“Agreed, but that hope and support is limited. For the moment, Ainslen and the Order provide much more than we can. Not just physically, but also mentally. Think about it. Even when we’ve provided the assistance you speak of, we do so in secret, in fear of the nobility’s reaction. When the people take advantage of the comforts we offer, they hide and sneak and pray not be discovered. No crime is being committed by accepting our help, but to us and to them , it feels that way. That sensation of some ethical misconduct is gone when it’s the king’s men making the same offers. We cannot win out against that, not yet. Now, go, let everyone know they will receive their instructions by the usual method.”
“Fine—” A pattern of three knocks, four, then two, cut off Tomas’ response. Both men glanced toward the door, and then nodded to each other.
The heavy thuds of boots and the jangle of armor reverberated from the street. Thar snatched a look through the crack in the window slats. Militiamen poured out from the alleys to the right, spears and longswords bared.
Thar ducked before anyone saw him and crept to the closet across the room. Tomas followed. Once inside, Thar waited for Tomas to close the door behind them. When darkness engulfed the space Thar drew on the energy of his soul, using it to enhance his vision. Night became day. With his boot he pressed down on a floorboard two planks from the wall. A latch released. The wood in front of them slid aside to reveal a dark space beyond.
They were almost to the first floor in the hidden staircase when the first soldiers entered the building. The men shouted to each other as they searched each room. Under cover of the racket Thar and Tomas made it to the basement and into the sewers.
No matter how many times he’d been in the sewers Thar always found the stench revolting. He cupped a hand over his nose for a few moments until his senses adjusted. They hurried along the tunnels, manipulating soul to prevent the splash of boots through all manner of filth, while rats protested their passage in squeaks and squeals. Occasionally, they stopped to listen for signs of pursuit. There were none.
Running through the passages conjured memories of Thar’s early days when he first turned from his calling as a King’s Blade. Elysse recruited him back then, taught him much of what he knew today. The introduction to the tunnels had come as a surprise. Who would have thought such an extensive network existed under Kasandar?
The tunnels ran all the way south to caves within the Cliffs of a Thousand Sorrows, north to the mines in the Whetstone Mountains, or east to various exits along the River Ost. Through them the Consortium had done brisk business, smuggling in goods from across Mareshna. And then there was the Undertow—the ancient city beneath Kasandar, filled with rich history and knowledge if one knew where to look. He spent countless days and nights learning its debris-strewn streets.
A series of turns and four-way intersections later, Thar held out a hand to stop Tomas. Their breathing was loud in the silent stillness. He didn’t have an exact reason for halting; it was a reaction to the odd sensation in his gut. Their escape had been too easy. The king knew of the guilds’ use of the sewers. Surely, the militia had been informed. Thar’s brow furrowed. How had the militia appeared so quickly? I should have seen them sneaking through the alleys. If not myself, then the lookouts should have given earlier warning.
With a thought Thar drew on the tenth cycle, jin , a combination of sintu , sera , and lumni , extending his soul away from his body, the nimbus thinning to almost invisible, and spanning some three hundred feet in every direction. Something too big to be one of the sewer’s many creatures broke the nimbus. Two of them. Focusing, Thar picked out the familiar patterns of other souls. He pulled Tomas closer to whisper in his ear. “We’re being followed.”
“How? We would hear them.”
“Not if they held back the soldiers and only sent Blades or Farlanders capable of melding to lighten their footsteps. Or already had people down here. The only way the militia could have gotten so close without us receiving more of a warning would be through the sewers.”
Tomas remained silent for a moment before he nodded. They slipped into the deeper blackness of an intersection. Time slowed to a crawl. Other than their breathing, the only noises were incessant drips, an occasional splash from one of the sewer’s denizens, and the squeaks and scurrying feet of rodents. The putrid muck beneath the two men was alive with squirming forms.
A man-shaped shadow detached from the walls two intersections back. Short, no more than five feet. Tomas’ hand tightened on Thar’s coat. The shape melted into the darkness. A similar form repeated the process, this one taller by at least two heads.
“Impossible, I-I can’t see their souls,” Tomas muttered, voice tremulous, words barely audible.
Thar understood Tomas’ fear. The guild leader was an experienced melder, strong too, one of the most adept at soul magic among the Red Beggars. Seeing the nimbus of a living creature’s soul was second nature to one such as he. All living things had a soul, the energy lingering even after death.
“Must be a trick,” Thar said reassuringly. “They’re Farlanders, it’s possible that they’re more adept in the second cycle than we.” He wished he could take back that last bit even as the words left his mouth.
“Look at them,” Tomas implored. “That’s not some expanded use of koren to hide their souls. If it were I’d see through it.” His voice was soft, an awed and yet fearful whisper. “It’s … it’s as if they have no souls. The stories must be true, about some of them being soulless, that they’re trapped between living and dead.”
“Foolishness. It’s a meld of some sort, one we don’t know. Regardless, you must slip off to the Undertow and warn the others of this new ploy. I’ll deal with these two.”
“Are you certain? These Farlanders slaughtered Jemare’s Blades as one might a chicken.”
“Yes, I am. Go. Now.”
“I have an ill feeling about this,” Tomas said.
In truth, Thar had an ill feeling too, but unlike most people he was drawn to the sense of impending doom. The few times he experienced the sensation were the ones he cherished most, the ones that gave him life. “Just go. Trust me.” Thar felt Tomas squeeze his arm before the man slipped around the corner.
At the intersection, the Farlanders edged closer, both dressed in pale leather. The first was a squat, square man, bald, clean-shaven. His partner was the opposite, blond hair to his shoulders, a wispy mustache, and a forehead too flat to have occurred naturally. Flathead carried a firestick, the weapon’s metal barrel aimed down the tunnel. Their nimbuses thickened, stark white in the blackness.
Small bursts, like miniature lightning bolts, flickered through Thar. The skin under his skin shifted, growing, elongating to the response of a threat. He smiled. He’d spent much of his early life not experiencing such excitement. As a Blade he’d been undefeatable, unrivaled in his prowess with soul magic until one of Jemare’s servants delivered a contract for Elysse’s head. He met her that same day. He recalled her confidence before they fought, so much like his own. Life had changed since. One challenge after the next presented itself, each with enough skill to test him, sometimes to best him. These Farlanders were two such.
Thar released his hold on koren , knowing the men had seen through the veil he created with it by stopping his soul energy. He stepped into the middle of the passage, ignoring the wetness soaking into his boots.
The two Farlanders halted. Flathead snapped the firestick up to his face and sighted down the long metal portion as if it were a bow. He had one arm stretched out, slightly bent, hand cupping the weapon, the other hand near his cheek. Barrel-gut produced a shield the same size as himself.
“Must be a hell of an offer for you to betray your own,” Thar said, voice echoing.
“You are not one of us,” Barrel-gut replied in a rough accent, pronunciation deliberate.
Thar nodded, impressed that the man not only understood, but also spoke Kasinian. “Oh, I wasn’t speaking of me. I meant those like yo
u enslaved in the Farlands.”
“What would you know of them?” Barrel-gut asked with a scowl.
“I know enough,” Thar said, shrugging, “more than you give me credit for. I know that we are related.” With those words he allowed the outer layer of skin on his face to fall away, revealing fine golden scales.
Barrel-gut snarled in a guttural language. The words did not sound friendly. Confirmation of intent arrived when fire and smoke belched from the black hole at the tip of Flathead’s firestick. Thunder accompanied it.
Thar dodged, a purely instinctive shift of his body, and was happy for his reaction. Another one of his instincts had been to harden the nimbus surrounding him, making it like steel. Vision enhanced, he tracked the metal ball streaking in an instant toward him. It passed through his nimbus like a hot poker through snow, striking the wall behind him, the impact echoing.
Refocusing on Flathead, Thar picked out a slight motion from the man’s hand where it held the rear section of the firestick near his face. The Farlander’s finger was contracting, an easy squeeze like an archer aiming before he loosed an arrow.
Fire and smoke belched. More thunder.
Again, Thar tracked the metal ball and dodged it. The ball shifted , changed trajectory. One moment it was tearing by, heat trailing from it, and the next it was zipping toward his head. A bit of soul clung to it, extending back to Flathead.
Eyes wide, Thar managed to turn his face a heartbeat before the pebble-sized ball struck. Fire scorched his cheek. The metal projectile continued on by, splashing into the sewage behind him.
Flathead’s finger was tensing once more. Snarling silently, Thar poured a major portion of his soul into his legs. He imagined massive coiled springs. With one motion he bent his knees and drove forward. In the instant it took Flathead’s finger to squeeze, Thar covered the distance between them, water sloshing around the tunnel with the backlash of his velocity.
By the time the fire and projectile erupted from the hole at the front of the firestick, Thar was slamming into Barrel-gut’s shield. Thar expected the men to be blasted off their feet. Instead, the short Farlander stumbled back a few steps through sewage, and then regained his balance, but not before he bumped into his partner.
Thar was on them, attacking with punches and kicks. In the limited space of the tunnel his sword would be useless. He became a blur of blows, strikes landing with metallic thuds, water splashing.
Barrel-gut parried every attack simply by shifting his shield a foot or two in the appropriate direction. Behind the short man, Flathead had taken advantage of the situation by sprinting farther down the tunnel. He was bent, head down, attention focused on the firestick, hands working with practiced efficiency. Thar glimpsed more metal balls.
Thar feinted a kick to the right. When Barrel-gut shifted, Thar brought his foot up and over the shield too fast for the man to respond. The kick caught the Farlander in the side of the face. Pain shot through Thar’s foot. Barrel-gut was grinning at him, metal glinting where the kick had sheared away skin.
Hissing in surprise, Thar took a step back. The Farlander’s scales weren’t golden. Neither were they the polished silver or bronze he’d come to know. They were dull, iron grey.
Another blast of thunder chased away Thar’s shock. Flathead was standing, firestick aimed. Flames and smoke spat from the weapon two additional times.
Barrel-gut chose that moment to strike, hand a blur of movement, deceptively fast for his girth. With no time to dodge both attacks Thar raised his forearm, reinforcing it with soul to block Barrel-gut. The man’s fist connected with a resounding thud. The arm went dead.
Agony filled the next moment, white hot, scalding. Thar bit back a scream.
Such pain might have paralyzed another man, but not Thar. The tingling bursts that had edged through him now roared in his ears. The charges became a complete flow, circulating with his blood, within his soul. He offered Barrel-gut a mad grin.
The diminutive Farlander unleashed another blow that Thar sidestepped. A second later the metal balls screamed by the spot where Thar’s head had been. Thar dropped to one knee, anticipating their change in direction. He released the charges from his body into the water.
Radiant shades of blue lit the darkness like lightning on a moonless night. It crackled all around him, crawling with life, raced through his nimbus. A wiseman might have said Keneshin, the Grey God of Storms, had come to visit the world. Thar smiled that mad smile, teeth showing.
The two Farlanders stood on their toes, mouths open, spasms rocking their bodies. They were jittery puppets in a guiser’s play, strings yanked this way and that in a dance of death. An intermittent hum and the scent of cooked flesh and burnt hair washed over Thar. When he released the hold on his power, the men fell, their bodies splashing into filth. The metal balls dropped. Thar snatched them out the air and placed them in his coat pocket.
As he strode toward Flathead, feeling returned in slow increments to Thar’s left arm. The vital points Barrel-gut had sealed with his punch were opening slowly, once more allowing soul to flow. Flexing his fingers, Thar made a pleased sound in his throat, the hint of a smile curling his lips. Life once again held some interest.
Thar peered around until he located the partially submerged firestick. He picked up the weapon and slung it by its strap over one shoulder. Then, with one hand, he grabbed the dead man by the bottom of his leather trousers.
A jolt of soul shot into Thar. Startled, he dropped the Farlander.
The surge was similar to that attained when he used derin fur or leather. However, he could think of no beast from which he could gain the pale leather the Farlanders favored. He stored the information as another tidbit he had to learn about their various races.
On his second effort, the soul was less noticeable, and he dragged Flathead to his partner. He kicked aside Barrel-gut’s shield. It was a creation of soul and would cease to exist two days from when the Farlander manifested it. Humming to himself, he magnified his strength, took hold of the diminutive man’s ankle, and headed down the tunnels, dragging the men behind him.
Not once did he consider abandoning the corpses. These Farlanders, like him, were some form of Dracodar. Of that he was certain. If someone found them and recognized them for what they were, Ainslen’s men in particular, they could attain a wealth of power by feeding off the remains. The rebellion already had enough problems with the king’s current strength and allies. Neither did Thar consider feeding them to his own melders, regardless of how much it might enhance their power in soul magic. The practice was an abomination, one of the main reasons he’d rebelled against the Empire. As for himself, partaking of his own was poison.
He thought back to Tomas’ inability to sense the two Farlanders, and then to their lack of golden scales. They possessed a cycle they should not. The discovery of the quintessence in the dead men was worrying, more so than the confirmation that the Farlanders had Dracodar fighting for them. And yet he couldn’t help but try to make sense of that last choice.
Reports from merchants and the guild spy network stated that the Farlander Dracodar led a life mainly as fodder for the armies. Some were slaves. A specific number of them were kept for breeding. Supposedly none were allowed any semblance of freedom. So why fight alongside their oppressors? Generally, men fought for four reasons: emotion, a cause, money, or life. Discovering which moved these Dracodar would prove essential to the future.
Troubled by the thoughts, Thar made his way to one of the Undertow’s hidden entrances, the corpses sloshing behind him. He activated a switch hidden within the wall, and a brick partition slid aside to reveal a corridor. Minutes later he was striding through passages that time had forgotten, thick with dust and the smell of age, the dead men leaving a wet trail.
He traveled deep into the dank darkness of the Undertow until he strode along an avenue lined with statues of massive ereskars. The legendary beasts featured oversized ears, tusks and matching horns, and elongated snouts wi
th rows of fangs in a face only a mother could love. When he found the rooms he sought, Thar stripped the bodies, planning to spend the next few hours studying them. Perhaps he would find answers to the secrets of their weapons and the odd color of their scales. Most of all, he would leave no trace of them when he finished.
Days later, Thar left the entrance to a cave hidden among massive boulders. At his back towered the Cliffs of a Thousand Sorrows. The Treskelin Forest was a tangled, dark mass ahead, the wind a kiss of cold that ruffled his hair. The sound of padded footsteps announced Snow and her derin pack as they exited the cave. Snow was the biggest of them, the size of a small horse, her short white fur lying flat and smooth like a hound’s. Her tongue lolled, and along with her canines that jutted past her lower jaw, she seemed to be giving a satisfied smile. Unlike the males, she had no mane. The other six derins were licking their chops, hints of scarlet marring their snouts.
Thar let out a frustrated breath, mist curling from his mouth. The Farlander corpses hadn’t revealed enough, but they had shown some troubling attributes. The grey color of their scales was artificial, some type of additional layer atop their natural gold. He grimaced, wishing he knew what it meant. Perhaps the Blade in his basement could offer some insight. The origins of their leather armor proved similarly futile despite his experience as a hunter. He folded the piece he had in his hands, rubbing it between his fingers. The material was pale, thin yet supple, and carried death’s noxious odor.
The firestick’s metal balls also niggled at him. The alloy reminded him of Dracodarian-forged steel, the same material used to craft his sword, and the weapons Winslow and Keedar wielded. However, any smiths who knew how to work the metal were long dead, along with the location of mines from which it could be gleaned. Those secrets were said to have disappeared during the Blight and the Thousand Year War that followed. And yet, here were these projectiles. Perhaps, like the few weapons of its kind that his forces possessed, the balls had been part of some lost cache.
The Quintessence Cycle- The Complete Series Page 29
