Shadow Of The Winter King (Book 1) (19 page)

“Wait,” Mask said. The black and green magic waned. “Listen—you have to—”

“For Lenalin and for Semana.” Ovelia raised the blade high.

“Semana lives!” Mask rasped. “The Blood of Denerre
lives
!”

The temple rained down around them.

Thirteen

T
he ancient temple collapsed
in a geyser of dust and peal of thunder, drawing eyes all across Luether. The place of worship had stood in place for centuries beyond reckoning, and while the Old Gods had abandoned Ruin long ago, most Luethaar considered the temple a keystone of the city’s former glory. Some in the city raised their fists and voices in celebration of Ruin’s final triumph over one of the last shards of Luether’s broken legacy, but more hunched their shoulders a little lower and struggled on, cursing the day. Aertem’s Fall stole just a little bit more of their resolve.

Heart in his throat, Davargorn felt a mixture of elation and fear. His master had betrayed him and sent him away, so if he had his vengeance that way, so be it. At the same time, though, it was his
master.

His whole face burning and screaming, Davargorn sheltered against the far wall as a massive wave of dust swept through the street. Stone blocks the size of his whole body tumbled past and cracked the cobblestones. A pillar crunched into the wall over his head, making the entire building shudder. Any one of those would have slain him. It seemed impossible anyone could have survived inside.

But he had to know for certain.

As the dust began to clear, Davargorn saw shapes moving in the street. Scavengers, no doubt—looking for corpses to loot or defile. Despite the circumstances, seeing them filled Davargorn with such rage he instinctually groped for his sword, only to find his scabbard empty. He must have lost the blade in the temple, when he fought the Oathbreaker and that damned whore Bloodbreaker. He saw her in his mind, casually swatting him aside and turning her back like he was nothing. His anger redoubled.

Davargorn swept over the nearest silhouette: a frail man with a pronounced lower jaw into which he had thrust blades like crude tusks. The man was pawing through rubble after something or other and not paying attention. Davargorn wrapped one muscular arm around his neck and twisted sharply. Bone cracked, and the man’s body jerked against Davargorn, hands flopping madly. He had a caster hanging at his belt, which Davargorn took as he let the body fall. Then he bounded on.

The bulky man ahead of him seemed more like a warrior, being at least twice as wide as Davargorn himself. A bandolier of knives stood out on his otherwise bare chest, and a barbed chain enwrapped one of his hands. Worse, he saw the attack coming as Davargorn ran through the cloud. The warrior’s eyes were shockingly big and green, and Davargorn realized that someone had removed his eyelids to produce just that effect.

Had he been another man, Davargorn might have been distracted by the deformity, but his mind mattered less than his body in that moment. He exerted his will toward the flying boots he’d borrowed from Mask, and a sudden burst of magic sent him sailing at the massive barbarian like a fired arrow. The warrior managed to lash out with the end of the chain, but he was too slow. Davargorn landed on the man’s chest, plucked two daggers from his bandolier, and planted them back into his neck. The brute toppled, blood spurting, and Davargorn rolled off him.

He willed the boots to activate again, but they were nearing their limit and would need time to rebuild their magic. Burn them, then: he had two feet of his own, even if one was weaker. He locked onto another dark shape and ran that way, blades up, blood spattered and roaring wordlessly.

Then he hesitated, heart roaring in his throat.

It was a woman, half her face a gory mess of blood and bone. She held her right arm, which twisted oddly at her side, held on by only a length of sinew and some flesh. She was screaming, but not in challenge—instead, her cries were terrified. This woman was no Child of Ruin, but an innocent Luethaar wandering past the temple when the fateful battle took place.

Davargorn backed away at the unexpected vision of horror. “You—I—”

His words drew her attention. Her big blue eyes fixed on Davargorn and horror filled her ruined face. It was as though even to this woman, with her skull crushed and half her face gone, Davargorn was the ugliest thing she had ever seen. She lunged for him, crying out incoherently and raising her good arm. In her madness, she must have forgotten to let go of her other arm, because she ripped it the rest of the way off and batted at him with it. Without effort, Davargorn eluded the clumsy attack and stumbled past her over a flow of bricks. He saw a route up through the broken stone and started that way, but the screaming held his attention. With her savior or enemy gone—Davargorn couldn’t say which he was—the woman collapsed to one knee and tried stupidly to fit her arm back into place.

“Burn me.” Davargorn reversed one of the knives, aimed, and threw. The blade took the woman in her good eye, and she fell to the ground.

He raised the other knife, ready for an attack, but none was forthcoming. It seemed most other folk had kept away, if they could. Shaken, Davargorn scrambled into the crumbled entrance. Since he would need both hands, he adjusted the caster slung over his shoulder, set the bloody knife between his teeth, and leaped onto the shattered wall to climb.

The boots chose that moment to fail, their magic exhausted, and he started to fall halfway through the jump. He slammed into the stone chest first, and the air blew from his lungs in a rush. He spit out the knife rather than cut off his tongue, and it went tinking off down the shattered stone hill. He flexed his arms and pulled himself up, sputtering and cursing, then lay for a moment on the outcropping of stone. His hands trembled and breath seemed hard to find, even without the dust that scorched his lungs. His fingers found something soft and yielding, and he realized it was one of the flowers, which had miraculously survived the devastation. As he watched, it wilted in his hand, deprived of the magic that sustained it.

Heart in his throat, he scrambled up to what had once been the top of the wall over what had been the great hall. He wiped blood from his face and peered down into what had been the main hall.

What he saw froze him in place.

The daylight burned down after the eclipse, reflecting vividly from the remains of the dawnstone altar. The shards gleamed like rubies amid the shattered floor stones and the settled dust. In the center of the room, Ovelia stood with her thrice-burned sword pointing down at something on the floor. Davargorn saw her first, and his first instinct was to put a bolt in her face. Even as he was reaching for his borrowed caster, however, he saw Regel not too far away, a throwing knife in his hand. Both looked miraculously unbroken.

“Do not,” the man was saying. “Ovelia, wait. We need him.”

Davargorn furrowed his brow. Then he saw Mask laid prostrate at Ovelia’s feet. Draca was at the sorcerer’s throat, and the tiniest flick of Ovelia’s wrist would plunge the blade home. It was why Regel had not thrown yet, Davargorn realized. Also, if Davargorn himself shot her with the caster, Ovelia would almost certainly kill Mask in her death throes.

Davargorn, who had come here with only death on his mind, suddenly froze, terrified at what he had almost done. He stared at them, sweat dripping down his distorted face. Hatred and fear warred in him, and ultimately he hesitated. What had Mask told them? What was happening?

“No,” Ovelia said. “No, I won’t believe it. Semana is dead. She— I— This creature can’t give her back to us. It’s a lie!”

Davargorn was ugly, but he was not stupid. He knew exactly what Mask was doing, and he realized what Mask had already done. All of this had been a trap, and he was part of Mask’s game, as he had always been. “Burn you, Master,” he said.

He took aim at Mask’s leather-wrapped face and squeezed the caster’s trigger. Sweat trickled down his gnarled face, even as a voice inside him demanded he cast. Kill Mask. End the torment.

But he could not.

Of course he could not. Mask had owned him for so many years, and he could no more break his vow than he could stop breathing. Instead, he turned the caster on Ovelia. It was her fault. If not for her, none of this would have happened. She deserved to die. And if Mask died as well, then Davargorn would be free. He aligned the bolt with her face and squeezed the trigger.

Click.

No loud
crack
, and no streaking death. The caster had misfired.

Davargorn screamed inwardly. The caster was useless, and now he had only a tattered trick cloak and no real weapon to take his vengeance. Mask’s boots had precious little of their magic left, and he wasn’t sure how long it would take them to build their charge back up.

He had faced worse odds, he remembered.

“We are not done,
Master,
” he murmured, then climbed away.

* * *

The throwing knife trembled in Regel’s hand. In the wake of Mask’s pronouncement—the revelation that Semana lived—he could hardly make himself think. He had never—could never have expected such a thing. But he knew, true or not, that he had to follow even the slightest of hopes.

Ovelia, on the other hand, seemingly had no such need. “It’s not possible,” she said, as much to herself as to either of them. Did she even realize Regel had drawn steel on her?

“Indeed, Lady Bloodbreaker?” Mask coughed where it lay at Ovelia’s feet. The sorcerer was their prisoner, yes, but by its relaxed tone, it might as well have held all the knives. “I think it at least
possible
, as you have spared me this long to speak of it.”

“That can change.” Ovelia turned Draca where it hung across Mask’s throat. In contact with the magic-devouring blade, the sorcerer could not fight back.

“Ovelia,” Regel said.

She looked up at him sharply, face livid with rage and doubt.

Regel and Ovelia had eyes only for one another, each poised to strike. The world faded around them. It felt like madness, to threaten his only companion in Luether—the woman who had shared his bed just yestereve—in order to protect one of his greatest enemies. And for what? A thin sliver of hope that his greatest mistake could be undone?

“Will you kill me, Regel?” Ovelia asked. “To protect that monster?”

“If it saves Semana,” Regel said. “You would do the same.”

Ovelia held the sword in trembling hands. Warning shadows spread across the red-tinged blade.

Then Mask began to laugh, the sound maniacal and resonant in the dusty hall. The wiry body shook with the rippling sounds. The wretch lay under Ovelia’s knife, and it
laughed
.

“Spare me those threats you’ll not act upon,” the sorcerer said. “If you were going to slay me, you’d have done it. You want what I promise—the princess you both love—and you cannot have her if I am dead. Aye, Bloodbreaker?”

Ovelia’s face reddened and her features drew together in rage. Regel had never seen anger breach her iron composure so completely as now, in Mask’s presence. He still held the knife ready to throw.

“This was a scheme,” Regel said. “Manipulating our confidence, bringing us here.”

“And here you are.” Mask’s unflagging confidence chilled him.

“You are bluffing,” Ovelia said. “No one could do what you claim to have done.”

“No one, Bloodbreaker?” Mask gestured to Ovelia. “Have you not spun such a web yourself, to force the Lord of Tears to do as you wished? Have you not laid plans within plans—feints within feints—oh Spymaster of Ravalis? I think we all know you have.” Mask looked to Regel. “I wonder what the Bloodbreaker promised to bring you here, Lord of Tears. Coin? Her body? I see you’ve already had that.”

“Watch your tongue,” Ovelia said. “I’m the one with the sword at your throat.”

But not the one with the power, Regel thought.

“Half a summerblood with a temper to match.” Mask indicated its spindly body splayed out on the floorstones. “Move. This is uncomfortable.”

Ovelia narrowed her eyes but said nothing. Finally she drew the sword away and let Mask rise. Regel lowered his throwing knife, but kept it pressed against his forearm.

“Good girl,” Mask said. “Now put the sword down.”

Regel expected to have to add his voice to the command, but Ovelia slammed Draca down on the broken remains of the dawnstone altar without argument. “You could not have done this alone,” she said.

“I had my erstwhile squire watching you.” Mask sat up and stretched its arms, making loud popping noises. “Davargorn had his uses.”

“
Tithian
Davargorn, you mean.” Regel had begun to suspect the man’s identity during the fight, but when Mask had named him, he’d known it for certain.

“Tithian—” Ovelia opened her eyes wide, only now understanding. “Old Gods have mercy,” she said. “Semana’s pageboy?”

“The same.” Mask uttered a huffing sound that might have been mocking laughter. “He was quick to betray his mistress in her hour of need. He failed her, and now he has failed me. I suppose I should not be surprised.” It stretched its arms and loosed a sigh of relief. It moved not unlike a marionette given life by some hidden puppeteer.

Regel remembered taking the young page of Semana aside and giving him a dagger in exchange for his vow to protect the princess. How poorly he’d placed his trust that day.

Ovelia’s face had turned white as that of a corpse left to rot for days. She put her free hand to her forehead. “Why?” she asked. “Why bring us here?”

“I can answer that.” Regel looked to Mask. “It’s because you need us.”

“Just so.” Mask turned its head slightly, its reddish eyes flicking to Regel. “I have need of the great Frostburn and the Bloodbreaker as well, and I’ll pay with your princess.”

Regel saw it, as surely as he had seen it when Ovelia had approached him at the Burned Man tavern. His path was laid before him, and if he left it, what then? Ruin.

Ovelia sat up straighter. “Prove it,” she said. “Prove Semana lives.”

“Reasonable. I expected you would not believe me.” Mask reached down, and Regel tensed. “Stand easy, Lord of Tears. I merely seek to do as your woman asks.”

“She’s not my woman,” Regel said.

“As you say.” Mask reached down with its left-hand gauntlet—a glove made of linking silver hoops—and unbuckled one of the clasps at its chest. From beneath the flap, it withdrew a small leather parcel and held it out to Ovelia. “Careful. It’s dear to at least one of us.”