The Darkslayer: Chaos at the Castle (Book 6) (8 page)

“Woo!” she said,
slapping her knees. “Sure is nice in here.” She fanned herself. “Getting really hot, though.”

The tavern chatter was about many things, including underlings, but there was something else going on she couldn’t put her finger on. A couple of
robed men’s faces were masks of concentration, staring hard into one another’s eyes inside a small group that gathered around and added more coins to the piles on the table.

“Ten seconds,” one said, rubbing his chin.

“Twenty.”

Sweat beaded on both of the robe
d men’s foreheads.

“Thirty seconds,” the man said.

The bigger of the two men locked in a stare jumped from the table, banging his knee and holding his head.

“Fodor wins!”

Darlene applauded along with the rest of the men, even though she didn’t have any idea what was happening. “Say, what kind of game is this, anyway? A staring contest?”

A couple of the scholarly
robed men chuckled while another man sneered and walked away. The smaller man in a bright green tunic seated at the table smiled and waved her over.

“Please, come over here and have a seat
. I’d be happy to explain,” he said, smiling.

“Really?” Darlene said, “My, you men sure have a different way about you
. And your clothes.” She grabbed the sleeves of one man’s robes and rubbed them. “They look more like something a woman would wear. By Hohm, that sure is soft. What kind of fabric is this?”

The man named Fodor cleared his throat.
“Ahem, Miss, what was your name?”

“Oh, Darlene. I’m from Hohm City. Home of the Mists
, and that over there,” she pointed, “is Scorch. My friend. He kills underlings.”

Fodor made a polite nod
. “I see. Well, Darlene, let me tell you about this game we play…”

“Excuse me, but are you Royals?” She grabbed another man’s sleeve.  “Where can I get a shirt like this
? It’s so pretty.”

He leered at her
and pushed her hand away. “This clothing is made for Wizards, not for a grubby sheep herder.”

A couple men chuckled
. Others gathered around.

Darlene looked them over
. “I’m a hunter and a trapper, and a fine shot with a bow. I bet I could out shoot any of you. And you better watch your manners.” She slipped a knife underneath the man’s privates. “Or for certain you’ll be wearing that fancy shirt as a woman.”

The man gawped, eyes wide.

“Certainly, Darlene,” Fodor said. He lay his hand on her shoulder. “Please, put the knife away. My companions don’t have the best manners when it comes to travelers.”

Darlene slid her knife back into the sheath
and burped.

“You can say that again. So,” she drummed her
fingers on the table, “tell me about this game again, Fodor. Is it something I can play?”

“Certainly,” he said, clasping his hand
s on the table. “And it’s really quite simple. Even for you.”

She swayed forward.

“Well, what do you mean by that?”

“I say that because it’s your first time
, is all. No insult about your intellect intended.”

She nodded
.  “That’s what I thought you meant.”

Fodder smile
d and continued.

“So, it
’s called a Mind Grumble. It’s a game for everyone, but a mage or wizard must link it. What happens is our minds are linked together and we engage in a mental arm wrestling contest. A test of wills. Do you understand, Darlene?”

“I think I’ve heard of this before. I had an uncle that was a wizard, or at least my mother said he was, well said he was my uncle, but I’m not so sure why she’d be sleeping around with my uncle.
” She shrugged. “Maybe it was on account that my father, my uncle’s brother, was no longer around. But he said he did something like this and gave a man a bloody nose for it.”

Fo
dor shook his head. “Who said he gave a bloody nose for it?”

“My uncle.”

Fodor looked at her for a long moment as if waiting for her to speak.

“
Huh … I see, Darlene. Are you finished?”

She rubbed her nose. “Will this give me a bloody nose?”

“It’s unlikely, but it has been known to happen before. See the floor
?” He pointed with his eyes and chin.

There was
a dark stain on the floor near their table.

“Is that from blood?”

“Aye, for the bloodiest nose I ever saw. Fogle Boon, one of our kind, arrogant and mysterious, locked minds with a stranger, somewhat like yourself. A rugged wilderness warrior whose name I can’t recall.”

“What happened?”

“To our shock and amazement, the big fellow won and Fogle Boon’s nose was broken.”

Darlene gulped, covering her nose.

“Darlene, that won’t happen to you, I promise. That night, if anything, was an unfortunate accident. Rather unexplainable, it was. But, in the spirit of things,” Fodor snapped his fingers, and a pretty waitress in a short white tunic dress strolled over, smiling, “I treat you to a bottle of wine. Are you ready?”

She
eyed the men that surrounded her and the table. They had a shifty look about them, but she felt all right. “You promise it won’t turn my mind to mush or anything?”

“It’s already mush if you ask me,”
one wizard said. He had a crook in his jaw and a partially bald head. “Shouldn’t hurt a thing.”

Darlene’s hand dropped to her knife.

“I don’t like you.”

He
stepped away.

Fo
dor continued.

“
Don’t mind him, Darlene. He never wins. And if you find yourself feeling uncomfortable, you just need to close your eyes, or look away. It’s quite simple. And for all I know, you might give more than I can handle.” He smiled and chuckled. “Such things have been known to happen before.”

She r
apped her fist on the table. “I’ll try anything once! Let’s do this!” She learned forward on her elbows and stared into Fodor’s eyes. “You have nice eyes.” She licked her lips. “Now what?”

Fo
dor loosened the top button on his tunic, nodded to one of the other wizards, and then turned his focus on her. The petite man’s eyes were like ice blue water, hypnotizing like a snake.

The men around the table quietly talked among themselves in a strange gibberish and gently laid coins on the table.

“Are they betting for me or against me?” she said.

T
he mage with the crook in his jaw muttered quickly, twirled his fingers, and then touched her forehead with one finger and Fodor’s with another.  “What’s he doooooo …”

Darlene didn’t feel anything
, but the man across from her’s face turned snake-like, red tongue licking out of its mouth and striking. It was her, watching herself standing in the dark woods facing off a great snake. She didn’t scream, just whipped out a knife and cut off its head.

“Is that it? Is it over? Did I win?”
Her voiced echoed. But the scene changed. A white mist surrounded her, and the sound of rain filled her ears. “Say, where’s the rain?”

In the distance, a man stood waving.

The mist turned from clouds to an Outland desert, and she was hot and thirsty. She watched the man drop a canteen. She was trotting towards it when an orc came from out of nowhere. She shot it with her bow. A gnoll popped up behind her, swinging a bastard sword. She ducked and stabbed in in the thigh. It disappeared. The suns beat down on her as she crawled hands and knees towards the canteen. She grabbed it, tipped it up to her mouth―and drank a mouthful of sand.

“Ugh! No!” she sputtered.

Nearby, Fodor stood, hands on hips, laughing.

“Have you had enough, Darlene?” he
said. There was something mocking about him.

She threw the canteen at him. “No!”

He picked it up and poured water down his throat and all over himself. “Ah!”

“This game is stupid, Fo
dor,” she said. She tried to yell, spitting sand from her mouth. “I quit.” She closed her eyes and opened them. Nothing happened.

“Why am I still here
?” she said, looking around.

“You half-wit!” he
said. He stormed across the sand, sneering. “This game isn’t over until I say it is over! And you, such audacity to speak with me and sit at my table. Oh, you shall pay for it. After this, you’ll tell no more of your stupid stories to anyone again.”

“What are you doing!” Darlene cried out.

“Teaching you a lesson you’ll never forget, inbreed!”

Darlene grabbed her head
. Her nose was bleeding! The sound of laughing voices was all around her now, jeering and making fun. Her fears overcame her, and darkness closed in.

NO! STOP THIS!

“Ha! Ha! Ha! Look, she peed herself,” someone from somewhere said.

Angry and embarrassed
, Darlene tried to fight back. Lashing out, her figure struck at Fodor with a knife. He rose above it, laughed, clapped his hands, and the knife was gone.

“Foolish woman, you are not clever enough to beat me!”

An invisible force squeezed her mind, suffocating her.

What is going on?

She felt a sudden
loneliness that she’d never felt before. Deep down, painful despair. No one liked her. No one needed her. No one cared for her. Not even her father or mother. Her brothers and sisters even abandoned her. She had no one. She was no one.

“That’s right, Darlene, no one cares about you at all. Your life doesn’t even matter,” Fo
dor laughed.

Tears were streaming down her cheeks, dripping onto the table.

I’m not so bad. I’m not so terrible.

A giant snake coiled around her and spoke through its fanged mouth.

“But you are!”

I
t took the breath right from her.

She deserved to die. She had no friends at all she could count on.

Or did she?

SCORCH!

***

Joline had just spent the last several minutes pouring her heart out to the man named Scorch. He was a wonderful listener and something to look at
, too. She’d just finished telling him about what happed to Kam and the baby Erin when he turned his attention away.

“Pardon me,” he sai
d. He was looking for his friend, Darlene.

“Oh my, how did she wind up with them
?” Joline said. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying any attention.”

Darlene sat in her chair, catatonic, while the men laughed because she’d peed herself.

“I’ll take care of this,” Joline said. She rushed from behind the bar straight for Darlene’s table.

“You men cut that out
! She’s my guest—”

P
lerf!

The first man that looked up
’s head exploded.

“Mother of Bish—”

Plerf!

The man next to the man whose head exploded
’s head exploded as well.

An arc o
f red sprayed across the room like a rainbow.

Plerf!

Plerf!

Plerf!

One right after the other, three more men’s heads exploded. Five bodies fell. Blood was everywhere. Silence fell.

Joline was shaking.
Blood was sprinkled all over her hands and apron. At the table, Darlene wiped the blood from her face, gaping at her.

“Did I do that?” Darlene said.

Joline’s tongue clove to the roof of her mouth.

Darlene turned and looked at Fo
dor. He sat wide-eyed, blood-coated and trembling in his chair.

“Did you do that
?” Darlene asked him.

He shook his head.

Plerf!

His head exploded.

“Guess not,” Darlene said. She grabbed the bottle of wine, pulled the cork out of the bottle with her teeth and started drinking.

Scorch was laughing
. Everyone else screamed.

CHAPTER 10

The Nest was in Chaos.

Find Diller! Save Erin!

Lefty picked his way through Palos’s blood bath and into the streets, where skirmishes among the thieves had broken out everywhere. Screams, shouts and cries of alarm echoed up and down the alleys and across the docks, where members of the thieves’ guild sought escape from one another―and from another predator: the wrath of Zorth’s blade.

Two thieves tumbled through a storef
ront. One collapsed in a heap, begging for his life. The other drove a dagger into his chest. Lefty darted away
.