by Graeme Ing
The rain fell harder, splashing on the cobbles and running along the wheel ruts, just as it dribbled from my hair down my face. I leaped into a regular carriage, its pair of helegs stamping and whinnying. Steam wafted from their backs.
“Temple Plaza,” I directed the driver, and sat back, shaking the water from my head.
I wanted to check out Caradan’s Tower in daylight. There was no way I would show at dawn unprepared, with the Duke expecting me. His words tumbled around my head. How much was truth? He hadn’t shot me, so that was a start. He obviously cared for his daughter, but was likely playing both sides. I exhaled loudly. Yeah, he’d tell Fortak everything.
The mansions fell behind as the carriage whisked me across the bridge. The city stretched out before me, everyone going about their lives and business. If only I could be as innocent.
What did Fortak have against me? I’d only just found out about the Covenant, so why had he been trying to kill me? I was still missing something. What purpose did Phyxia serve to this Covenant that they would be so bold as to kidnap her? It was a reckless move given her ambassadorial status, but foolhardy given her powers. Why had she let them take her? Was it her pacifist nature or an augury?
My brain hurt. I rolled my head around, forcing myself to relax. Every bone in my neck cracked.
Lord Caradan climbed his tower to the floor above, where the doors to the great hall lay open. A warm glow spread out across the hallway floor like a welcoming mat. From within came the sounds of supper: cutlery scraping across plates, tankards bumping on the table, the gurgling of keg taps, belches, chatter, and laughter.
He led his men inside and exchanged greetings from more of his Guildsmen, and the half dozen Elik Magi eating alongside them. He hated that his wife insisted that her Magi live in his tower. With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the servants from the room, and they pulled the doors closed on their way out. The huge hearth was alight for the purpose of heating the skewers of meat and cauldrons set before it, but the high-ceilinged chamber was lit by bronze bowls set high on the walls, each filled with everfire. Caradan surveyed the empty gallery that circled the room on the floor above.
Thunder rolled across the sky, growing ever louder as the Gods gathered to witness the massacre.
At the prearranged signal, each of his men let loose their magic. The very air crackled and hummed. Caradan embraced the raw power that rippled through him. The room grew chill and unnaturally dark. Conversation halted, giving way to the squeal of chairs as the Magi leaped to their feet, drawing on their own power.
Caradan smirked. Now came the fun part.
He clicked his fingers and lochtars whirled from the darkness to circle the room, their fine white hair streaming behind them. Spells of every color zapped from the Elik Magis’ fingers, and they wrapped shimmering fields around the vicious creatures. The lochtars dived at the sorcerers, their elegant, fine-boned faces transforming into chattering skulls with withered hair. Shrieks echoed around the hall.
“What are you doing?” one of the Magi cried out.
“Yolanda, come quick,” another called.
Yes, where was his wife? Why did she not fight beside her men as he did?
An invisible wall of force swept Caradan off his feet, carried him through the air, and smashed him against the wall. Red sparks flickered across his vision. Jarring pain rippled across his back. He tumbled into a heap and rolled behind a row of beer kegs. The nearest exploded in a green fire, drenching him in warm ale. He peeked around the keg that hid him.
Derren, strongest of the Magi, stood in the center of the fight. His green force shield flared each time a lochtar drew near, bouncing it away stunned. Unable to harm the undead, he took aim on Master Petay who promptly erupted in a column of roaring white fire. Petay screamed and screamed, flailed his arms, and fell to the ground. The rug ignited under him.
Eclias faced another of the Elik sorcerers. Five feet apart, they flung magic with wild abandon, and a rainbow of colors flickered around them. They seemed equally matched until one of the Magi’s blinding white rays burned a hole clear through Eclias’s abdomen, and he stumbled. Blood and intestines spilled from the hole. Teeth clenched, he lurched forward and fell at the foot of the Magi. The latter dipped his head in remorse before turning away.
Caradan spat in disgust at their distaste for killing, obviously gutless compared to his own brave men.
Eclias, lying in a pool of his own blood, reached up and grabbed the Magi’s shin. Necrotic magic pulsed from his fingers, causing a black rot to spread up the sorcerer’s leg. It consumed the Magi, crumbling flesh and bone to powder. The Elik Magi wailed and attempted to blast off his own leg, but to no avail. A moment later, only a heap of gray dust remained. Eclias pitched forward, dead.
Caradan surveyed the scene with clenched teeth. Most of his men lay dead, their souls delivered to Lak. Half of the Elik Magi remained. Master Binar joined him behind the kegs, his body covered in blood, his clothes singed.
“It’s time for the wraith,” Caradan said.
Binar’s eyes widened. “There has to be another—”
“No. We end it now.”
They cast together, joining their magic in the forbidden spell. It didn’t matter now. Their souls were damned. Might as well gain favor with Lak.
The darkness spread, extinguishing the flames in the hearth and dimming the everfire. The air became heavy and chill. Something stirred in the black corners of the room, not visible directly, only obvious when Caradan looked at it sideways. An unwholesome shrieking came out of nowhere and built to a crescendo. Men from both Guilds faltered and covered their ears. United for the first time in the battle, they inched toward the door.
In an instant the wraith was upon them, a writhing cloud of manifested anger and malice that tore around the huge chamber. Caradan set his teeth, unable to prevent the twitch under one eye as he endured the screaming pleas for mercy and screams of torment. The entity smothered every living thing, enveloping them like a black sheet, sucking them into The Deep, condemning them to an eternity in the clutch of the wraith.
Only Caradan and Binar remained, immune to their own spell. Binar cried like a baby, rocking himself back and forth. Caradan stared blankly at the wall. He’d had no choice but to sacrifice his own men to eradicate the Elik Magi and the threat they posed to his Guild.
I jerked upright, cracking my head against the wooden frame of the carriage. One hand flew to my dagger. Another jolt shook the carriage and the driver up front murmured an apology. I blew out my breath and slumped back into the seat, blinking hard to rid the macabre scenes from my inner vision. My face was drenched in cold sweat.
Why was Caradan in my head? How did these nightmares fit in with the jumbled pieces of my puzzle?
The rain had stopped, and a moment later so did the carriage. I stumbled out and paid the driver. Temple Plaza. I swore the entire population of Malkandrah could fit into it, even the dregs from Boattown. I could scream at the top of my voice and no one on the far side of the vast, fountained lawn would hear me. I was told twenty-seven temples lined the perimeter. I’d never bothered to count.
A cliff of alternating strata of red and gray rock dominated the southern end of the plaza, rising up to my right toward the highlands above the city. High on the cliff nestled the green and blue spires of Belaya’s temple. I always imagined that it resembled the face of the goddess watching over her city, looking down on the other Gods that she dominated.
“My Goddess,” I murmured, touching two fingers to my head, above my eyes.
I’d never believed that she cared enough to listen but thought of it as insurance.
Crowds wandered the plaza but I made a beeline for a quiet street that resembled a gorge between two gargantuan temples, their minarets piercing the sky. Basalt and granite walls towered over me, and I picked my way between cascades of rain water pouring from the fanged mouths of bikka gargoyles high above.
Eventually, I stood alone at an inters
ection behind the temples. Before me, a single wall ringed an entire city block, though it had been intended to keep things inside rather than keep trespassers out. The necropolis surrounding Caradan’s Tower wasn’t a place even necromancers dared to visit, long ago pronounced off-limits to thrill-seeking apprentices after many had failed to return. Ivy smothered the wall, and several branches and bushes had thrust their way between the stones, bowing the wall outward, shattering it in places. The whole thing looked as tenuous as my patience.
The twelve-feet-high wall prevented any glimpse inside, so I climbed a nearby pile of rubble and slipped easily through a hole in the wall.
The clouds chose that moment to engulf Solas, and a damp gray settled over the city.
I jumped down from the broken wall into a garden filled with a treacherous mix of roots and grass-covered boulders, with some sinkholes thrown in for good measure. Around me, slabs of gray poked up from the verdant carpet of weeds and grass. Some were rectangular, others rounded or cross-shaped.
I bent before the nearest and scrubbed away the dirt of ages, tracing the unreadable carved script with my fingers. Only Solas worshippers buried their dead a few feet below the surface. Closer to him, I suppose. Give me a nice deep crypt or catacomb any day.
The derelict Caradan’s Tower lurched at an angle away from nearby Temple Plaza, as if cowering from the Gods. By counting windows, I judged it five floors high but it had once stood taller. After the bloody massacre of Caradan, a century before, a disaster had befallen the tower, causing it to sink partially into the ground. It didn’t seem to want to be here any more than I did.
A balcony jutted out close to ground level, against which someone had erected a plank, granting access to the balcony and a dark and uninviting doorway. Red hawks perched in a line along the ivy-covered railing, and at first glance I mistook them for gargoyles. A handful took flight, settling into the trees where they studied me, turning their heads to one side.
The gray overcast pressed down, threatening to rain at any moment.
Fetid marshland surrounded the tower. Islands of turf, grass, and reeds speckled the marsh, and the water between them was green and stagnant. A cemetery had once stood at the base of the tower, but now only a handful of gravestones and mausoleums remained, half-sunken or toppled, strangled by vines and moss, and draped by a persistent mist. The sounds of the city were muted, as if the land inside the boundary wall existed in a world of its own.
Haunted, people said. I shrugged. Everything was haunted.
I could see why the Duke had brought me here. I’d choose this place to hide secrets too.
I perched atop a tombstone to think. Phyxia was right—I should visit Mother’s tomb. It had been eight solars. I remembered little of my childhood, but yellow lilies had always sat in vases around our house. The sweet smell tickled my nose. Did her tomb lie as dilapidated and forgotten as the crooked, leaning ones around me? Even the gravestones were dying.
Phyxia would call that an augury.
I followed a trail of trampled grass through the swamp, taking short jumps from islet to islet. The ground squelched and gave way more than once, plunging me into bracken water up to my knees. It was a relief to step onto firmer ground. I craned my neck to study the tower looming above me. The hairs on my neck stood erect. I was being watched. My gaze scanned the windows, leaping from one dark slit to the next, but I saw nothing to validate my fears.
The plank propped against the balcony railing looked recent, and was solid underfoot as I crept up it. If Caradan’s ghost lay within, he had no need for such a bridge, so something human had been this way. The Duke? How many people made up this Covenant and what did they do in such a depressing place?
Vague shapes stood in the shadows inside the door. I pushed out a gentle Perception and it tickled immediately. Skeletons. I detected several more deeper into the tower, and dozens on the floors above and below. Why so many? What did they guard? What did the Duke want me to see? I wasn’t about to walk into another skeleton ambush. Sure, I could defeat the lot of them, but not yet, not until I knew what I was doing here.
I hurried back through the half-sunken necropolis, seeking the perceived safety of the trees. Something malevolent hung over the area, like nothing I had sensed in any crypt or deep place. I glanced behind me at the tower and replayed my nightmares, imagining the brutal war of magic that had taken place inside.
At dawn, the Duke had said. Very well. I would return then. I had a plan, and it involved my old tutor, Master Kolta.
From my vantage point high on the vaulted roofs of the Guildhouse, I watched Solas sink to a fiery death in the ocean, turning the water a hundred shades of burnished orange. The smell of fish and salt hung heavy in the air. I crouched below a chimneystack, having jammed my feet in between the jagged, broken tiles to prevent myself sliding off and plunging into the alley.
Knowing what I did now, I’d been a naive fool to walk into Begara’s classroom that time. If Fortak caught me walking the hallways, it’d all be over.
A mubar monkey scampered over the ridge of the roof. When it saw me, it puffed its fur and hissed.
A tile dislodged under my boot and I tumbled sideways. I clawed desperately for a handhold, but succeeded only in tearing another tile loose. The tiles and I made an infernal din as we slid and clattered down the roof. The dark chasm of the alley approached at great speed. Hoping my apprentice memories held true, I rolled onto my stomach and slid feetfirst over the precipice.
My arms reached beneath the dark eaves and I came to an abrupt stop, jarring my wrists and popping one shoulder. There I hung, clutching one of the bikka-shaped gargoyles for dear life. That it hadn’t snapped was amazing. Trying not to think about the four-story drop to the alley, I lowered myself onto a narrow windowsill.
I rapped on the dirty glass, then again, louder. The window opened, almost knocking me to my death.
“Master Kolta,” I said. “It’s Maldren. I need to see you.”
He stuck out his head, twisted it upward, and surveyed me with his bug eyes. They always looked about to pop from his head.
“What in bloody Belaya’s name are you doing? Get in here.”
His head darted back inside and he extended his hand to assist me. I slipped, sending chunks of the rotten windowsill plunging into the darkness, but he yanked me inside and I tumbled onto the rug. He perched on the chair before his desk and gestured to the bed, within touching distance in his cramped quarters.
“Everyone’s looking for you,” he whispered, his gaze flicking to the closed door. “Fortak is bloody pissed, screaming at everyone.”
I sat on the hard bed, nursing the ankle I had banged on the window frame.
“I don’t have time to explain. Do you trust me, Master?”
He nodded vigorously, sniffed, and picked inside his nostril.
“Of course I do. Lak, if he finds me talking to you…”
“I hate to get you involved but I need a favor.”
“What do you need?” He studied the snot on the tip of his finger. “Need I tell you what he’ll do to you?”
I blew out my breath. “I know. Believe me, I know. He already tried to kill me.”
Kolta’s mouth fell open. Absentmindedly, he flicked the booger onto the rug at our feet.
“I need Walk the Bones,” I said.
“That’s a Master-level spell.”
“Which is why I need your help.”
He sniffed and gyrated his nose. “What’s this about? What have you gotten into?”
Just like old times. How I’d missed my tutor. Boogers and all.
At thirty-five, he was barely ten solars my senior, and a good reminder that not everyone in the Guild was a pompous ass. I trusted him but wasn’t ready to tell him the full truth. I didn’t even know what the truth was. Besides, he was a master of the Guild and I couldn’t say with certainty that he wouldn’t turn me in if I started ranting about conspiracies.
I told him as much as I dared abo
ut the fires, the grak, and visiting Duke Imarian, but avoided mentioning any connection to the Guildmaster. Kolta had a lot of questions and kept eyeing me suspiciously. I chewed my lip. He knew I was holding back. Finally, he agreed to help me gain access to the tower.
“One proviso, my boy.”
He waggled a finger at me and I eyed it carefully, wary of him flicking boogers at me.
“I’m coming into the tower with you. No complaints. Fortak is not to be trifled with. You’re going to need my protection.”
Was I still his baby apprentice? He beamed, broke the seal on a pair of beers, and handed me one.
This was going to be fun. The two of us once more.
“Now what’s this about your new apprentice?” he said. “A girl, no less?”
I grimaced. “I don’t know what to make of her. She’s not as useless as I’d expected and has a lot of spirit, but I’m worried she’s a spy for her father.”
“Messy business. How’s her tuition coming along?”
I rubbed my nose. “I don’t want to waste my time. Once I figure all this out, she’ll be going home to her father.”
Was she still in Boattown? I doubted it, since I’d told her that I wasn’t coming back. Life would be easier if she’d tucked her tail between her legs and gone back to daddy. Maybe then the Duke would trust me.
Kolta tut-tutted. “You can’t leave your apprentice in the dark, my boy. You’ve got to have a solid schedule of lessons, reading, and tests. How’s she going to learn? You’ve got a responsibility now.”
I must have put on my “do I have to?” face, because Kolta laughed. “You can’t make Master without an apprentice.”
He guzzled his beer.
I studied a dusty painting of Belaya explaining the final Test of Ascension to Lak, failure of which resulted in him being cast into The Deep. I’d assumed Fortak had been setting me up by assigning Ayla to me. What if he’d genuinely wanted to test me, force me to step up? Was him trying to kill me his final test for me? That was stupid. I shook my head. Too many questions, not enough answers.
