Authors: Thomas M. Reid
The girl turned back to try a different doorway and saw motion from deeper in the house. She swallowed hard and slipped the coin into her pocket, dousing the illumination and peering into the
darkness. It had not been Xaphira, for Emriana could easily see her across the way by the glow of her coin, moving about in a dining room. Whatever had moved, it had been hidden in the near-darkness on the edge of Emriana’s vision.
I need the eyes of a dwarf, the girl thought, frustrated. They can creep around without any light at all and see just fine.
As Emriana stared at the blackness ahead of her, trying to spot whatever had caught her attention without being exposed herself, she heard the rustle of cloth and a single footstep brushing softly across a stone floor.
“Xaphira!” Emriana cried out, yanking the coin free of her pocket and throwing it in the direction of the sounds. “Hurry!”
The coin bounced and rolled into the hallway, lighting the passage enough as it traveled that Emriana could clearly see Bartimus standing in a doorway several paces away. Even her suspicion that someone was present didn’t help Emriana contain her fear, and she shrieked slightly when the wizard’s face came into view.
Bartimus seemed just as startled as the girl, Vor he jumped when the coin came at him, his eyes wide with apprehension. He took one look at Emriana, then turned and ran, his robes swishing behind him.
“Come back here,” Emriana yelled just as Aunt Xaphira came running out of the dining room. Emriana took off after the wizard, determined not to let him get away.
“Em, wait!” Aunt Xaphira called, hustling to keep up with the girl. “Don’t get foolish!”
Emriana stopped to pick up her coin before she continued, allowing her aunt to catch up to her. “It’s
the wizard,” she said, charging through the doorway where Bartimus had disappeared. “He’s escaping!”
Bartimus was no sneak and Emriana could easily hear him huffing and puffing as he tried to evade her and her aunt. He ducked around a corner and Emriana spotted him a moment later at the far end of a hall. He had stopped and was gesturing toward her. She froze on the spot, knowing he was about to launch some arcane force at her, and she couldn’t make her legs move to get out of the way. Xaphira grabbed at the girl and jerked her sideways into a sitting room, jvst as a burst of flame came roaring down the hall. The blast of heat that cascaded over Emriana’s face from the searing jets of flame was enough to help her regain her caution.
“All right,” Xaphira said once the fiery blast faded away, “I’ve got something for him, now,” and she stepped back into the hallway, holding her holy coin in front of her. “Come here, you little worm,” she said, and went trotting down the hall, her light receding with her.
Emriana started out the door to follow her, but a sound caught her attention from the other direction. She paused, keeping her coin in her pocket for a moment, and just listened. Someone was in the next room over!
Quietly feeling her way with her hand on the wall, Emriana moved in the opposite direction her aunt had gone. Xaphira had vanished quickly, for when Emriana glanced back once, wondering if she should let her know what she had heard, the woman and her light were both already gone. For a moment, Emriana fingered her opal pendant.
No, she decided. Can’t give away my presence even with a whisper.
Emriana bolstered her courage with a single deep breath and proceeded. The noises from the next room continued, and it sounded to Emriana as though someone were shifting crates around. She used the wall to guide herself, and when she found the frame of the door, she stopped, listening again.
Someone was definitely on the other side of the door. She felt for the handle and pulled the slightest bit, hoping to get a peek inside before anyone noticed she was there. It was dark in the room, but the sounds continued. Emriana listened for a moment longer, keeping the door open only a crack. It still sounded as if someone were stacking crates.
How odd, she thought, preparing to swing the door wide and toss the coin inside for a better view. Then she grew suspicious. Can wizards make magic that sounds like someone moving around? she wondered. Probably, she decided. Wants me to just walk in.
Instead, she took a length of rope that she carried in case we need to do any serious climbing or tie someone up, she had told Xaphiraand very carefully tied one end of it to the pull handle of the door. She uncoiled the rope as she walked backward, away from the portal, perhaps ten paces. Then she yanked the door open.
An audible click sounded in the hall and a whoosh of air was released from inside the room. A blink of an eye later, something loud popped on the far side of the hall.
Despite her preparations, Emriana jumped at the sound. Then she stood stark still, waiting to see if anything else happened. When it did not, she carefully moved back to the wide-open door and listened. The sound of crates being stacked was still in evidence, and in fact, hadn’t changed at all.
Knowing that such noises couldn’t be natural, Emriana pulled her coin out of her pocket, blinking in its brightness. The room was no more than a storage closet, but mounted on a stand in the center, aimed right for the door, was a small ballista. A bit of twine ran from the trigger mechanism to the door. Turning, Emriana found the remains of the large bolt that had been fired. It was as long as her leg and as thick as her thumb.
It would have skewered me, she thought unhappily.
The sounds of crate-stacking continued, but Emriana realized they were merely a trick of magic, some sort of prestidigitation Bartimus likely conjured to draw her or her aunt into opening the door.
Aunt Xaphira!
Emriana turned around, ready to grab her pendant and call to her aunt when a face loomed into view just inside the girl’s circle of light.
It was Denrick, smiling at her.
Vambran moved down the smoky, torchlit hallway, sword in hand. The stink of sweat and fear clung to everything so many levels below the surface. The lieutenant knew he was near the dungeons of the Palace of the Seven, but his magic seemed to be leading him in a different direction. He had not encountered any guards, no one to stand in his way, though that was not a surprise. The city is in chaos, he thought. Why stay here and protect empty corridors?
The mercenary was close to the source of the malignancy, and he knew it. Malevolence radiated through the place, oozed from the walls, hung on him like a funereal shroud. It was a sense of evil so pervasive that he no longer needed divine guidance to track it. Whatever was causing the plague was in the bowels of the keep, and he was closing in on it.
He had to fight the urge to leap ahead, to charge forward and find that source. Whatever was down there was strong, and he could not afford to underestimate it. But he craved the hunt. He needed it the way he needed air. After everything he had endured over the last three days, the urge to vent his frustrations on the source of it all was like a bad taste in his mouth.
The pulsating evil led Vambran to a door at the end of the passage. The force he sought lay beyond that portal. It beckoned to him, taunting. He hesitated, listening. No sounds arose from the other side, but some presence lay beyond. Something that hated him. Adjusting his grip on his sword, he shoved the door open and peered inside.
The chamber beyond was out of a nightmare. Implements of torture filled much of the room, and the lieutenant could see a laboratory along one wall, jammed with alembics and decanters containing all sorts of vile things. Half of them turned his stomach when he recognized them and the other halfwell, he didn’t even want to guess at those.
A cloaked figure stood at a table in the laboratory, its back to Vambran, apparently working. Even when the door slammed open, the figure barely twitched. It wore a brown robe with a hood pulled up, completely hiding its head. It didn’t stop in its work as it said in a masculine voice, “I wondered when you would get here.”
Vambran paused with one foot inside the room. He stared at the figure, unsure what sort of trap he might be falling into. “How did you know I would
come?” he said, hoping to draw the man out, get him to turn around. He looked around the room as he spoke, searching for other threats. He saw nothing, but there were so many items filling the chamber, so many places to hide, that it seemed ridiculous not to have allies hiding among it all. The lieutenant sensed death everywhere, and not all of that palpable hatred emanated from his counterpart. The whole chamber was filled with it.
“I know a great many things,” the figure said, moving from a small apparatus over to a flask resting atop a ring stand and heated by a candle. “For example, I know that you are here to stop me from completing my quest, and that you have brought great magic with you to do so.”
Vambran swallowed, circling wide of the figure, wary of having some caustic substance hurled in his direction. “Then you must also know that I’m set on staying around until I finish the job.”
“Finish the job?” the figure in the brown robes said with a hearty chuckle. “You aren’t serious, are you?” And he began to turn around, spinning slowly to face Vambran. “After all,” he said as his face came into view, “you couldn’t finish the job twelve years ago.”
Vambran stared at the man whose features remained partially hidden within the hood of the robe. The cryptic comment baffled him. But when his enemy reached up and pulled his hood back, fully revealing his face, a memory came flooding back to the mercenary. A memory of a man lying near a pond, with a crossbow bolt protruding from his chest. A dead man.
“You!” Vambran said, stunned. He reached out to grab hold of a table to keep his balance. “But you’re dead! I saw your body!”
“As I said,” Rodolpho Wianar replied, “you couldn’t finish the job then, so how do you expect to do so now?”
Vambran reeled at the revelation. Still alive! How was it possible? Then another thought struck him. No, he realized, dismissing it. Xaphira would not have made such a mistake. He was dead, and brought back from the dead. But why?
Vambran’s eyes narrowed. “Your death was a screen, a cover-up, wasn’t it? Everyone was supposed to assume you had died, and I was set up for it.”
“Right you are,” Rodolpho Wianar said, looking pleased. “They said you were bright,” he added, chuckling. “I just didn’t believe them, seeing how you kept dragging your family into the middle of all this.”
Vambran shook off the backhanded compliment. “But I wasn’t the one who killed you before,” he said. “And you know that.”
“Too true.”
“I bet you know who did, too.”
“Yes, he does,” came another voice from a corner of the room, one that Vambran recognized. He shot a glance over to confirm that Junce Roundface was standing there. “He knows very well I was the one who punctured his heart with one of your own bolts that night.”
Vambran snorted in disgust. “Of course,” he said sarcastically. “Speak of a devil, and he appears.” The lieutenant moved slightly so he could keep both opponents in view. “Come to gloat over my shock and surprise?”
“Truthfully, no, though I’ll take that as an added bonus,” the assassin said, smirking. “I actually came to throttle Rodolpho here for not living up to his end of the bargain.” He turned to the hooded man
and asked, “Unless you’d like to reconsider giving up the cure?”
Vambran eyed the assassin with suspicion. “The cure?” he asked. “You have a cure?”
“No,” Junce answered, still looking at Rodolpho. “This wretch of a man refuses to divulge it.”
Rodolpho laughed. “What, and ruin everything just when I’m on the verge of marching an army to my cousin’s gates and demanding his surrender? I think not. Now, why haven’t you died yet? Surely you’ve been exposed to the plague by now.” He spun and hurled a beaker of something viscous and yellow at Junce.
The assassin seemed to anticipate the attack, for he leaped out of the way, allowing the glassware to shatter against the wall behind him. But as soon as it did, a phlegm-colored cloud of vapors expanded outward, drifting to fill the room.
Junce backed away from it, stumbling as he bumped into a horrific torture rack. The cloud billowed up and outward, threatening to engulf them all.
“I’m sorry you won’t be able to take that cure back to dear cousin Wianar,” Rodolpho said, striding across the room to another door on the far side, “but you can let him know yourself, once you’re part of my army.” He opened the door as Junce and Vambran retreated from the cloud, backing into the same corner, trapped. “Just in case you manage to evade my recipe,” Rodolpho added, swinging the door wide, “my seven apprentices are on hand to finish the job.”
One by one, seven figures filed into the chamber, fanning out to stare at the two men pinned in the corner. Each man and woman might have been young
and strong when they entered into Rodolpho’s service, but no longer.
Vambran could see the beauty that might once have been part of each face, but that beauty was twisted and distorted in undeath. Pieces of flesh were missing, exposing bone beneath, and where the creatures’ eyes should have been, red points of malevolent light glowed instead. Dressed in fine clothing and wearing cloaks of red and gold, the seven gruesome figures stood waiting and watching.
Rodolpho waved at the two men and disappeared through the door.
As memories of the previous night washed over Emriana, she felt her knees weaken, her hands tremble. Denrick was leaning against the wall, his hands folded across his chest, still wearing that smug grin that haunted her. She retreated a step, wanting to turn and run, fearing that she would never flee fast enough.
“Hello, Em,” Denrick said, pushing away from the wall and following her, sauntering. “I was hoping you’d stop by for a visit. I enjoyed last evening so much, and I thought you might like to spend time with me again.”
No! Emriana silently screamed, fighting the feelings of helplessness. Not again! “Get away from me,” she said with as much cold hatred as she could muster. “I know you’re not real.”
“I’m not?” Denrick asked, looking wounded. “Last night sure felt real enough,” he said, that smug smile returning. “And this is certainly real,” he added, lunging forward and grabbing at the girl’s wrist.