Knives in the Night

by Nathan A. Thompson

  That was, and still is, the main goal, I promised calmly. But we need a little more information before we can unleash on this city. Karim, can we reveal ourselves to anyone here, or should we occupy one of the empty houses for the night?

  He looked back at the tapestry, squinted as he read it one more time, then nodded confidently.

  My relatives will take us in, he decided, this house, at least, has not thrown their lot in with the occupiers. If they had, the script would have included layers of praise celebrating the local leadership, instead of the bare minimum offered here, he added as he pointed to a line my enhanced eyes could barely make out, thanks to my Rises, dragon bonds, and consuming two sense-oriented Dark Icons.

  But it was much, much easier to notice the relief that the dark-skinned Testifier felt over discovering that his relatives had both survived and not turned traitor.

  Then, after receiving my permission through the mindlink, the Script mage reached over and carefully touched one of the tapestry’s scripts. There was a very, very faint magical pulse that I could only feel because of my close proximity to the scribe. But a minute later, I heard movement from beyond the door. There were more pulses of magic as someone undid a veritable plethora of wards, and then the door creaked open the tiniest amount—just enough for a single eye to peer through.

  The door opened wider the very next moment, wide enough for a woman who looked to be roughly in her late thirties, with skin just a shade lighter than Karim’s, to stick her head out and very clearly mouth what in the expletive are you people doing?

  But her mouth and eyes widened the very next moment as she took in Karim. She thrust the door open the rest of the way and pulled the younger man in, making a hurried motion to the rest of us. She shut the barrier the instant we were all inside her home, and traced her finger across it to reactivate whatever Script wards she had deactivated to let us in. Then she turned to grab Karim by the front of his robes and stared into the taller man’s eyes.

  “Is it you?” I heard her whisper. “Is it really you?”

  “Yes, Aunt Nadine, I am that distant nephew of yours,” Karim replied softly, “though I am surprised you can recognize me even that much, given how long it’s been.”

  “It has been a few years at the most since you were lost!” the older woman hissed, her teeth flashing as she spoke. “And how could I not know your face and name? You were the pride of our entire family! I remember your grandparents gushing over your achievements! I remember their heartache and rage when you were sacrificed to appease the threatened pride of those pompous cowards! The entire family cut off all ties with the College the very day we learned of the awful news!”

  Karim shifted, looking a tad uncomfortable with the praise. Nadine’s expression softened as she continued looking at him.

  “How are you still alive?” the older woman asked him. “The mission was suicide. Everyone knew that. You and those two friends of yours were said to be lost for good. The Fellows’ child, and that nice young dwarf that sculpted those statues for our young ones. Did they survive as well? Are they with you?”

  She turned her head to finally take in the rest of us, and began blinking.

  “Eadric and Weylin are much as you remember them,” Karim said as he gestured toward his fellow Testifiers, “those you see with them are others that I encountered on Avalon as well.”

  He gave me a questioning look, and a wordless inquiry through the mindlink.

  Up to you, I informed him, as his overwhelmed aunt continued to gush her surprise.

  “You all survived! And you brought others with you!” She started to clap her hands, but quickly mastered herself. “I cannot be loud. None of us can be loud at night. You are all likely tired, and your coming here has brought terrible danger upon yourselves. I will give you what shelter and hospitality I can, but please tell me: did you learn of the last Challenger’s fate? Did they truly kill him as they said?”

  “Yes and no,” I answered dryly, as the poor woman blinked at me. Karim shot me an annoyed look.

  Sorry, sorry, I replied, didn’t mean to steal your thunder. Please go ahead.

  “Aunt Nadine,” Karim continued, as if he were recovering from a rude interruption, “I present to you the Lord Challenger Wes Malcolm, and his retinue of heroes, some of whom have risen from Avalon’s forgotten depths, to aid him in the liberation of our worlds.”

  I lowered my hood and undid my helm, revealing my red hair. Breena flew into view as well, and after looking to make sure all the building’s openings were thoroughly boarded up, began to glow ever so softly.

  The overwhelmed woman gasped in surprise, eyes widening even further. I reflected that I may have to worry about causing heart attacks with future introductions.

  “Aunt, I know you have many questions,” Karim continued, “but we are likely short on time. We need shelter, rest, and information, and I hope I do not risk your safety too badly, by asking that you help provide it.”

  “Safety?” the woman scoffed as she turned back to her nephew. “There is no safety left in Tajam. They take more and more people into their blasted Pits every day. It would not surprise me if they managed to fully empty our city by the end of the year. My time will come any day now, as it has for many others, including your uncle.” The woman’s eyes flashed angrily. “So stay here if you wish. I would tell you all to leave and save yourself if you were anyone else. But you have returned from Avalon, and brought the Lord Challenger and Holy Fairy with you. So I will hope instead,” she added desperately. “I will hope that if you and our Lord were strong enough to battle your way through Avalon, you will be strong enough to give our oppressors the slaughter they so richly deserve. I will even hope that our Lord Challenger retains the miraculous power of rescuing those lost to the Pits.”

  “He does,” Petalbell said as she flew out from behind Breyn, “I have witnessed him doing so myself—as an assistant as well as a survivor.”

  “Destroying any local Horde Pits is one of my primary objectives,” I said grimly, “that and eliminating the rest of the Malus presence here. But I didn’t want to start without knowing the situation here—especially since our contact wasn’t waiting for us when we arrived.”

  “They began rounding up the exiled Testifiers a few days ago,” Nadine said darkly, “in clear defiance of the peace Lalla Anahita had worked between our peoples.”

  I frowned at that. That action was likely retaliation for what I had done in Mejem and Nedjena.

  I was beginning to better understand the frustration I had felt from Anahita’s part of the Breath.

  “Do not blame yourself, my Lord Challenger,” Karim’s aunt said when she saw my expression. “I said their recent actions were in clear defiance. They have been breaking their own rules in secret every time they could. The only times they have even remotely behaved was whenever the Holy Steward’s Satellite risked killing one of them in their beds. But they were bound to do as they have now done at some point, whether or not you ever arrived on our world. Yet you are here now, my Lord Challenger, and so our vengeance and deliverance are both close at hand.”

  The gleam in her eye had taken on a bloodthirsty tone. I had to remind myself that if my family had suffered as much as she had under these assholes, I’d be out for blood, too.

  Then I remembered that my family had suffered under these assholes. They had been quietly monitoring us for years, and at the very first inkling of potential gain, they had murdered my father, defamed him, kidnapped my foster sisters, forced them to further defame my father, defame me and my family by proxy, cripple me, attempt to send my foster sisters into sexual slavery, and then attempt to murder my mother, my biological sister, and all of my remaining friends.

  So yeah, I was out for blood, too.

  CHAPTER 19: LOOKOUT DUTY

  In addition to giving us room and board in her large house, Nadine was able to explain much of the city’s situation to us that night.

  It was as unpleasant as I had s
uspected it to be.

  The Malus operatives had begun emptying entire neighborhoods into the nearby Horde Pit, on a scale Breena confided that they hadn’t believed possible.

  In the previous invasions so many centuries ago, back before Stell had been able to seal the Lost Deeps, Horde Pits grew rapidly, but within certain limitations. A brand-new Pit had a cap on how many people it could absorb at a time. In fact, that was the reason why the first Horde Pit I had encountered had only thrown Petalbell inside of it, instead of the rest of the fairies. Breena explained that the Pit could have technically carried more captives, but had chosen to process only one because of all the magical energy a fairy contains, and because the Wretch champion had wanted to modify Petalbell in ways that still made me too angry to think about.

  But by the next day, the Pit would have been able to double the number of Ilklings, further empower the Wretch champion, and produce another Wretch. It also would have expanded in size and been able to handle two more fairy captives. Those victims would have let the Pit and Hordebeasts double again, and then again, probably until it was able to upgrade from a Smear to a Stain and begin producing Mongrels.

  But they still would have had to manage their growth carefully. Even if they conquered a nearby village, they couldn’t just dump the entire population into the Horde Pit all at once and send their growth into overdrive. They would have to feed the poor people into the disgusting pool a dozen max at a time, until they grew to the next level, which was…

  Breena, I asked, interrupting my own musings, what was the level of Horde Pit after Stain?

  Outbreak, Wes, she said as she prepared to devour her plate of breakfast baklava, it goes Smear, Stain, Outbreak, Contagion, Plague, and Nightmare. Eating now. No more talking.

  Right, I said, turning back to my own internal thoughts. At any rate, Breena, Stell, and Guineve had all explained that only at the much, much later levels could Horde Pits start devouring entire cities in several big bites. They still grew quickly compared to the civilized races’ settlements, and their speed in producing combat-ready creatures was completely unmatched by every race around, but the slow speed of processing Pit victims was perhaps their only bottleneck.

  That was why the Horde had to create multiple Pits. It was much, much easier to bring a second, third, even a fourth Horde Pit from Smear to Outbreak, than it was to bring the first Outbreak-ranked Pit to Plague status.

  But according to what we knew, there was only one Horde Pit near Tajam. And we had learned enough from our contacts and interrogated Malus operatives to know that none of the Horde Pits in the Golden Sands were at a stage beyond Outbreak.

  So they shouldn’t have been able to just throw hundreds and hundreds of people into the Horde Pit every day.

  But according to Karim’s aunt, that was exactly what they were doing. And they weren’t merely moving prisoners around. Not to other worlds, and not to some cage within the Horde Pits.

  She knew that, because the people sent to the Horde Pits had actually returned as Pit victims, modified by the Pits to serve as slaves inside the city itself.

  That wasn’t supposed to be possible, either. Not in the city itself. In the past, the Horde would remove some victims from the Pit to mold their minds and bodies into their ideal slaves, but they always remained near the Pits. They normally would assist the Ilklings in construction or other menial tasks or serve as bridemeals—whatever the fuck that was—to certain Hordebeasts. And they could no longer do the second, on account of the disgust I had projected over the idea into the first Wretch that had tried to submit to me.

  But they could still make slaves, and those slaves were just as bound to the Pits as the victims still inside them. No known magic had ever restored their sanity or bodies, and they still died when their bonded Pit was destroyed.

  But they shouldn’t be capable of managing market stands, complex deliveries, or running an entire city…

  And yet, that was exactly what had happened.

  The citizens of Tajam would wake up every morning to the sight of people with enlarged, night-black pupils and black, visible veins hawking their wares, serving as couriers, and cleaning the streets. All with vacant, pained expressions. It was impossible to interact with them because they usually wouldn’t respond to anyone outside of performing whatever task the Horde had apparently ordered for them that day. A Pit slave merchant would loudly hawk their wares, explain their prices, and exchange their wares for whatever specified amount of coin they had been commanded to accept, but they would ignore any questions or comments not regarding their merchandise.

  With one exception.

  If the Pit-slave encountered a relative, friend, or neighbor, they would briefly mumble “save me,” or “kill me” in an emotionless tone, then go back to focusing exclusively on their task. Neither of which had been possible, because moving a Pit slave anywhere else didn’t return them to normal, and they healed from every form of damage—even beheadings, or being burned to death.

  Only destroying the Pit itself had ever worked, and even then they would just collapse to the ground in limp, lifeless, grateful husks.

  That information threw a bit of a wrench into my plans.

  I needed to find out if using Ball-ee to destroy the Pit would free Pit slaves like it would with the victims still inside the Pit, or if it would cause them to die because their connection cut off.

  Then, I needed to figure out just how many Malus operatives were here, how powerful they were, and how vulnerable they were regarding their routes, and rest.

  Then, I needed to decide which we should go after first. The Malus operatives were probably the bigger threat, since they were basically an evil version of Challengers, but the Horde Pit could produce a constant supply of monsters to threaten both my retinue and the population itself. Point of order, it was apparently churning a few hundred Horde a day to send to attack my people in Mejem.

  But Breena and the others reminded me that I was overlooking an even bigger danger.

  They’re using the Pits to travel now, Wes. Remember? she pointed out. What Anahita sent that broken rooster to come tell you? As soon as they send word that you’re here, those Pit Knights will take a whole bunch of elite Horde and Malus men and start hopping through the Pits like we do with Pathways.

  I wasn’t sure if that was exactly right, because I got the impression that they would have to pass through several Pits to get here, but her point stood.

  If I didn’t take care of the Pit immediately, we would have all kinds of trouble shortly after we were discovered.

  But I still needed to do some sort of reconnaissance. Unlike in Mejem, no one knew exactly where the Horde Pit was located beyond the general direction, because the Malus Men and Horde tended to lock down the city when they began gathering up the next group of victims.

  That, and there had been so many victims that the surviving populace was just trying to keep their heads low and survive.

  So we’d have to find the Pit while avoiding detection, reach the Pit while avoiding detection, and then destroy the Pit without being detected in time for the Horde to throw whatever awful surprises they were preparing for me.

  The best way we could think to do that would be to try and trail the Horde and Malus operatives the next time they went to pick up the next batch of Horde victims.

  But we would have to figure out when that would happen, because Nadine told Karim that the time had been completely random, as far as she or anyone else could tell.

  So since I wanted to look into the Pit slaves anyway, a small handful of us went out into the city.

  Karim and Salima took the lead, since they blended in the best, but the rest of us trailed behind in the long, hooded robes most people wore here.

  We left Eadric, Gabin, and Breyn behind. Partly because it made sense to have a group as large as ours split up, and partly because they were obviously non-native, with their sizes and skin tones. Technically, Weylin and I probably also qualified, but we w
ere easier to disguise, Weylin knew the city well and I just needed to see some things for myself.

  Petal volunteered to stay with Breyn. I respected her privacy and didn’t ask why.

  The crowds of people we had been expecting to see late last night finally materialized in the morning. Crowds of people in colorful robes finally filtered out into the city streets, moving quickly, and all keeping their heads low. The mood was tense, hurried, and fearful, but for all that it still had the hustle and bustle my parents had described of their morning commutes to work, especially when they were already late because they had to take me to school first. People needed to get somewhere quickly. They needed to get something. And then they needed to get home as quickly and safely as possible, avoiding the probably avoidable, but very real, chance of death in the process. Granted, that risk came from monsters this time, instead of a car accident, but the fear was no less familiar to me for that difference.

  You okay, Wes? Breena messaged me from my cloak as she saw me shake my head.