”
The crow looked right at him. Its eyes reflected the cool light, making them glow. Zoshi shivered. Yes, said those eyes.
Chapter Eleven
A single drop stained the stone. The copper-skinned Rahuatl crouched, running a claw through the mark. She brought it to her forked tongue. Blood. Rashk half-turned, glancing over her shoulder. She sneered at the fog; it had ruined her hunt. Phantoms drifted in the mist—lost spirits with no blood, no form. Cowards.
Dismissing her irritation, she turned back to that drop of life, listening to the songs of distant clashes, the screams and vague battle cries that were shouted from the stones. The fog was mad—poisonous.
Rashk ran her tongue over her sharpened teeth. A tongue-piercing clicked along each tip, soothing her senses, and more—the rune-etched stud kept the poison at bay. With curved blade in hand, she rose with the smoothness of a cat, and padded silently through the gloom. Her Whispers had not been returned by Thira or Morigan. Either the women were dead, or the fog was hampering weaves. Whatever the reason, the Rahuatl required a bird’s eye view.
Her foot touched the first step of her tower stairwell. The ward that she had placed in the stone pulsed, and a warning whistle shrilled in the back of her mind. She was not the first to ascend these steps.
Crouching low, Rashk held a kukri in each hand, ears straining, eyes searching, sniffing the cold air. The mist smelled of frost on a grave. Halfway up the long climb, she broke through the fog. It lay at her feet like a filthy pond, lapping at the stone step. The enchantress had placed a complicated spirit ward on that step: a weave of air and spirit and light. The ward repelled Reapers and Forsaken, and apparently this fog.
She stopped on the landing, and rubbed two finger caps together, activating a dormant rune. When the enchantment hummed to life, she placed her palm flat against the stone, and listened. The stone vibrated like a wounded beast. The castle was unsettled.
Rashk snatched her hand away, and shook off the sensations. She did not pause at the next landing, or glance down the passage that veered off to another set of rooms. A dark spot caught her eyes, and another—the trail of a wounded predator.
On the third landing, there was no passage, but an alcove with a bench that faced a narrow window. Without warning, Rashk lunged into the alcove, bursting through a mirror weave. She brought herself up short, her blade whispering against a high collar.
Thira frowned, and dropped her weave. “You’re late.”
Rashk hissed at the thin woman, and withdrew her unbloodied blade. “Whispers do not travel in this muck.” She looked to the man who shared the small space. Thedus faced the wall, his palms flat on the stone. He was still naked.
“I suspected as much,” Thira said. “I knew you’d return to your tower eventually.” A long cut ran down Thira’s cheek, and a dark stain saturated the shoulder of her longcoat.
Rashk looked at her in question.
“It took some effort to shake Eiji from our trail,” Thira explained.
The Rahuatl jerked her chin up the stairs. In silence, the group climbed the winding stairwell. When they reached the top, Rashk stepped forward, wrapping a hand around an innocent looking handle. Rashk’s tower had more wards and traps than a nobleman’s vault. She clicked her claws against the metal in a precise pattern. It
whispered like a cricket’s chattering. The wards unraveled, and the door opened. Rashk motioned her companions inside.
When the enchantress stepped into her workshop, she reactivated the wards, and walked through her rooms, searching for lurkers. No one had breached her tower.
A whistle pierced her ears, and Rashk hurried back to the main room. The call came from Thira’s lips. The woman stood by a window that faced the inner bailey. She repeated the call.
“Did you kill the cowardly Archlord?”
Thira cocked her head. “Marsais? No, he’s likely still alive.”
Rashk bared her teeth. “I meant Tharios,” she hissed.
“I did not,” the woman admitted. “He ran into the Nameless and closed the Titan Gates.”
Rashk stepped into the shadows by the window. “Isek Beirnuckle lives. He is a slippery foe.” She had lost Isek during a skirmish with guards. The traitor had disappeared in all respects—to her eyes, to her nose, to her instincts. Rashk knew that he had served as Marsais’ spymaster, but she had never suspected that he was so skilled.
She looked down at the fog-covered grounds. Her tower, the Spine, and the guardian statues at the Storm Gates poked out of the murk. Everything else was lost. She eyed the shield of wards that covered the Spine like a net.
“Thedus activated the castle wards,” Thira said.
Rashk looked to the man. Thedus stood in the middle of her workshop, gazing at the rafters. The pattern always seemed to captivate the lost man.
“How?”
“He placed his palm on the Titan Gates.” It explained nothing, but then Thedus was a mystery. No one seemed to know when he had come to the Isle, or even if he was a Wise One at all. Like the stones underfoot, he had always been. Rashk glared at his tangled hair, wishing she could pierce his skull. If she ever discovered a way to dissect thoughts, she would. Bloodmagi could, and did, by scooping out brains. But even Rashk had her limits; she had no wish to kill the man.
“Do you have anything that might pass as tea?”
Rashk pointed a claw at a shelf. “Bandages and salve.” It was an order, and Thira did not balk, but shrugged off her coat and set about cleaning her wounds.
Rashk sniffed at a pot, trying to recall what she had last used it for. A poultice of entrails. It would do. She cleaned the pot with sand, rinsed it, and dropped a water rune in the bowl. When it filled, she set the pot on a heating stone.
In minutes, the water began to spit, and Rashk dropped a pale root in the boiling water.
Thira had pulled a chair to the window, and there she sat, tending to her shoulder. Every so often, she paused, and whistled a shrill command. When nothing answered, she returned to her wounds.
Rashk poured three cups of milky liquid, handed one to Thira, and set another beside Thedus. He was sitting on the stone floor, gazing at his hand as if only just noticing it was attached to his body.
“Is this poison part of the Wards?” Rashk asked the man, expecting no answer. Thedus lived up to her expectations.
“He said it was the Fey,” said Thira.
Rashk met the woman’s dark gaze. Strain etched the corner of Thira’s eyes and that ram-rod spine was slightly bent. The Mistress of Novices smelled of defeat.
“The Fey?” Rashk hissed. “But—”
“They are bedtime stories used to frighten brats,” Thira supplied.
“Yes.”
Thira took a thoughtful sip of her tea. “However muddy the water, it is still water. Truth can be buried in myth. Sifting through the lies simply requires finesse.” She gave another whistle, and waited, searching the mists. When nothing stirred in the dim light, she set her cup on the ledge, nearly shattering it. “I shouldn’t have left him outside,” she murmured.
Rashk did not ask whom she meant. It was certainly not the small man-child Zoshi, but rather, the dog that had turned into a mammoth and had been left outside of the Storm Gates as a crow. The Mistress of Novices looked lost without the dog by her side.
“Is it the Fey?” asked Rashk.
“The one man who may know is not here, and the man who surely knows is madder than the first.” Thira pinched her nose and closed her eyes. “I’m open to suggestions, but those...phantoms are not Forsaken, and they are not Voidspawn. So let us work off the assumption that those things are Fey, of which we know very little.” She opened her eyes. “With that in mind—what do we know?”
“That Tharios needs his throat slit.”
“Practical as always.” The thought seemed to bolster the woman. Now, Thira smelled of the hunt. “I think it’s safe to conclude that Tharios has been scheming for some time. He already possessed forbidden power, and yet, he had his eye on the Archlord’s throne. Why?”
“The Fire Imp talked of libraries in the upper levels,” Rashk confided. “Could he have wanted knowledge?”
“Perhaps.” Thira plucked up her tea. “You said Tharios showed you a sketch of Soisskeli’s Stave.”
“He did,” Rashk confirmed. “And the man-child, Zoshi, described it from the ritual chamber.”
“The stave that Tharios used to open the portal?”
“Yes.”
“But Soisskeli’s Stave binds; it does not open portals.”
“A staff has two ends,” Rashk stated. “What good is the power to bind if you have nothing to bind?”
Thira frowned, considering the possibility. “As common as portals were before the Shattering, legend may not have even thought to mention the portal enchantment. But that...” she hesitated.
“Would be formidable,” Rashk finished. “Most artifacts are. I’ve long suspected as much. Legend never explained where Soisskeli found the dragons that he used in the war.”
“If it is the same stave that Zoshi described, then that means Tharios had the stave before he was named Archlord,” Thira pointed out.
“Yes, but Isek could have escorted him to the Archlord’s chambers after Marsais fled...or maybe he only had a part of the stave. A segment could have been in the vault.”
“Perhaps.” Thira sipped on her tea thoughtfully. “Tharios didn’t have the stave when I chased him into the Nameless. That means he didn’t use it to open a portal to the Fey. There’s something more that we’re missing—some greater plan. And I wonder...were the Fey even part of his schemes? What if we forced his hand when we barged into the council chamber?”
“The hawk was waiting, and we startled it.”
Thira stood and leaned on the windowsill, gazing down at the mist. “I have often wondered what curse lay on that Nameless chamber. The wards, Rashk, the guardian statues, all of it is centered around the Spine; not the castle. What if the wards were designed to keep something in, and not out?”
“A prison.”
“Exactly.”
“You think the Fey were trapped in the Nameless chamber?”
“Considering that he locked himself in that room, and the Fog appeared shortly after, I would say it’s a plausible theory.”
“If the mist is really the Fey, and we startled the hawk, then what is his real prey?”
“Likely something far worse,” Thira breathed. “I think Tharios simply needed a diversion.”
Rashk followed that line of thought. “Most of the Isle still believes he is Archlord. He is using the mist to hide in confusion—to scatter and divide and kill us one at a time.” Rashk had used the tactic herself; it was effective. “And as long as the poison remains, we can’t even send a Whisper.”
A tight smile cracked Thira’s lips. “We need to find Tulipin.”
Silence had many forms: the warm cloud that filled a mind; a chill of clarity; the emptiness of an abandoned home; the charged air of a hunt. These empty passages should have been silent. But the castle was not quiet. Voices whispered in the mist.
Those voices drowned out the hunt. Words buzzed in her ear and busy thoughts clouded her mind. Soundless, and yet, not. The whispers pushed at the boundary between silence and a scream. With the Fey, that dist
inction was impossibly thin.
Rashk glanced over her shoulder, assuring herself that Thira had not been lost in the murk. The thin woman was there, encased in a Barrier of runes that she could keep cycling in her sleep.
The air was fitful, and the mist angry. Rashk stopped at a corner, listening beyond the hiss of voices. A needle pricked her instincts. Rashk moved without thought, pulling Thira into a side passage. The Wise One threw up a mirror weave, and the two women waited.
Boots thudded, the mist parted, and a group of guards marched past. The Quartermaster, Kreem Wyrmbane, led the squad. He was a hulking southerner from the Thanes who rivaled a Nuthaanian berserker in size. A dangerous warrior.
Rashk eyed the crimson bands around the guards’ arms. That was not part of the Isle uniform. No doubt, this new edition served as a means to distinguish men loyal to Tharios from those who were not.
Two Wise Ones, one at the front, and one at the back, marched with the troop, their weaves parting the fog.
When the fog closed in, swallowing the group, Rashk whispered in her companion’s ear. “The infirmary is that way, and they smelled of the hunt.”
Thira hesitated.
“Tulipin may be there,” Rashk pressed.
But Thira shook her head. “With Bloodmagi and foul fog invading the castle? There is only one place Tulipin Tuddleberry will be.”
Rashk cracked open an ornate door, and eyed the chamber. The blinding light of golden sconces, braziers, and tiles burst through the crack. She curled a lip in distaste, and stepped into the temple of Zahra. The great hypostyle hall appeared empty. She sniffed the air, but the powerful fumes of incense masked any would be assassins.
Mist clung to the floors, but stopped at the far end, curling back, away from the feet of a towering statue. Zahra, The Radiant One, stared from beneath her golden cowl. She held scales in one outstretched hand and a sword in the other. Rashk did not like Zahra—her breasts were covered, proclaiming her mother to no one. But the Rahuatl had learned to keep such thoughts to herself. The Blessed Order had burnt people for less.
The Broken God (Legends of Fyrsta Book 3) Page 7
