The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (18 page)

The duke whirled. "I said we will await my advisor. In the meantime, you and these others may wait here. You know where to find the food and drink. If you're lucky, there may even be a few sweets left over from today's sessions."

Corliss bowed. "Of course."

He turned and led everyone up the stairs, Urus following last to make sure he could see everyone. He didn't like how dimly lit the place was, even with all of the lamps and sconces. The room had narrow vertical slits in the stone walls, but at this time of night they seemed to swallow light rather than admit it.

There were trays of bread and pastries and pitchers of ale left over from the city government sessions earlier that day. At the sight of the food, he realized just how hungry he was. He felt more hungry than he had in a long time, and ended up fighting with Goodwyn over the last few cake squares.

One hand still clutching the sweets, he approached Murin, turning him to make sure he could see his lips.

"We're way past your secrets and holding back from me. I want to know what's really going on here and I want to know now," he signed, which allowed him to keep chewing the piece of bread he had just stuffed into his mouth.

"What do you mean?" Murin asked.

"For starters, I want to know why when I speak, people hear their native language, and I can read lips of people speaking languages I've never seen before. Don't deny that isn't your doing."

Murin grinned. That expression still seemed alien on his grey-skinned face. "Do you know the phrase 'quantum entanglement'?" he asked, but didn't pause long enough to let Urus answer. "No, of course you would not. It is part of what happened when you invaded my mind in the dungeon in Kest. You have inherited a power you cannot possibly imagine and have no way to control or harness. You are like a cauldron of pitch near an open flame."
 

Urus flinched, remembering the damage he had caused in the hostel and how close he had come to killing someone.
Like pitch near an open flame, indeed
, he thought.

"None of that makes any sense at all," Urus signed, stuffing pieces of cake into his mouth while Murin spoke.

"You saw the blue light again tonight. You used your power," Murin said, watching Urus eat and looking at his hands full of food. It wasn't a question.

Urus looked away, ashamed of what he had done, afraid of what he might have done had Cailix not been there.
 

Desperately wishing to change the subject, he turned to Corliss. "How many ways are there in and out of the city?"

That question had been nagging at him since they talked to the duke.

Corliss smiled, clearly amused by Urus's talent for holding so much food and still managing to talk or sign. "To get in? Just the one, the road where we met. It's possible to climb down through the mists on the back side of the mountain, but it's dangerous and definitely can't be used to enter the city."

"If that's the only way in, then how did the duke's constable get past the briene army to get here?"

Corliss dropped his drink on the table and turned to look back down at the duke, seated in his chair, casually sipping from a silver wine chalice, his mind lost in thought.

Murin gripped Urus's shoulders. "I cannot believe no one thought of that sooner. The constable would have had to go right through an army spread across a hundred miles of forest."

"Why don't we just ask him?" Goodwyn said, pointing to a silhouette that had just stepped into the light of the door behind the dais.

The new arrival, presumably the constable, was tall and wore a bright white robe, his short hair barely reaching to the cowl. Urus thought it odd that a man with a military rank would wear a robe, but he figured it must be another cultural difference between Kest and Waldron. After all, their duke dressed like a feastday turkey.

Corliss and the others started down the stairs toward the dais as the constable spoke with Duke Pemor. As Urus took the first step, he noticed Cailix withdrawing into the shadows again, the look of fear on her face at odds with her usual stoic countenance.

Urus took a few more steps down toward the dais when it dawned on him that the look on her face hadn't just been fear. It was recognition.
 

She knows the constable!

"Corliss, please bring the visitors here so they can tell Constable Anderis what they know of this new threat. I am particularly curious as to what the young woman knows about the briene," called the duke, the constable still whispering in his ear.

"As am I," said Anderis with a wry grin, his eyes focused directly on the shadow in the back of the chamber where Cailix had been standing before she disappeared.

Murin straightened and reached into his robe. "Surely you are not Anderis Slakenwood of the Order of the Sanguine Crystal? I saw that creature die three millennia ago."

"Appearances can be deceiving, Arbiter. You of all people should know that," Anderis replied, a knife appearing in his hand as he seized the duke. "And if you move on me I will slit the duke's throat."

"What are you doing?" demanded Pemor, eyes wide with shock and fear. "Release me!"

"I know you're there, Aerlissa," Anderis called to the darkness, again looking to the back of the room. "After all that I have taught you, all that I have done for you, you betray me like this by siding with the enemy? And that bit with the knife on my pillow, that was priceless. You made me so proud."

Instinctively Urus flexed his fists by the mace handles at his waist, waiting for a chance to use them. He hoped someone else would take care of this constable first, though, saving him from the fight. His mind flashed back to the boat in the cistern below Kest; to when he froze and almost let the invader kill him. He wondered if the same would happen the next time he faced an opponent, or if the mysterious blue light would kill his enemy or his friends. It was all just too much to think about.

He wished Uncle Aegaz were here.

It suddenly hit him that Murin had said three
millennia
. They were three
thousand
years old? That couldn't be possible. He must have misread Murin's lips in the dim light.

"How could you betray us like this?" Corliss asked, sidestepping along the edge of the dais, his curved sword drawn.

"Betrayal requires that my allegiance belonged to this rathole to begin with," hissed Anderis, tightening his grip on the duke and pushing the blade up into his neck, drawing a small bead of blood.

He bent closer to the duke's neck and sniffed. "You smell that, apprentice? That is the smell of power; power that you will never have. The real betrayal here is what you have done to me!"

"Let him go, Anderis, you've got nowhere to go," Corliss yelled.

"You have no idea how wrong you are, Knight Marshall," Anderis said, a wicked grin spreading across his face.

He squeezed the duke's neck with one hand and pulled the other back to strike with the dagger.

"No!" Cailix shouted, leaping from the shadows onto the dais, a dagger in each hand.

Ignoring her, Anderis sliced open the duke's throat, sending a spray of blood across the dais and onto the front row of seats. He pushed his victim to the floor and rubbed his hands in the duke's blood.

Cailix pounced, landing on Anderis's back. At this, everyone rushed the platform. With the duke down, Anderis had lost his hostage. Murin leapt up first, followed by Corliss and Goodwyn, all with weapons in their hands. Urus arrived last.

Paying the girl no heed, as Cailix plunged her little knives into the man's back Anderis's lips moved while he smeared the blood on his face and chest. If he felt the stab wounds, he showed no sign of it.
 

Just as the group reached striking distance, with Goodwyn's suzur already flying through the air, Anderis vanished. There was no smoke, no flame, no fanfare, just the absence of Anderis.
 

Cailix dropped to the floor and ducked as Goodwyn's bladed chain flew by, a mere hair's width from her head.

"Where did he go?" Cailix asked, looking up at Murin.

"How did he do that?" Corliss and Goodwyn asked at the same time.

"I think you have some explaining to do," Murin said to Cailix.

Corliss stood over the dead duke, shaking his head. "I think you all have a lot of explaining to do."

15

Urus watched in silence as Corliss's men carried away the wrapped corpse of the duke.

"We have to get to the roost," Corliss said.

"What's up there?" asked Goodwyn.

"If that traitor Anderis has been working with the briene all along, and they are planning to attack, then they know everything about Waldron's defenses and the devil only knows what other surprises Anderis left behind. I need to see this army for myself."

"What about the duke?"
 

"There is nothing we can do for him now. What we need to do now is defend this city and keep its people safe. Come with me, all of you." Corliss led them out of the council chambers and across the main courtyard to the courthouse.
 

Urus and Goodwyn followed him through a several large assembly rooms, the last of which held a small door that led into a narrow back hallway. Murin and Cailix took up the rear of the procession of foreigners.

Corliss stopped in front of a small, uninteresting wooden door and turned to the group, "It's going to be a long, painful climb to the top."

Urus exchanged a look with Goodwyn but said nothing.

"By the time we get to the top, I expect to be fully informed on just who in all the hells you are," Corliss said, pointing to Cailix, "and how you came to be that traitor's apprentice. And I want explanations for everything else that's happened here tonight. If I don't get my answers, I may just push you off the roost myself. The fate of my city is at stake, and I will brook no evasions or half answers. Am I clear?"

Urus nodded, as did the others. Even Murin seemed a little intimidated by Corliss's newfound determination.

"All right then, let's go." He opened the door to reveal an iron spiral staircase and started climbing.

It was Murin who spoke first. "I will ask, then. Cailix, how did you come to be the apprentice of a blood mage?"

"Someone had better explain to me what a blood mage is," Corliss snapped.

"Cailix," Murin said, "answer the question."

Urus held onto the railing with both hands so he could twist around to look at the person talking. It was awkward and nauseating to try to read lips while ascending the staircase, but he wasn't about to miss a word of this.

"I was a ward of the monks in Naredis," she said finally. "Anderis and two others came and killed everyone but me. I fought back, so Anderis thought I was interesting. I think he saw me as a pet."

"What were they looking for in Naredis?" Murin asked.

"Something called the Woan Map. They found it, but it turned to dust after they broke the wax seal."

"That was no wax seal, that was a sigil ward," Murin said, his eyes wide. "After all this time, to think that the Woan Map was real. That explains how the Order knows where to find the vertices."

Cailix shrugged. "They covered it with blood before the map crumbled. They made a new map out of the blood. I went with them after that."

"Those men are murderers. Why would you do such a thing?" asked Corliss.

"Because the monks were all dead. I had no way of surviving there in the cold, and I thought I might eventually be able to kill Anderis if I stayed with him."

Urus watched as she described what had happened, her face calm and distant as usual, as though she were merely describing what chores she had done. Even Kestians didn't talk about vengeance with such coldness. He found it a little scary.

Corliss had been right. The staircase seemed to go on forever. As Cailix spoke, they had climbed up through a stone tower that rose above the city. Corliss lit a torch as they rose above the tower and the stairs wound up into the mountainside like an iron screw boring through the stone.

"So what are the briene doing here?" Corliss asked. "What do they want with Waldron and what does that have to do with you and the constable?"
 

"The Order of the Sanguine Crystal, a cult of the last remaining blood mages, seeks the five vertices," Murin replied, a bit breathless.
 
"The Woan Map contained their locations. All the evidence points to there being a vertex here in Waldron."

"A vertex?"
 

"Like a door, but not a door. It can be any shape, though most are slabs of stone with carvings on them. Each vertex is a fixed point in multidimensional space. It exists both in our universe and in another. They also act as wards, preventing anyone from crossing between."

"First your companions appear out of nowhere and tell me that magic is real," Corliss sputtered. "Then you show up and my superior officer turns out to be a…a blood mage who murders the duke. Now you tell me that there is another universe? Do you have any idea how absurd that all sounds?"

"To be precise, there exist a countably infinite number of universes," Murin began. "As to the vertices, they were set in place three thousand years ago to put an end to a brutal war that nearly destroyed this world. The Order is trying to destroy them."