Shadow Of The Winter King (Book 1) (36 page)

Thirty

R
egel had not exaggerated
the scope of the complex beneath the palace of Tar Vangr. Blue candles lit along the walls as they stalked through the metal lined tunnels that twisted in and around themselves like the skittering threads of a long abandoned web. One could wander the halls and passages for months or even years without finding an exit, unless one knew where to look.

The crypts had been ancient when the Empire of Calatan had been young. They spoke of a finer craftsmanship than the secret passages in the palace above, though years of neglect had turned the steel girders dark with age. Cleverly concealed doors, like the one that had opened to the secret charnel chamber, led to unknown rooms, most of which could never be accessed. The art of opening such doors had faded with the centuries, and no one living today could force one open. Regel had tried for some time in his youth to break into many of the chambers, mostly in vain. Only flawed doors like that of the charnel room would work, leading to anonymous chambers full of dust, their original purpose inexplicable. But even a handful of accessible chambers were enough to make the tunnels invaluable. Finding these doors was nigh impossible for the inexperienced, and the unexpected turns, sudden pitfalls, and nearly invisible nooks made the tunnels a perfect hiding place for treasures—or for prisoners kept forever secret.

Into this place the two men stalked, shadows carved out of the light of a lone torch Davargorn bore inside his warding cloak. They kept the light small and directed in their path.

“Leading me into some dark corpse hole, Lord of Tears?” Davargorn asked.

“There is a cell down in these depths, reserved for the most important prisoners. Here they can never be found, except by those in direct service of the Crown. Like as not, Semana is there.”

“And if she isn’t?”

Regel shrugged. “Then we will provoke the Ravalis for no reason, likely to our deaths.”

“Oh very good.” Davargorn sneered. “Just remember: I hold all the blades.”

“Indeed.”

Regel knew the tunnels well, though he had not been here in many years. As a child, he had made his home in the secluded corners of the palace, and the tunnels had been his refuge when guardsmen chased him from the kitchen or—later—after assassinations. Now, Regel himself had become an old shadow of a dead king, while Davargorn had become that graceful, ruthless boy from his memory: a vicious killer skulking the shadows, hopelessly in love with a woman he could never attain.

And if Davargorn was anything like his younger self, Regel knew he intended treachery at the first opportunity. Regel would not forget that.

Several times, they had to double-back to bypass a fissure that cut through the tunnel or a partially collapsed ceiling. The tunnels had changed somewhat from the last time Regel had been here, and his bad leg meant he couldn’t skitter around them as he once had. As the King’s Shadow, he had leaped from rooftop to rooftop and even scaled the thousand-foot sheer palace wall of Tar Vangr. Now, only five years later, he felt much older.

Regel could tell their constant backtracking grated on the younger Davargorn. Eventually, the man even spoke. “Who dug these, anyway? They look ancient.”

“No,” Regel said. “Vangryur miners delved deep and found them almost four hundred years ago. Thousand of years old at the time, sealed away by a long-ago cave-in.” He peered around a corner, then motioned Davargorn on. “Legends credit the Old Gods of the Nar or the little gods of the earth.”

“But the legends lie?”

Regel shrugged. “These tunnels date from before the Prophecy of Return. Perhaps from the Old World itself,” he said. “Some say that when the folk of Denerre returned to this world, they passed through these tunnels.”

“Ridiculous,” Davargorn said.

“Spend an hour in this place, and you will feel the weight of ages on your shoulders.”

Davargorn made a derisive sound. “Nothing here now.” He kicked loose stones to skitter down the corridor. “Naught but dust.”

“Aye, dust.” Regel traced his fingers through the thick dust, which crumbled between his fingers and filtered to the floor. “Dust and shadow.”

* * *

After a time in the dark, they heard the echoing sounds of boots and muted conversation that indicated waiting guards. A little further on, torchlight flickered along the walls ahead. Davargorn left his own torch to gutter against the floor, and together the men stepped into the muddy darkness with the grace of hardened killers. Ten paces ahead, two Ravalis guards stood on either side of a faintly glowing red sigil drawn on the stone wall. The image gleamed like still damp ink—or like fresh blood.

“Only two,” Davargorn whispered. “I can deal with them both.”

Regel restrained him. “That sign is a blood magic ward. If either of them touches it, an alarm will sound, these tunnels will fill with warders, and we shall never escape.”

“I take one, you take the other. We strike at the same moment.” He looked at Regel’s knee. “You can’t run at them, and I can’t throw worth a speck of blood.”

“I can.” Regel held out his hand for one of the daggers.

Davargorn hesitated. “Can you kill a man from this distance with a throw?”

“The nearest one,” Regel said.

Davargorn’s good eye widened and a twisted grin split his features. “Oh, that is rich,” he said. “I go alone, against two men, and I have to run
past
the first one?”

“Would you rescue your princess or not?”

“What if you miss? Or perhaps you’ll not throw at all and just leave me to my fate.”

“You’ll have to trust me, it seems.”

“Very well.” He drew the knife at his belt and gave it to Regel. He paused, then handed him the second knife as well. “Two chances are better than one.”

“I won’t miss with the first.”

“So you say.” Davargorn reversed the sword in his hand, blade down, and ran.

Regel took aim, considering the moment. If he threw too late, the blade would not catch the guard before he touched the ward. Too early, and he would alert the other man before Davargorn could reach him... or hit the boy himself. Also, he had to predict how the guards would move in response to Davargorn’s charge: which would draw steel, and which would go for the ward? Either or both?

Regel drew in a breath to steady himself. He raised the knife close to his eye.

The guards saw Davargorn falling upon them like death. The near one cried out and grasped the hilt of his sword, while the farther guard reached for the ward.

Regel found stillness and threw.

Davargorn shot right past the near guard and ran the second one through. He tried to pull the sword free, but it lodged in the man’s ribs. The first guard whirled on his defenseless foe, but the hilt of his sword caught on his belt. He cursed and wrenched hard, and the sword sang free.

The point of Regel’s dagger burst from the man’s throat. His sword clattered to the floor and he reached up to clutch at his neck while his other hand reached for the ward. Davargorn slapped the reaching fingers away and shoved the dying guard across the hall to slump against the stone.

“Took you long enough,” Davargorn called back.

Regel released the breath he had been holding and limped forward. Davargorn was pulling at his stuck sword to no avail. Regel bent to recover his knife from the dead guard’s throat.

“Pitiful steel.” With a wet crack, Davargorn wrenched his sword free. “Luethaar, probably. They make poor blades down south, no?”

Regel placed his palm on the center of the ward. Fire shot out from around his hand and wreathed the steel portal, circling in arcs around its edges. It tore along twin grooves carved in the corridor wall, shattering packs of dust, and raced down the tunnel wall. A low hum just perceptible to the human ear filled the air. It would be louder above.

Davargorn’s eyes widened and his hand trembled on the sword. “What have you done?”

“Listen to me now, boy, for we have only moments before the Ravalis arrive,” Regel said. “They have only to follow the line of fire and will come straight to us. We can escape before they arrive, but only all three of us. Do you understand?”

Davargorn’s body trembled, and finally he uttered a curse. “You win.” He pointed to the ancient door. “Open it.”

“Blood magic,” Regel said. “Blood calls to blood. Remember that.”

Regel raised his knife to his hand, cut a red line through the flesh, then placed his bloody palm on the ward. The flames abruptly turned gold instead of crimson, and the stone ground against itself. In the space of a single breath, the wall opened, revealing a dungeon lit by a single flickering candle.

What they saw inside the chamber, however, caused both of them to stop breathing.

“Dust and shadow,” Regel murmured.

Hanging before them—a taut black steel chain running from its neck to a hook mounted in the ceiling—was a very limp, very dead Mask.

Thirty-One

W
hen she was ended—when
there was nothing left but darkness and defeat—it was Regel’s words that came to Ovelia. “
Dust and shadow
,” Regel said in her mind, the words in time with passes of the necklace that swung like a pendulum. “
None of us are more or less
.”

There was strength in those words: a wild abandon of sense and prudence. Regel spoke them over the dead—whether they lay on a bier or were about to rush into doom. She’d never quite understood their meaning until now. Ovelia’s eyes opened. “All of us die,” she murmured.

“Eh?” Lan looked down at her. “What was that?”

Another of Regel’s favored wisdoms came to her, and a tiny smile crossed her face.

“Two moments... when a man is weakest,” she whispered. “When he makes love...”

Lan’s eyes gleamed with lust. He reached out to her, but before his hand could touch her, a keening hum shot through the chamber and he cringed. An alarm ward.

“And when he thinks himself victorious,” Ovelia said.

She leaned forward and bit him.

Lan shrieked. He shoved at her, but she held on and he only succeeded in making her bite harder. Something in him gave way, and she loosened her jaw rather than break his skin. If she shed Lan’s blood, Vhaerynn would come, and she would die.

Blows fell on Ovelia’s head and shoulders, and Lan finally succeeded in clouting her on the temple. Her jaw released and she fell to the floor, coughing. She spat blood onto the fur rug, but it must have been her own blood, for no terrible sorcerer appeared to end her life.

“Nnh—” Lan covered his loins awkwardly, but Ovelia could see the mass of bruises forming there. Lan tried to wrap the trembling fingers of his other hand around his belt dagger. “Whore... nnh!”

Ovelia got her feet under her and lunged at him with all the strength she could manage. She jarred his hand from his blade and they collapsed writhing to the floor. The prince cried out in incoherent rage and pain, but Ovelia slammed her forehead into his jaw, knocking him senseless for a moment. She brushed her head against his shirt to wipe away the blood streaming down her face—she’d felt his teeth punch through her skin. But it was her own blood rather than his, and so it would not mean her death.

She tried to rise, but pain ripped through her belly and she fell on top of Lan, her vision blurry and her head exploding. Had he stabbed her? She didn’t know and couldn’t see well enough to check.

The high hum burned her ears. A ward had been activated in the halls below them. Her heart started racing and her vision went blurry. The royal cell, far below:
Semana.

And she knew, somehow, that Regel was the cause of the alarm. He lived yet.

She felt at Lan’s pockets, but she could find no key to her manacles. She abandoned the search and gritted her teeth against the pain. Blood oozed from her cut wrists, but the pain was as nothing compared to the agony inside her. She couldn’t worry about that. Semana needed her.

Ovelia tried to scramble off Lan, but his fingers tangled in her hair and yanked her head back. “Filthy whore!” Lan roared, his breath hot on her neck. She felt cold steel at her throat. “You—”

Ovelia slammed her head back into his face, and Lan moaned. His dagger slipped from her throat, leaving burning pain in its wake. She fell to the floor, wincing, and worked her shoulders to pull herself along Lan’s rug. She forced one leg under her and tried to rise. Then a hand fell on her ankle.

“No,” she said, panting. “
No
.”

Roaring, Lan wrestled her down. Without her hands, there was little Ovelia could do. She drove her shoulder into his chest, but it was like hitting a wall of stone. He punched her square in the face, and stars exploded across her eyes. Lan tackled her and they crushed a wooden chair, sending pieces skittering in every direction. Ovelia felt sharp wood cut into her bare flesh. Lan straddled her, ignoring his battered crotch. The prince’s fingers wrapped around her throat and began to squeeze. “Whore!” he cried, as though that was the only word he still knew.

Ovelia thrashed, but she didn’t have the strength to twist free. She could barely make herself move. The edges of her vision crumbled.

Semana
needed
her.

Ovelia put all her strength into her right leg. She shoved her knee up as hard as she could, right between his thighs into his bruised crotch. Lan cried out. His hands faltered and his fingers splayed like arrow shafts. He curled down, caving in on himself.

Heart hammering, Ovelia stood up, slamming her shoulder into Lan’s jaw hard enough that he snapped back as though she’d struck him with a hammer. The back of his knees caught on the edge of the bed, and she staggered and fell heavily atop him. His dagger lay on the floor within easy reach, but it was useless. Even if her hands weren’t still bound, a blade would do her no good if Lan’s blood summoned Vhaerynn to slay her. Instead, she straddled his midsection and reached down behind her back, her hands trembling between his legs, and clutched his bruised blade hard in both hands.

“No king,” she spat, and twisted.

Lan shrieked. Somehow, his agony gave him the strength to strike, and his fist caught her on the left side of the head. They tumbled dizzily onto the floor. Ovelia’s hip exploded in pain on the bearskin rug and she almost bit through her tongue. Lan snarled, his eyes burning, but when he tried to surge toward her, he screamed in pain, clutched at himself, and let go of her leg.

From the floor she kicked at his head with all the force she could muster. Her bleary aim was off and she caught him in the shoulder, but it still hit hard enough to knock him on his back. Panting hard, she fought to rise and somehow succeeded. She wavered on her feet, balance hard to find.

“Whore!” His voice was pitched high and broken. “Wh—!”

She brought down her heel on his face. Then again. And again.

Finally, he stopped moving except to twitch feebly on the blood-stained rug.

Heart thundering in her head, she caught sight of herself in the mirror and stopped for an instant. The fight had left her face a mess of bruises and her own blood, with one eye swollen shut and her lower lip split in two places. This did not bother her, however, so much as her nakedness—modesty could come upon one at strange moments. As best she could with her manacled hands, she wrenched the blanket from the bed—a silk so deep crimson it seemed black—and wrapped it around herself. In the mirror, with her hair of fire and that mantle, she looked more like the Red Sorceress from legend than a Knight of Winter.

Ovelia shivered and looked over her shoulder just as Lan murmured and stirred. Had he made a noise that had drawn her attention, or was it the other way around? She couldn’t say. It was almost like having Draca again, even though the sword was nowhere in sight. In all likelihood, the Ravalis had squirreled it away in a vault or melted it down by now. She wished she had the sword, with the simple clarity of its magic to tell her what to do. Draca did not lie, as her heart often did.

In any case, she turned to regard Lan where he lay like a wounded animal on the bloody rug, breath rasping through his throat. Still alive. She remembered standing over the unconscious Ravalis guard in the secret tunnel behind the Denerre bloodtree. Old Gods, how long ago had that been?

Ovelia sat down on Lan’s chest, facing away from him, and wrapped her ruddy fingers around his throat. She found she didn’t have the strength or leverage to strangle him. She tried to choke him with the manacle chain, but he could still breathe around all the pressure she could manage to exert.

“Burn the Old Gods,” she cursed between clenched teeth.

Ovelia forced herself to rise, then knelt awkwardly on his throat. He coughed and struggled, as though his body refused to die even when his mind had no sense. She lost her balance and slipped off him, not once but twice. The second time she lay panting on the matted bearskin rug and tried to gather her strength. Her stomach felt as though a creature had burrowed in and was tearing her asunder from inside. She coughed, and blood spewed from her mouth as though from a wound deep down.

Ovelia looked to Lan, who lay beside her. The prince had sprouted a dozen awful bruises on his face and midsection, and matters only became worse as she looked down at his mangled groin. She could not tell if his chest rose or fell. She had to choose: leave him alone and try to escape, hoping he expired on his own, or use the last of her strength to make sure Lan was dead, then collapse and die herself.

Semana needed her.

Finally, Ovelia forced herself up and padded away, limping where she’d slammed her hip into the floor. At the door, she turned, put her bound hands on the latch and fumbled to open it. Her hands shook.

The door gave way and she backed through it. The corridor seemed empty, and Ovelia stumbled against the opposite wall and panted in the darkness. Her heart thudded and her belly burned. Weakness seeped through her, as though she was bleeding from a dozen unseen wounds. Sweat poured down her face and breath came hard. Old Gods, her insides were on
fire.
She needed medicine. Herbs. Anything.

Ovelia could hardly think for the pain. She looked down at her belly, where she was sure she would find a ripped-open gash, but there was nothing—just smooth skin with no sign of injury. Old Gods, what if she had been right and she was carrying Regel’s child? Was she even now
losing
that child?

The blanket shifted awkwardly. Automatically, she tried to reach up to adjust it, but with her hands still bound, she succeeded only in upsetting the blanket and making it worse. She thought to search for keys again, but her legs didn’t have the strength to carry her back into that awful room. She slumped against the wall and slid to the floor, trying to breathe through her nose. Her mouth had closed tight.

The humming sound—the ward from the depths—faded and died away, but it had done its work. Guards would follow the ward through the tunnels to investigate the sound and, like as not, they would find Ovelia along the way. Even now, she heard footsteps down the hall, and she could do nothing more than sit, waiting defenseless outside the room of the Crown Prince she had maimed and possibly killed. At least she had managed to cripple him, before she succumbed to her own weakness. Perhaps the Ravalis would be merciful and kill her immediately. The thought gave her relief, but then she realized she would fail Semana all over again, and her heart ached.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have fought back. Perhaps she could have used Lan, as she used Paeter years ago. Let him have his way with her and endure. Perhaps...

Ovelia sank fully to the floor, face pressed against the cold stone of the wall. She was so tired. Tired of the horror, tired of the pain, tired of all the blood...

“Hail!” Strong hands caught her about the shoulders. “Pass w—oh
Gods
. Lady Dracaris!”

At first, she thought it was Lan come to avenge himself upon her, or perhaps Paeter returned from the grave. But this face was thinner than either of those men—the eyes gentler.

Garin Ravalis wound the fallen blanket around her shoulders. “What happened to you?” He brushed at her sticky cheeks. His fingertips came away red with her blood.

Ovelia tried to speak but couldn’t. She shook her head and nodded toward Lan’s door.

Garin, his face writ with horror, looked toward the door, but Ovelia caught his hand. She willed him not to go. She didn’t want to be alone.

“All’s well,” he said. “No more harm will come to you, Lady. I swear it. I just have to see.”

Ovelia nodded limply. Her jaw was clasped tight. She wondered if her lips would ever open—if she would ever speak again. The horror seemed too real.

Hand on the warpick at his belt, Garin looked in the door. Ovelia watched him weigh the variables in the situation, see the implications, and determine his course. Now she imagined he would turn on her and draw his steel to make an end of it.

Garin turned his bright blue eyes on her. His jaw was set. “He attacked you,” he said.

Ovelia looked at him numbly, then nodded.

“Old Gods of the Nar.” Garin’s fingers shook on the hilt of the warpick at his belt.

He was going to kill her, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

“No,” he said, as though he could hear her thoughts.

Ovelia blinked, confused, as Garin wiped away the blood and spittle on her face.

“My cousin is an animal. Whatever hurt you have dealt him, he no doubt deserves.” Garin took her hands in his. “Now come, we must get you away. Someone triggered a ward in the depths. Your friend, the Lord of Tears? That creature in the mask?”

He didn’t know about Semana. She wanted to tell him, but when she opened her mouth, blood trickled down her lips. Her blood. She was bleeding inside. Old Gods.

Lenalin my love
, she thought.
I’ll be with you straight.

“Lady?” Garin asked. “Are you—?”

She spat gore on the stones and wiped her chin. “Silver hair,” she said. “They both—”

Weakness overwhelmed her, the world went numb, and Ovelia collapsed into Garin’s arms. He was shouting at her from an increasing distance and she was sinking, unable and unwilling to hang on.