Stalking Darkness (44 page)

“Well, she’s a good soldier,” said Alec, as much for his own comfort as hers. “With Micum and Seregil for teachers all those years, and then Myrhini—that’s as good training as anyone could have.”

Arna gave his arm a squeeze. “Maker love you, sir, I hope you’re right. I’ll go get you something to eat as you ride. Don’t you go off without it, hear?”

By the time he’d shifted his borrowed saddle onto Patch’s back, she was back with a bundle of food tied up in a napkin and several torches. Mounting he lit one from the courtyard lantern and set off on the final stretch to Rhiminee under a clouded, moonless sky. He met more columns of riders and foot soldiers along the way, but didn’t stop for news.

He came in sight of the city just before midnight. The highroad followed the top of the cliffs above the sea and from here he could see down to the harbor where lines of watch fires outlined the moles, shining brightly across the dark expanse of water. More signal fires burned on the islands at the mouth of the harbor, and torches had been lit along the city walls above.

The north gate was open under heavy guard to allow for the passage of troops. Inside, the Harvest Market looked as if a war had already been fought there. Piles of scrap wood and tangled shreds of colored canvas were all that appeared to be left of the booths and stalls he’d ridden past that same morning. Despite the lateness of the hour, soldiers were at work everywhere, setting up ballistas and hauling off refuse. From now on, it appeared, merchants would have to carry on their business under the open sky or from the backs of carts.

Steering Patch through the chaos of the market square, Alec rode on into the maze of side streets beyond to Blue Fish Street. Light still showed around the front shutters, although in the excitement Rhiri had let the lanterns hanging at the Cockerel’s front gate go out.

Thryis will be after him for that. Alec thought, riding around to the back courtyard.

He stopped at the stable long enough to unsaddle Patch and throw a rug over her steaming back. Leaving her with water and feed, he let himself through the lading-room door and hurried up the back stairway. With all the uproar around town, perhaps Seregil would overlook the fact that Alec had ignored his admonition to spend the night at Watermead.

He knew the way upstairs well enough not to bother with a light. On the second floor he gave the corridor a cursory glance, then headed up the hidden stairs to their rooms. The keying words for the glyphs had become habit to him by now, and he spoke them with absent haste as he went up. In his eagerness to find Seregil, he failed to notice that the warding symbols did not make their usual brief appearance as he passed.

No final dream or vision prepared him.

Nysander was dozing over an astrological compendium by his bedroom fire when the magical warning jolted him to his feet; the Oreska defenses had been breached. The alarm was followed by a storm of message spheres, swarming like bees through the House as every wizard in the place called out for information.

Or in fear. Invaders in the atrium! Golaria’s voice rang out in a red flash. A dying cry from Ermintal’s young apprentice stabbed at Nysander’s mind like a shard of glass, and then that of Ermintal himself— The vaults!—cut short by another burst of blackness. Through the onslaught of voices Nysander called out to Thero. There was no response.

Steeling himself for the battle he’d hoped never to fight, Nysander cast a translocation and stepped through the aperture into the corridor of the lowest vault just beyond the secret chamber. Shadowy figures waited for him there. He took a step toward them and stumbled. Looking down, he saw what was left of Ermintal and his apprentice, recognizing them by the shredded remains of their robes. Other bodies lay heaped beyond them.

“Welcome, old man.” It was the voice from Nysander’s visions. Magic crackled and he barely managed to throw up a defense before it struck him in a roar of flame. The corpses sizzled and smoked as it passed.

Regaining his balance, Nysander retaliated with lightning, but the smaller of the two invaders merely lifted a hand and brushed it aside to explode against the wall. By its light, Nysander saw it was a dyrmagnos. Beside it stood a figure so cloaked in a shifting veil of shadows that Nysander could not be certain at first if it was human or supernatural.

“Greetings, old man,” the dyrmagnos hissed. “How weary you must be after your long vigil.”

Not Tikarie Megraesh, but a woman, Nysander thought as he took a step toward her. She was a tiny, wizened husk of a creature, blackened with years, desiccated by the evil that animated her. This was the ultimate achievement of the necromancer—the embodiment of life in death wearing the sumptuous robes of a queen.

Raising gnarled hands, she held up two human hearts and squeezed them until blood oozed out in long clots, spattering to the floor around her feet.

“The feast has begun, Guardian,” the figure beside her said, and Nysander again recognized the voice of the golden-skinned demon of his visions. But it was an illusion. Through the veils of darkness, he saw a man—Mardus—speaking with the voice of the Eater of Death.

Just behind them, several other robed figures came into view. Nysander could smell the stench of necromancy coming from them and with it something heartbreakingly familiar—the unmistakable sweetness of Ylinestra’s special perfume.

“After all these years of anticipation, you have no reply?” the dyrmagnos sneered.

“There has never been any reply for you but this.” Raising his hands, Nysander launched the orbs of power that burned against his palms.

T
he moon had passed its zenith by the time Seregil came back to Blue Fish Street. It had been a pointless day overall. With the Beggar Law in force, most of his more valuable contacts had fled or gone to ground. Those that he had managed to track down had no fresh information on Plenimaran movements in the city. If the enemy was in town, he was keeping a low profile.

Weary as Seregil was, however, the sight of the unlit lanterns in front of the inn brought him up short. A tingle of presentiment prickled the hairs on his neck and arms. Ducking quickly into a shadowed doorway across the street, he scrutinized the courtyard for a moment, then drew his sword and crept cautiously across to the front door.

It was slightly ajar.

Leaving it untouched, he crept around to discover the back door open as well. He pushed it wide with the tip of his blade, tensed for attack, but there was no sound from inside.

An unlucky odor filled his nostrils as he entered the kitchen; the stale, flat smells of a cold hearth and lamps left to gutter out on their own. Taking out a lightstone, he saw nothing out of place, except for Rhiri’s pallet, which was missing from its place near the hearth.

On the second floor the signs were more ominous.

Thryis and her family were not in their rooms and only Cilia’s bed appeared to have been slept in; the linens were thrown hastily back, and the coverlet hung awry over the side. Next to the bed, an overturned chair lay in the shattered remains of a washbasin.

A grim heaviness settled in the pit of Seregil’s stomach as he moved on to the guest rooms at the front of the inn. Only one had been occupied. The unlucky carter and his son lay dead in their beds, smothered with the bolsters.

The hidden panel leading to the stairs up to his rooms appeared untampered with from the outside but opening it, he found that the warding glyph at the base of the stairs had been tripped. There were spots of blood on the lower steps, and several were smeared where more than one person had stepped in them before they’d dried. The glyphs farther up were simply gone. Still gripping his sword in his right hand, he drew his poniard with his left hand and mounted the stairs.

The doors at the top of the stairs stood open, showing darkness beyond. If there was anyone lurking in the disused storage room, it was best to find out now while there was still a chance of easy retreat. Fishing a lightstone from a pouch at his belt, he tossed it into the room. The stone skittered noisily across the floor, illuminating the few crates and boxes scattered there. No one jumped out to attack, but the floor told a tale it didn’t take Micum Cavish to read; people had been in and out of his rooms, quite a number of them. Some had been dragged and some had been bleeding.

The final warding glymph on the door to the sitting room was gone, too. Taking a deep breath, Seregil flattened himself against the wall next to the door frame and slowly turned the handle.

A band of eerie, shifting light spilled across the floor at his feet, and with it came a horrendous slaughterhouse stench. Weapons clutched at the ready, he stepped inside. Even with all the warning he’d had, his first glimpse of what lay beyond struck like a blow.

Several lamps had been left burning, and pale, unnatural flames danced on the empty hearth.

Someone had turned the couch to face the door, and on it four headless bodies sat as if waiting for him to return.

He knew who they were even before he looked past them to the heads lined up on the cluttered mantelpiece.

The strange light cast their features into tortured relief: Thryis, Diomis, Cilia, and Rhiri seemed to look with dull incomprehension toward their own corpses, which some monstrous wit had arranged in attitudes of repose. Diomis leaned against his mother, one arm draped over her bloody shoulders.

Cilia sat next to him, slumped against the remains of Rhiri.

There was blood everywhere. It hung in congealed ribbons from the mantelpiece and pooled on the hearthstones below. It had dried in scabrous crusts on the pitiful bodies. There were great sticky smears and handprints on walls.

There had been a struggle. The dining table had been knocked sideways, spilling a sheaf of parchment onto an already blood-soaked carpet. The writing desk was overturned in a litter of quills and parchment, and the shelves to the left of it had been pulled down. As he stooped to inspect the mess more closely, something in the shadows beneath the workbench caught his eye, stopping his breath in his throat.

Alec’s sword.

He dragged it out and examined it closely. Dark stains along its edge showed that Alec had put up a fight before losing it. Gripping it by the hilt, Seregil was surprised by a brief, irrational burst of anger.

I told him to stay at Watermead!

The door to his bedroom was shut, but bloody footprints led inside. Taking a jar of lightstones from a nearby shelf, he kicked the door open and tossed them in.

An unearthly yowl burst out from inside and Seregil raised his sword in alarm. It came again, ending in a drawn-out snarl. Following the sound, he saw Ruetha crouched on top of a wardrobe, eyes glowing like swamp fire. She hissed at him, then leapt down and scuttled away toward the front door.

Nothing appeared to have been disturbed here except the green velvet curtains of his bed. He never used them, but someone had pulled them shut all around the bed.

Someone who’d left the bloody foot marks on the carpet.

Seregil’s breath sounded loud in his ears as he forced himself across the room, knowing already whose body he’d find when he pulled the hanging aside.

“No,” he said hoarsely, unaware that he was speaking aloud. “No no no please no—” Gritting his teeth, he flung the curtain aside.

There was nothing on the bed but a dagger-a dagger with a hank of long yellow hair knotted around the hilt.

Seregil picked it up with shaking hands, recognizing the black horn grip inlaid with silver; it was the knife he’d given Alec in Wolde.

For one blinding second he seemed to feel Alec’s thumb on his face again, reaching to smudge over the clean spot on his cheek.

“Where is he?” Seregil hissed. Grabbing up his sword, he rushed out into the sitting room again. “You bastards! What have you done with him?”

An evil chuckle erupted beside him and Seregil froze, scanning the room. The laugh came again, lifting the hair in the back of his neck. He knew that voice.

It was the voice of the apparition that had dogged him through the Mycenian countryside; the one he’d fought through a fever dream the night Alec had torn the wooden disk from his neck.

But this time there was no black, misshapen specter. The voice issued from the writhing lips of Cilia’s severed head.

“Seregil of Rhiminee and Aurenen!” Her glazed eyes rolled in their sockets, seeking him. “We found you at last, thief.”

Diomis’ jaws gaped with the same terrible voice.

“Did you think we would allow you to escape? You have desecrated the sanctuary of Seriamaius, and defiled his relics.”

“The Eye and the Crown.” It was Rhiri now, who’d never had a voice in life.

“Thief! Defiler!” Thryis spat out, her withered lips curling back in a leer.

“Defiler! Thief!” the other heads cried in moaning, joyless chorus.

“Aura Elustri mdlrei,” gasped Seregil, watching the grotesque performance with a mixture of outrage and revulsion. “What have you done with Alec? Where is he?”

They made no answer, but Rhiri’s head tumbled to the floor and rolled at him, snapping its jaws and laughing, followed by the others.