Nightblade: A Book of Underrealm (The Nightblade Epic 1) (28 page)

Loren saw stars, reaching up to free the knife from the cloth that ensnared it. Stars receded just in time for Loren to see Auntie coming in for the kill, her remaining knife high in a curled fist.

The weremage’s eyes focused above Loren, and she stopped. Loren heard heavy, running footsteps, and a sword swiped through the space before Auntie’s frightened eyes. She stumbled back, as Loren had, and ran into the alley’s mouth.

Gregor watched her go. Loren’s disappointed heart sank into her gut. The fight, and the accompanying deaths, had been for nothing.
 

Still, she might have a chance. “We must go to her hiding place. Mayhap she will return there, hopeful of protecting her treasures.” Loren held up a hand for Gregor to help her up.

The captain stared down at her, his eyes a low, burning smolder. She became suddenly aware of his sword. Silence in the street stretched like a yawn.
 

“Gregor!”

Gregor’s eyes snapped up, joining Loren’s to find Damaris just up the street.

“What of the weremage?” she said.

“Escaped, my lady.” Gregor looked down.

Damaris’s lips pursed. “Escaped? You had her within your grasp. I hold you accountable.”

“I apologize, my lady.”

“We may still find her,” said Loren. “She might be in her hiding place.”

The merchant’s gaze fell to Loren. “Very well. Make haste, then. And get up off the ground, child. You soil your cloak.”

Loren gained her feet, dusted herself off, and went to Damaris. She did not want to look at Gregor, or see the hate in his eyes.

thirty-three

Gregor’s men gathered again near Auntie’s hideout. Gem nearly overwhelmed Loren as she approached, pouncing from shadows to wrap his arms around her waist.

“Thank the sky and stars! I thought I would find you again as a corpse, or not at all.”

“You could have come with me,” said Loren, trying to sound gruff. She patted his head, and then firmly pushed him away. “I might not have nearly died, then.”

Gem drew himself up and placed his hands on his hips. “I am not so foolish as you. When a deadly foe seeks my life, I do not pursue her into the darkness she calls home.”

“Enough,” snapped Damaris. “If you are right, Loren, we must make haste. Show us the way.”

Loren waved a hand at Gem. “Here is our guide. Take us to the hidey hole.”

Gem’s eyes widened, and he looked around at them all. “You wish to go there? But why? Auntie’s boys—”

“Will flee or be destroyed.” Damaris’s eyes were iron, her voice sharpened steel. “Lead us now, or join their lot.”

Gem swallowed hard and looked at Loren. She gave him a nod. Their only chance at success lay with Damaris, and the die was already cast.

Gem took them to a drainage hole, but Loren cuffed him lightly on the head. “How will these men crawl through that, simpleton?”

The boy rubbed his head and glared at her. “Am I at fault for their bloated size?”

“Take us another way,” said Loren. “Have you forgotten our haste?”

Gem grumbled but did as she asked. They found an entrance like the one they had used to escape from Auntie the night Loren had lost her blade. Iron rungs set into the wall provided an easy way down, and the hole gaped wide enough for even Gregor’s mighty shoulders. Loren had half thought the merchant might stay behind, but she climbed down like the rest, hitching her skirt up slightly to swish a few inches from the filthy floor.

The moment their boots touched stone, Gregor’s men pulled torches from the wall.
 

Gem said, “Torches will only let others see you the more easily.”

“We are not cravens who fear to be seen,” said Gregor. “Lead on.”

Gem did. Again, Loren grew lost amid the twists and turns, but the boy never wavered. Gregor remained close by Damaris’s side, peering into the gloom with suspicion. Men flanked her to either side. But Damaris might have been on an evening stroll, or one of her horseback rides with Loren, for all her calm.
 

Before long, they reached the intersection that led to the hidey hole. Gem slowed before the corner and turned. “We’re almost there. We’ll want to be quiet—”

Gregor grunted and pushed Gem aside with a sweep of his arm. His men drew blades and marched around the corner, brandishing steel in the torchlight. Loren helped Gem back to his feet and quickly followed.

She rounded the corner in time to see Auntie’s fleeing guards, terrified at the sight of men in armor approaching from the darkness. There lay the short hallway before the hidey hole, and beyond it the huge wooden door. But she saw no sign of Auntie.

“Where is she?” Loren muttered.

“With all the noise they’re making, probably far away,” whispered Gem.

Damaris’s men did not slow. Two took up positions at the hallway’s mouth while others headed off to guard the closest intersections in every direction. Gregor himself moved down the hallway toward the door. Damaris waited halfway down. Loren paused at the hallway entrance, uncertain whether or not to proceed.

Gregor glared over his shoulder at Loren. “It is only a wooden door. We should have come here first.” He tried the handle but it did not move, so he turned and nodded to one of his men. “Break it down.”

The guards at the hallway’s entrance left their posts and went to the door. They reared back a few feet at Gregor’s direction, and then charged the door with their shoulders. Neither stood as tall or broad as Gregor, but still Loren guessed that more than five hundred pounds slammed against the wood. But the door did not move. They reared back and tried again. And again. Five times they struck, and five times the door held.

One of the men rolled his shoulder, but did not wince—Loren suspected Gregor did not cultivate weakness in his ranks. The guard turned to his captain, baffled. “It does not move, sir.”

“I can see that,” Gregor growled.

“No, I mean that it does not budge at all. Wood has some give, whether you can break it down or no. This has nothing. It might as well be a cavern’s stone wall.”

Loren half expected Gregor to yell at the man in anger, or mayhap strike him. But instead, he stepped past him without question, went to the door, and placed a hand against it. He furled a fist and sent it into the wood. He took two steps back and tried his own shoulder at the door. He turned back to Damaris, his expression dark.
 

“It is as he says, my lady. I suspect some sort of enchantment. I have seen a mindmage do something like this once. If it is so, only another mindmage can break it.”

“And yet our little tart of a weremage remains unfound.” Her words seemed harsh, but Loren heard no trace of anger or frustration in Damaris’s voice. She ran a hand up and down her neck, deep in thought. “I may know of a man, a mindmage. But he is more than a day’s ride from Cabrus, and if Annis is trapped within . . . ”

Loren heard a shout and a scuffle to her right. Turning to look, she saw two of Damaris’s men thrashing and fighting some figure. A third man joined the fray and threw a fist. The figure jerked and fell still. The guards came forward. As they emerged into the nearby torchlight, Loren saw skin of loam and hair like sunlight.

“That may not be necessary, my lady,” Loren said. “Here comes our weremage.”

Gregor’s men hoisted Auntie up by her arms at the hallway entrance. Her eyes rolled wild in their sockets, piercing in their hate and mad as they glowed in the torch light. They focused on Loren with an impossible fury. Bones shifted beneath her skin.

“Hello, Auntie.” Damaris stepped forward while keeping well out of reach. “That is what you call yourself, is it not? I am Damaris, of the family Yerrin. Well met.”

Auntie spat, but it went wide and flew past the merchant’s shoulder. Damaris looked at the spittle upon the stone floor and raised an eyebrow. Then she lifted her head and spat directly in Auntie’s eye. The weremage responded with a shriek of rage and a fresh bout of struggling.
 

Gregor’s fist crashed into her face, and Auntie went limp. She raised her eyes, still burning with anger and defiance. Loren saw that her nose had broken. Then she closed her eyes, and the bones of her face shifted. She briefly looked like someone else, with a sallow face and little in the way of good looks, before she reverted back to her normal visage, with her nose no longer bent at an odd angle.

Auntie’s lips parted in a sardonic grin. Blood stained her teeth.

“It is my wish that we should avoid any more such unpleasantness,” said Damaris. “Tell us how to open the door.”

Auntie stayed silent, and Loren thought she might try spitting again. Instead, she chose to ignore Damaris, looking at Loren again.
 

“Hello, girl,” she said, her voice silky smooth as it had been when they met. “You know, of course, that no matter what happens here, I will find and gut you. No power on earth can stop me from leaving you bloodless and bloated, floating along the sewer’s current until you spill into the river. I will cross the veil wrong just to haunt you in your dreams and lead you screaming from a rooftop. I curse it in every language of the nine lands.”

Loren’s heart chilled at the words, but she kept it from showing on her face. “Another told me something similar, scarcely a week ago. I shot him with an arrow.”

“That will not stop me.” Auntie’s eyes fell to Gem at Loren’s side. “And you. The sorest waste of my life. The great traitor. I hope you sleep well thinking of all your brothers you killed today.”

Gem shifted slightly to half hide behind Loren. “I killed no one.”

“You brought it on them. And all for the traitor’s whore whose skirts you hide behind. Or mayhap you do more than that with her skirts? Does she love you, Gem? Treat you like your mother treats you?” The weremage ran her tongue along the length of her lips and smeared them with blood.

“You’re not my mother,” said Gem, his voice gaining strength, “and you never were.”

“Enough,” said Damaris.
 

Gregor stepped forward and hit Auntie again, this time in the chest. Something cracked. Auntie turned her scream into a laugh, returning her gaze to the merchant with a predator’s smile.
 

“Have your say, or kill me,” said Auntie. “But please cease to bore me.”

“Only you hold that power,” said Damaris. “The door. How do we enter?”

Auntie shrugged. “It has been so long. I can scarce remember. My mind has never been good and has only worsened with age. Though you look to have twice that problem.”

Damaris rolled her eyes. “How clever. Search her. No, hit her again, and then search her.”

Gregor sent an obliging fist into Auntie’s face. Her head snapped back, and Loren feared her neck would break. But as she lolled forward, Loren could see that the weremage still breathed—though her eyes wandered and she could not seem to see straight. Blood oozed from a socket and ran down her cheek like a tear.

Without ceremony, Gregor drew a knife and sliced the strings holding Auntie’s jerkin together, and then cut through the top of her tunic. The weremage winced when the blade kissed her skin. Loren covered Gem’s eyes, but Gregor did not lay Auntie bare. Instead, he reached for something hanging on a chain around her neck and tugged. The chain snapped, and Gregor held up what Loren now saw to be an iron key.

“My lady,” said Gregor.

“Well done.” Damaris smiled. “Now, let us be done with this and away. I dislike the smell of this place.”

Gregor turned to the hallway again. But then Loren remembered the trap falling from the ceiling above, and her pulse quickened. She stepped forward, blocking the captain’s path. “Wait, there’s . . . ”

Gregor batted her aside as he had Gem before. His hand on her chest crashed like a hammer. Loren stumbled to the side and fell into the water with a cry. She struggled to right herself, the cloak dragging her down, before she could free her arms and find the surface. She pulled herself to the edge of the channel, where Gem seized her arms.

“Are you all right?” He tried pulling her up, but an ant might as well have tried lifting a mountain.

“I told you we would brook no more interference,” said Damaris, her voice light.

Loren ignored them both, struggling out of the water and leaping to her feet. She ran to the hallway where Gregor stood facing the door. Damaris cried out, and one of Gregor’s men made a grab for her, but Loren twisted away and charged toward the captain. His hand rose, and the key twisted in the lock. It stuck, and he tried to pull it back out.

Snik.

SkreeeEEE!

Loren flew through the air and crashed into the back of Gregor’s knees. The captain bellowed as he fell, while the iron grate dropped from the ceiling.
 

Loren felt Gregor’s body jerk atop her, and then he lay still.

thirty-four

“No, no,” whispered Loren. She pushed and squirmed, slithering out from under Gregor’s heavy legs before finally fighting herself free and rising to her feet.

Spikes had punctured his shoulder in two places, but his head hung free from the grate, facing the hallway’s mouth. His eyes twitched in pain, gritted teeth visible as his lips split in a grimace. All along his face, muscles spasmed in agony as he fought to contain a scream.