by K L Reinhart
Blood Gate Boxed Set
Dagger of the World, Books 4 - 6
K. L. Reinhart
Copyright © 2020 K. L. Reinhart
All Rights Reserved
Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. All people, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination and / or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.
Individual Covers Designed by Radovan Zivkovic
Contents
The Hexan
Prologue: Doom in the North
1. Caught
2. Defiance
3. The War Burg
4. Defender of Araxia
5. Imposter
6. The Fourth Family of the Elves
7. The Hexan
8. Squire of the Fourth
9. Beast-killer
10. Into the Dark
11. The Bargain
12. Elsewhere, the Walls of Araxia
13. The Queen of a Thousand Tears
14. No Prize for Being Clever
15. The Battle for Araxia, Part 1
16. The Battle for Araxia, Part 2
17. Showdown
18. Orcish Honor
19. The Lady of the North
The Ungol Blade
1. The Benuin
2. Magic Missile
3. The Enclave, Tartaruk Mountains
4. Mutiny!
5. Root Magic
6. The Fifth
7. Under Stone, Under Mountain
8. The Hall of Statues
9. Under the Gate
10. A Game of Dominos
11. The Carnivorous Cavern
12. Hopscotch in the Dark
13. The Chiefs of Pain
14. The Ungol Blade
15. The Path of Pain, a Return
16. The Lair of Grom
17. Orcsong
Epilogue: The First Strike
Blood Gate
Prologue: In the Dark, Running
1. The Sending
2. Rescue
3. The Surprises of a First Creature
4. The Black Keep
5. Mother Viveni & Malvern’s Point
6. The Mysteries of a Chief
7. They Tried to Kill You, Again
8. Hyxalion, Exasperated
9. Teeth in the Dark
10. The Emarii
11. The Northern Wheelhouse
12. Of the First Times, the First Creatures, and the Elder Beings
13. The Three Sisters
14. Arcanum
15. A Null’s Purpose
16. A Rude Awakening
17. The Great Forest of Hon
18. Forest-Fiend, Forest-Friend
Thank You
Fantasy Reads Newsletter
The Hexan
Dagger of the World, Book 4
Prologue: Doom in the North
“Chief . . .?” A human voice croaked from behind the stone doorway, as a shaking, black-gloved hand hit the doorframe to the private study of Father Jacques, the Chief External.
“Arthan?” the older Chief of the secretive monastic community known only as the Enclave coughed where he was half bent over the worktable. Father Jacques was a man in his middling years, with short, cropped hair slowly giving its black up to silver—and right now he felt far older than his years. I feel like horse dung, he thought, and he knew that his skin looked sallow and tired and his eyes bloodshot.
But still better than Journeyman Arthan, the Chief saw.
“Chief! It’s not working. The Silverweed . . . it isn’t working!” the Journeyman groaned. His hand slid several inches down the doorjamb. With a clearly heroic effort of will, he gripped onto the door tighter and attempted to quell the shakes rampaging through his body.
“Here, sit!” The Father moved from the table, knocking the vials of solution he had been working on. A widening stain spread across his jottings as he grabbed a stool to take to the younger man.
Every movement from the Father felt like a stab of the needles from the Southern Lords Pain Artificers. There was a thumping headache behind his eyes as if the Dwarves of Jolnir were using the inside of his head as their weapons forges.
But it is only pain. The Chief External controlled himself. Like all of the Brothers and Sisters, monks, nuns, acolytes, novitiates, journeymen, and Chiefs of the Enclave, he had been brought up following the Law of the Book of Corrections, otherwise known as the Path of Pain.
“Pain teaches us. It reaches into our marrow . . .” Jacques murmured as he set the stool down, and the failing Journeyman Arthan atop it.
“Yes, Father. I forgot myself. I am sorry,” Arthan hissed through his teeth. Jacques saw the younger man attempt to take in deep lungfuls of breath, to imbibe the pain as he had been correctly taught and allow it to transmute who he was.
But I’m not sure if any man can hold onto even this much pain . . . Jacques thought with a moment of real fear.
“Report,” the Chief said, passing a skin of water to his sweating agent. If the Chief’s own hands shook, then he did not pay it any mind.
It’s still only the early stages, he thought of his own infection—because that was what it was, wasn’t it? An infection of the worst kind, a demonic illness spreading out from the Blood Gate on the other side of the Tartaruk Mountains where the Black Keep of the Enclave huddled. The infection was just one of the Baleful Signs . . .
The signs that signal the end of our world, Jacques knew.
“At least half the Enclave have caught it,” Arthan wheezed, thumping his chest as if to dislodge something that sat there. “It came on yesterday evening and is spreading like wildfire.”
“Numbers!” Jacques said tersely. He knew that he was being harsh, that he was asking a lot of this young man.
But we humans need the pain, otherwise we grow soft and weak as babes—another maxim from the Book of Corrections.
“Ten before nightfall,” Arthan panted. “Another fifteen by midnight—cough!—another eighteen by second watch, twelve by fourth watch—"
“Twelve?” the Father seized on this. It was now just before dawn, just the fifth watch of the night and almost the first hour of a new day.
“Yes, Chief . . .” Another hacking cough sent Arthan doubling over, spluttering any water that he had managed to imbibe. “Eight more that I know of, but I lost Journeyman Sara, so I couldn’t complete the count.”
The numbers are slowing! Father Jacques seized on this fact. If that was the case, then maybe, just maybe, the mysterious disease was burning itself out . . .
“But none are responding to the Silverweed—cough! hack!” Arthan groaned.
“Ixcht!” Jacques grumbled, his anger affording some release from his own pain. The Silverweed he had prepared was the best healing herb that he knew. He had seen it stop the Red Pox and the Winter Sweats in their tracks. And if those who have caught whatever illness this is succumb to it, then we’re set to lose sixty or more Brothers and Sisters of the Enclave in one night! That would be a sore blow, almost a fifth of their number.
And with the smaller Enclave left—and presumably half of them in as bad a state as Arthan and Jacques were—how could they possibly seek to halt the next Baleful Sign from the Blood Gate?
For a second, Father Jacques wavered where he stood as a surge of weakness flowed up from his knees to the top of his skull. The Chief, who specialized in “quiet work” and relied on his toughness, wits, poisons, and blades, stumbled backwards as he leaned against the opposite doorjamb.
And for just one brief moment, this man who had survived orcish warb
ands, squads of armored guards, evil sorcerers, and far worse—knew fear.
The Blood Gate had been activated. Their world of Midhara was once again aligned with the nightmare-world of the Ungol. That cosmic cycle began the process of the Five Baleful Signs which presaged the full opening of the Blood Gate, allowing the enemies of all mortal things to flood their realm.
First, the purple-and-red Ungol-light, that even now Father Jacques could see hanging over the mountains like a second dawn.
Second, the plague of biting things—the flying snakes known as the Estreek.
And now this, the plague of disease, the Father thought. So far, he had found nothing that could slow the Baleful Signs and nothing that could close the Blood Gate. There were only two more before the end of everything that he knew and cared about. The fourth sign was the plague of darkness. The fifth was the arrival of the Gatekeeper—a powerful Ungol War Captain who held the cosmic hell-gate open in the final hours before the apocalypse happened.
And we, the Enclave, are the only ones standing in the way of that doom . . . the Father thought—and feared.
1
Caught
Aii! Terak the elf, the null, the assassin of the Enclave, opened his mouth and tried to scream.
But no sound came out.
Mother Istarion! His frantic thoughts tried to order what had just happened to him. He had been standing on the edge of the portal between the world of the Aesther and his own world of Midhara. He had been standing in the ritual room of the elves of the Second Family in Everdell Forest, and about to deliver the precious Demiene Flowers that would heal his friend, the fellow novitiate of the Enclave, the human girl Reticula.
But then something had grabbed him from the fading light of the circle and dragged him back—and that something had tentacles.
“Rargh!” Now that his mind had realized what peril he was in, the feeling of constriction around his waist suddenly made sense. He tried to roar in rage, but once again his words disappeared into the red-and-purple glow of lights all around him.
I am falling between the worlds.
I’m going to die.
Something has stolen me.
All of these thoughts and more flashed through Terak’s mind as he tried his best to twist and turn, thumping his hands on the bands that wrapped around him and bound him securely.
Pain exploded all across his finer elf senses, like a roar of noise that threatened to drown out every sound. It is this place. Terak desperately clung onto any moment of clarity that he could. He had been sent through the Second Family’s portal into the realm of the Aesther to retrieve the healing flowers there—but any travel between the worlds at the moment, with the imminent close alignment with the Ungol, was hazardous.
Which meant it hurt.
And it was far more likely that Terak would be thrown into the nightmare realm of the Ungol than the ethereal, dream-like landscape of the Aesther.
Maybe it meant that whatever armies and creatures of darkness that were coming for Midhara would have an easy job of reaching out and grabbing a naïve traveler such as he.
No! Terak thrashed as much as he dared. He’d had a short sword, but it was gone. All he had were his fists and nails. The burning sensation across his skin was making him weak, not to mention the crushing feeling of the thing wrapped around his waist!
It can’t end like this! It can’t! Terak would have howled if the eldritch airs allowed such a thing. But not only in pain. He would have howled in savage, defiant fury.
Pain was, after all, only another sensation, wasn’t it? It was only another feeling that he had been trained to endure. Terak had been trained this way since he had been an elvish babe, far younger than any other acolyte that had ever been admitted to the Enclave.
Terak gritted his teeth in agony and bit down on the pain, held it deep in his soul.
“Urgh!” All of a sudden, the pain of that between-place stopped with a blissful sense of coolness, before being replaced with the jolt of a thump. He felt his body hit the floor.
For a moment, Terak’s senses were thrown awry with the impact. He panted and gasped before once again trying to beat and pry at the band that held him.
“Stop that,” a voice grunted. Terak’s vision cleared, and he could look up and see the cause of his dismay.
There, standing over him, was an orc.
But it was unlike any orc that Terak had seen before. Although Terak wouldn’t dare to presume that he was an expert on orcish matters, he had fought them before, twice.
Orcs were monstrous beings, easily standing at seven feet tall if they straightened to their full height. They usually had pallid, gray skin with snubbed noses and large lower jaws with obvious fangs. Their long arms often ended in talon-like nails, and their bodies were thick with muscle.
But this one looks even bigger! Terak gulped. It was both broader and taller, although its heavily stooped shoulders made the monster look almost doubled in half. The orc wore heavy black plate that looked like rusted iron, but the patches of skin the elf could see were mottled gray and dark black.
Almost like the Estreek poison, Terak realized, remembering how the black webs of poison had spread over Reticula’s shoulder after she was bitten by the flying snake-things.
And in the orc’s hand was the thing that was still wrapped around Terak’s chest: a giant metal-like tentacle. Terak could see that the far end was just one severed lump of scaled flesh. The fact that it was dismembered did not stop the still-alive tentacle from twitching, however.
“No noise,” the orc grunted, peering at the elf through the one small and black good eye it had. The other was a sightless white orb.
Ixcht that, Terak thought and opened his mouth to shout—
“Inglot!” The orc flexed his hand and the tentacle responded, squeezing so tight that the null assassin was sure that his back would break. Terak gasped in pain and saw stars, until the orc muttered another ugly little word and the tentacle responded, relaxing its bone-breaking hold by a fraction.
The orc loomed closer. Now that Terak could at least breathe, he saw that he wasn’t in the strange crystal-tree forest of the Aesther, and he didn’t appear to be surrounded by the burning purple-and-red light of the Ungol, either.
There were trees standing proud around him and an overcast, gray sky above them. But not the giant trees of the Everdell Forest, Terak thought.
“Where am I?” Terak panted.
“I ask the questions,” the orc muttered in a low growl before raising his head to snuff at the air several times.
The orc is wary. That is why he wants quiet. Terak’s mind raced. The orc had a massive broadsword strapped to his hip, so large that it was far too big for any human to lift. He also appeared to have at least two more smaller blades and a short, cruel metal club.
Appearing temporarily satisfied, the orc returned his gaze to the elf at his feet. “Who is your master?”
Mother Istarion. Father Jacques. Hyxalion the Aesther spirit. The Enclave. The Second Family of Elves . . . Terak wondered for a moment who of the many people he’d met was the answer to the question. But in the end, the truth was far simpler:
“Nobody.” Terak glared up at the orc, judging the distance from where he lay to the creature’s belt—and his knives . . .
“Liar,” the orc grunted, flexing his wrist and allowing the tentacle to sympathetically shiver in response, tightening again so much that Terak hissed in pain.
“Good. Now you know not to lie to me. Next time, I break your bones.” The orc stooped a little lower, so that his giant head filled Terak’s vision. “Where is he?”
Where is who!? Terak wanted to ask. How could he make this orc believe him when he said the truth?
Luckily, Terak was saved by a high-pitched sound of metal hitting metal, as something splintered against the orc’s back-plate.
“Vorg!” a grunting roar from the edge of the trees split the air, and the questioning orc spun around to face his attacke
r.
Attackers, Terak corrected. Three smaller orcs were stepping out of the trees, each of them growling and snarling at the one they hunted. Terak saw that at least one of the orcs had a crossbow that he was slamming another short bolt into, raising, and firing—
With a grunt, Terak’s captor (Vorg, he assumed) flicked his wrist once more for the tentacle to release its hold. But he wasn’t quick enough to stop the speeding bolt as it slammed home against his breastplate, hitting with a smack that sent up sparks and made Vorg snarl once more in pain.
Terak was freed with a smooth ripple of scales and was already pushing himself into a roll as Vorg engaged the three other orcs. He heard a powerful crack as the massive orc threw the tentacle forward.
The elf knew that this might be his only chance to escape. Whatever was going on here—and wherever here was—he had to take this one shot, lest it be his last. He continued to roll toward the far side of the clearing—
“Scrargh!” Just as another orc stepped out of the bushes ahead of him, brandishing a single-bladed ax. Terak stopped, and the small black eyes of the gray-skinned orc alighted on him, a second before he charged.
