The Elements of Sorcery (13 page)

In the flickering yellow light far below me, I could just make out the edges of a form which seemed to be carved from the very stuff of nightmares. It was a slick, oily black color from the top of its bulbous head to the end of its barbed, whip-like tail. Huge talons raked the ground beneath it, leaving furrows in the sand. It opened its mouth, revealing rows of yellow dagger-like teeth, and let out a horrible, screeching howl that shocked my nerves into numbness. Given the distance between me and the creature, it must have been the size of an aurochs.

A shrike.

The crazy bastard was keeping a
shrike
in the cellar.

Pain lanced through my head and shot down my arms to the tips of my fingers, tearing a gasp from my throat. With great haste, I stood up and backed away from the metal grate. The beast thrashed, and I could hear the clattering of chains. Somehow, Alvar had captured that
thing
and imprisoned it beneath the Brauch manse.

My brain gibbered.

Bad.

This is very
very
bad.

I'd never had the misfortune of coming up against a shrike, but I'd read plenty of second-hand accounts... and precious few first-hand ones. They were huge killing machines, twisted by corrupted manna to rend and slay and bathe in the blood of their victims, and they were far from mindless. To the contrary, they were reputed to be some of the most vicious and cunning hunters of the fel beasts.

Better than ninety percent of the first-hand accounts I'd read had been written by Arbiters. Those who were not blessed with the crystalline swords seemed to have a bad habit of dying gruesomely and having their shrieks written about by one of their friends who ran slightly faster than they did.

It was also said that they had a nose for sorcery, and preferred a victim who was skilled at controlling manna over all others.

I'd discovered Alvar's secret weapon. He planned to regain full control over the city by—what? Loosing the shrike and hoping that it would kill Trulia and her cabal first? Beyond that, Alvar had trained as a sorcerer himself. Setting that thing free would be tantamount to suicide, unless…

Dread crept up my arms and rested its skeletal fingers on my temples. For weeks, he'd been pushing me about containment sorcery. His questions had always been oblique and hypothetical: was it possible to set off a reaction and then contain it? Control it? Could that control be extended, exercised over a larger reaction?

The memory of those seemingly-innocent questions now made my blood run cold.

Could Alvar Brauch have discovered a way to control a shrike… and use it as a weapon?

My brain immediately tried to count all the ways that could possibly be bad for me, but petered out while trying to number the shrike's teeth. All I'd ever seen were illustrations, but no one ever seemed to be able to give a clear answer as to how many scything, jagged teeth the things had in their bulbous heads.

Reeling, my mind initiated its standard defensive mechanism and recounted the theories and known history of the shrike, which was supposedly descended from a much less deadly creature somewhere back in the mists of history. Thousands of years of breeding in the presence of corrupted manna had changed the entire species into—

With the mental image of slamming shut a door, I cut off my rambling thoughts. Someone needed to be told, someone needed to know about this…

When I turned back to the door, the light from inside the mansion was shrouded by a figure.

"I take it you have seen what I wanted you to see?" Alvar's voice purred.

Unable to call up any words, I swallowed hard and nodded dumbly.

"Good," the scion of House Brauch murmured. "I want you to return to the wharf and tell that seething bitch what you know. I want her and all of her sniveling drudges to know
precisely
what I plan for them. I want them to know fear before they die, Edar – and you are going to give them that fear."

I tried to say something, anything, but no words would come out of my mouth.

"I take it we understand each other," Alvar said. He knocked loudly on the door frame. "Sorzen," he called, and a retainer appeared as though from thin air. "Please show Master Moncrief to the door. He has some business to attend to before the night is out."

As Sorzen bustled me away, I looked back at Alvar. He only smiled.

"Twenty-four hours, Edar. Tomorrow night, the claws will strike."

Bewildered, bemused and befuddled, I stumbled out into the streets of Selvaria's Old Town district as the Conte's servant politely ejected me from the front door.

Horror gripped my heart. I simply could not accept the idea that Alvar intended to unleash a shrike—even one ostensibly under his control—on the citizens of the city that his brother ruled. Not for the first time since I departed Elenia, I found myself wishing to glimpse the cold blue eyes of the Arbiter D'Arden Tal. Whatever icy vengeance he would wreak on me for the theft of the heartblade would be worth the lives of so many of Trulia's hapless slaves.

But Edar,
my mind giggled hysterically.
Haven't you looked in a mirror lately? Selvaria already has an Arbiter to save it.

The thought of solving my "murder" no longer seemed important to me. All that mattered was warning them, all of them…

A thought crept, unbidden, into my mind. Alvar and the Conte had proven conclusively that they had not been the ones to murder me. That narrowed down the short list of my suspects by a significant margin, and suddenly included only the people that I wanted to warn about the shrike.

I nearly traveled further down this path of thought when two figures stepped out of the darkness, onto the torch-lit streets. At first I started, readying myself for another attack, before realizing that no assassin would try again on the broad streets of the Old Towne. It took me a few more seconds to recognize them.

"Mendoz," I said, first spotting the gilded hilt of the sword protruding from over the monster-hunter's shoulder. "Vellierz."

"Was starting to wonder if you were ever coming out of there alive," the big man said.

My eyes settled on my short, pudgy friend, who hurried up and clasped my hand warmly. "It's so good to see you, Edar," he said, his eyes flicking toward the ground. "Trulia told us… she said that you'd been killed."

"It takes more than an assassin with a knife in a dark alley to kill Edar Moncrief," I said confidently, ignoring the continued hysterics in the back of my brain.

His eyes fell on my wrist, and my heart sank. I'd forgotten to re-establish the illusion of the silver cuff on my arm. Thankfully, the enchantment still masked my eyes. "How did you get the shackle off?" he demanded, seizing hold of my hand and inspecting the absence of the device carefully.

I grimaced. "Apparently bleeding almost to death is price enough for it," I lied, retrieving my arm. "Trust me, it's not a pleasant method of getting there, and I'm not sure it would work twice."

Anger flashed in his eyes for the briefest of moments, but he didn't press me further. Vellierz and I had done the most work trying to unravel the enchantments of Trulia's slave shackle, and the only release condition we'd nailed down for certain was the death of the wearer. Because of the dangers involved, we'd never been able to test just what the enchantment used as an activation trigger—was it the stopping of the heart, the death rattle? We just didn't know—and the narrow-eyed stare that he kept on me made my guts writhe.

Naturally, I was not about to explain the truth of my survival. Not here.

"There are bigger problems," I said. "It's time I had a conversation with Trulia."

"She's having a big meeting of all of our people down by the wharf," Vellierz said. "We can't interrupt her."

"On the contrary, my friend," I countered. "Interrupting her is
exactly
what we must do."

"I've done my part," Mendoz said, crossing his arms. "Walking into the lair of the Circle of Thorns with a dead man is not exactly my idea of a good time. I'm out."

"No you're not," I corrected. "I'm going to repay the favors I owe you, Mendoz. I'm going to make you the hero of Selvaria—but first, you have to come with us."

"Hero?" the scarred man said, bemused.

"Come on. We don't have much time." I set out for the wharf at a near-jog, not even checking behind to see if they'd followed me.

They did.

If only there had been some way to preserve the image of the horrified looks upon the faces of the Circle of Thorns when Vellierz, a muscle-bound monster hunter and I busted open the door on their precious "secret meeting", I'd have hung it on my wall and prayed to it daily for the rest of my life.

Alas, some things even sorcery cannot provide.

At the head of the long table—despite what the name may have implied, the Circle of Thorns was anything but egalitarian—sat an ancient, wizened old woman with a face wrinkled like a lake on a windy day, snow-white hair and the most intense, mesmerizing green eyes I'd ever seen.

"Moncrief?" she screeched, surprise evident in her voice reminiscent of a raven's cry.

"Trulia," I said. I'd have doffed my hat, had I worn one. "Members of the Circle, I come bearing a dire warning." Once, I might have shrunk beneath so many pairs of staring eyes, but the part of my brain still writhing in hysterical laughter would no longer permit such cowardice. "Within a day, Alvar Brauch intends to release a horrific weapon upon this city: a shrike over which he has somehow asserted control."

I expected a lot of things to happen here. Panic, fear, terror; I had been prepared for all of those.

What I had not been ready for was the complete and utter silence that hung over the room.

No one moved. Everyone just
stared
at me, as though I were an apparition or perhaps a manna-animated corpse with surprisingly cogent things to say. Which, I reflected, was true… in a sense.

The only person in the room not gazing at me with slack-jawed dismay was Trulia, who was grinning; her yellowed teeth gleaming in the light, her brilliant emerald eyes glittering like the gems they resembled.

"A little bird told me you were dead," she purred, and the hunger in her voice unnerved me.  "I should have known that if anyone could find a way to cheat death, it would be you,"

She stood from her chair, moving like a seductive snake, like no one with that many years should have possibly moved. It was both riveting and horrifying as she slowly sidled toward me, seeming to disassemble me with her gaze as she sought to determine the cause of my survival. It was impossible to read anything in those eyes, alight with purpose and a ravening hunger that made me want to scream and drown myself in the lake.

I brought up my arm to ward her off, realizing too late that it was the wrist upon which Trulia's slave bracelet should have been attached. Her eyes widened with interest, and then narrowed. The grin never flickered.

"So, you have escaped my trap," she murmured to me, and I heard the whispers running around the table. With one absent-minded gesture, I had undermined her authority throughout the Circle, and yet she seemed unfazed. "How did you do it?"

"That's hardly of importance," I said, trying to fend her off as she continued to approach, and I backed away. A moment later, I felt the wall against my back. There was nowhere left to run. "What matters here is that Alvar has a weapon, and he's planning to use it against you."

"Silly boy," she sneered. "You cannot control a creature of corruption. If Alvar believes he can, then he will simply be the first of many to die. If he dies, then seizing power in this city will at last be within my grasp."

"Unless the shrike hunts you down and kills you, too," I pointed out.

She placed her palm on the center of my chest and pushed me back against the wall with surprising strength. Trulia leaned close to me; her breath smelled of mildew and charcoal. "Only after it rampages its way through the Old Towne, terrorizing and slaughtering everything in its wake," she purred. "Once it does, I will step in and kill it, and Selvaria will be mine at last."

"You're insane," I told Trulia sincerely, and shoved her off of me. She took a step back, but never lost her balance. I turned to address the room. "How many of you are willing to risk your lives like that?"

All of them looked away or stared at the table. No one would meet my eyes. I looked over at Mendoz, who lifted his shoulders in a vague shrug.

"You forget," Trulia purred. "You may have slipped out of your contract with me, Moncrief, but I still own every one of them."

"I'm not willing to risk it," Vellierz said from behind me.

Slowly, I turned to face him. Trulia's eyes followed mine, both locking on the pudgy, reddened face of the one sorcerer in town that I dared to call friend.

"What did you say?" she hissed.

"I said that I'm not willing to risk it, Trulia," he answered. "I'm going to help Edar, whatever it is that he wants to do."

"And if I compel you to do nothing?" she asked.

He thrust his double chin out at her defiantly. "Then you can kill me now."

I blinked. I'd never seen that kind of spine in Vellierz before. He'd always been quiet, soft-spoken, but surprisingly intelligent given the package his brain was wrapped in. I'd never seen the possibility of true bravery in him, but he stared the viper down as though he were a very fat mongoose.

Three cheers, Vellierz
, my mind silently sang.

Trulia was the one who blinked, and I thought I might die of happiness on the spot.
No one
stared down Trulia of the Thorn, but by gods, my pudgy friend had done it. "Very well then," she hissed. "You may do what you will on this, Vellierz. Your defiance, however, will cost you."

They stared at each other for another long moment. Finally, Vellierz broke the brittle gaze, turned to me, and said, "So. What's the plan?"

My mouth turned to mush. Once again, every pair of eyes in the room was on me.

"Trulia will give me the location of the back entrance to the House Brauch cellars," I said at last. "I know she has one. Then we're going to go there and kill that shrike before it can hurt anyone."

Both Mendoz and Vellierz blanched. Trulia's grin returned; the crazy bitch.

"Oh, what I wouldn't give to watch that," she purred.