The Iron Ring (19 page)

Hool glared at him. “You will shut
up
! I am busy now.”

“What happened to Hendrieux?” Artus asked. The alley was a dead end, save for a single door. That door stood open, but beyond it was simply a brick wall—­a door to nowhere.

Hool slammed the thug against the wall. Artus heard bones crack. “Filthy magic! Filthy
cheater
magic! Tell me how it works!”

“I don't know!” the man squealed. “They don't tell us!”

Hool's voice was made ragged by the rumble of her growls. “If you know nothing, I will kill you now.”

“Ple—­” The man didn't finish his last sentence before Hool's jaws snapped closed around his neck, crushing it with a spurt of blood. She threw the body on the ground like a pile of rags, where it twitched for a few seconds before falling still.

Artus threw up in the gutter. When he finished, Hool was sitting on her haunches, looking at him with her glowing copper eyes. “You should not drink poison,” she announced. Blood stained the fur around her lips.

“What happened?” Artus asked, his stomach still tumbling.

“Hendroo and an old man went through that magic door. He left this stupid man to fight me, but he was too slow and I killed him.” She looked at the body and then back at Artus. “You were here for that part.”

Making certain not to look at the dead thug, Artus went over to inspect the door. He was no wizard and knew virtually nothing about sorcery, but part of his still ale-­soaked brain hoped maybe there was some sign of magic writing or some such to show how the door worked. There was none. It was just an old door—­probably a former side or back door to some building. When the building had been renovated or rebuilt, the masons had likely bricked up the door from within, but never bothered removing it entirely. Beyond its architectural oddity, nothing else seemed unusual about it. “I wonder what happened,” Artus mused aloud.

Hool shrugged. “It is late. Let's find a barn to sleep in. Tyvian Reldamar will solve this wizard-­puzzle in the morning.”

Artus pointed to the dead body. “We can't just leave
him
here!”

Hool cocked her head to one side. “I am not hungry.”

Artus shuddered. “I can't believe you would
eat
him.”

The gnoll prodded the body with her foot. “He is too big to eat myself. Enough meat for three days.”

“You're disgusting.” Artus folded his arms over his queasy belly and left the alley.

Hool followed him a moment or two later. “Do you want a sword?” she asked.

Artus shook his head. “First you kill them, then you rob them?”

Hool blinked slowly. “Dead ­people don't
need
swords.” She spoke as though speaking to a child.

“I know that.”

“You are stubborn and dumb,” Hool said finally, tossing the dead man's sword back in the alley.

Artus sighed. “Hey . . . thanks.”

Hool fixed him with her hard copper eyes and nodded slowly. “We are a pack, no matter what Reldamar says. He is stubborn and dumb, too.”

A cold rain began to fall, quickly soaking Artus to the bone, so he was shivering as they wandered the streets at night. The water beaded on Hool's thick fur, but she didn't flinch from it as she loped along at the boy's side. She seemed comfortable and happier than she had been since Artus had known her. That, along with the image of her breaking that Delloran's back in the street, playing over and over in his mind, made him shiver even more.

A
rkald the Strange, Necromancer of Talthmoor, ran for his life. Behind him, his mossy old tower burned with a supernatural flame. Within, all his books, all his ritual ingredients, all his creations—­his entire career—­died a final death that not even he could reverse. Part of him wanted to go back, to throw himself in the fire, to die with his work. It would have been more fitting that way. Arkald, though, had never been a brave man.

The ground was a mixture of mud and slush, the provenance of a week's worth of sleet and rain. Arkald's sandals could scarcely find purchase. He kept falling, slipping, tumbling down hillsides in the dark of the night. His breath came in ragged gasps; he was so cold he could scarcely breathe. Fear was the only thing to keep him going. It seemed as though a blazing spike of terror was nestled in the center of his back somewhere, radiating out to all his limbs and pushing them to frantic activity.
Sweet Hann, he had to get away!

Arkald knew who was coming for him. He didn't know how he had been found, but he knew who had done the finding. He wished to every god he knew that he was wrong, but he just wasn't that lucky.

He chanced a glance behind him. He'd made it perhaps a quarter mile from his tower, and there, in the blazing phosphorous-­white light, he saw the silhouette of a man built like a rampart—­tall, broad, and blunt. There was a glint of silver at his shoulders and on his brow—­armor and a simple iron circlet. The sight filled the necromancer's gut with a new wave of terror.

Arkald felt the sorcerous energies that made up the world shudder just before the ground exploded beneath his feet. The heat and force of the blast was absorbed by the wards he had placed on his cloak, but no sorcerous ward would defend him from being tossed ten feet in the air and landing with a crunch against a rock. Arkald screamed into the night sky; his hip was broken. He rolled in the mud, trying to draw the Lumen into a spell that might knit his bones back together, if only temporarily. The ley did not favor him, though. The Lumen was found in places of light and life and happiness; the muddy winter hillside in the middle of the night was a place of darkness, death, and terror.

Channeling the Ether, the Lumen's opposite, was significantly easier, and so Arkald was able to cast a deathbolt at his pursuer despite his frozen fingers and pain-­wracked body. The arc of green lightning that erupted from his fingers, though, was casually batted aside by the broad man in the iron circlet. Arkald tried again and again, each time pouring more of his fear and hatred into the spell to enhance it, but each time the man countered it with wards and dispels of his own. Arkald's attacks didn't even force him to break stride.

As though mocking his weakness, the man channeled the Fey—­the energy of heat and chaos—­to cause a ring of fire to leap up around the prone, shivering body of the necromancer. There would be no escape now. Despite cold creating a favorable ley, Arkald was too weak to channel a countering energy, the Dweomer. A miscast or mistake in the spell could be catastrophic—­it could freeze him dead or kill his ability to feel. Instead, Arkald curled up into as much of a shivering ball as his screaming hip would allow and waited for the man in the circlet—­the Mad Prince, Banric Sahand—­to arrive.

Sahand calmly stepped through the ring of fire, the flames parting for his armored bulk like waves against the prow of a battleship. He towered over the wretched form of Arkald, his dagger eyes practically digging furrows in the necromancer's pale cheeks. “Well well, Arkald, it's been a long time.” Sahand's voice was heavy and rough, like a shirt of mail dropped on a stone floor.

Arkald couldn't meet the Mad Prince's gaze. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “How could you know? I was so careful . . . so careful . . .”

Sahand crouched, his mail jingling softly. “I have been working on this project for over ten years, Arkald. I've had you and the rest of the League eating out of my hand all this time, and you thought I'd grown complacent, is that it? That I would forget about my nosy little friend, Arkald, and all his very useful talents?”

Arkald felt tears welling in his eyes. He'd expected rage from the Mad Prince, he'd expected a quick and violent end. He found himself, instead, facing the cold, passionless glare of a man who did things not from impulse, but from somewhere deeper, darker, and infinitely more terrible. “Puh-­Please don't kill me. I didn't tell anyone. I swear it!”

Sahand slapped him in the face. It stung but it didn't hurt. “Stop that. Is this the necromancer who terrorized the village of Alwood into paying him tribute? Isn't this the man who summoned the spirits of Varner's dead scouts to come and spy on me? Surely such a man isn't going to weep in the mud like a child? Surely you don't intend to
grovel
.”

Arkald was weeping now. He couldn't stop—­the pain, the cold, the terror were too much for him. “My tower! My work! You've destroyed me, Sahand! You've already destroyed me!”

Sahand flipped Arkald onto his back so that he could stare into his eyes. “Arkald, I would think a necromancer, of all ­people, would have a more optimistic appraisal of their own ability to rise from the ashes, as it were. Besides, let's be honest—­the Defenders would have found your little tower eventually anyway. Being a sorcerous criminal doesn't mix well with a fixed address; we don't all have private armies to defend us, now do we?”

“But I don't even know what you're really doing!” Arkald said, clutching at Sahand's loglike forearms. “What could I tell anyone? That you're not working on Rhadnost's Elixir? No one would even believe me! Tapping the Daer Trondor sink is an impossible task—­it's like trying to move a glacier with your hands! Why would you put in all the effort if
not
for the Elixir? What else could you possibly be doing? If I told, I'd look like a fool!”

Sahand nodded. “Very good try, Arkald—­­people don't tend to believe you, do they? Arkald the Strange, the fellow who animates dead squirrels and communes with restless spirits so he has someone to talk to—­who would believe him? Why, killing you would be a pointless act, as you are so despised.”

Arkald grinned and nodded vigorously. “Yes! Yes, just so, Your Grace! No one in the League listens to me! I'm a nobody! A fool!”

Sahand leaned in close to Arkald so that the necromancer could feel hot breath on his icy cheeks. Arkald could now see through the cracks in Sahand's calm, calculating facade. Behind it there was nothing but rage—­pure, hateful, white-­hot rage. “If I wanted you dead, Arkald, I would have killed you already.”

Arkald's breath caught in his throat. Dare he hope? “But my tower, my work . . .”

“A waste of your time, Arkald, and a liability to your continued existence—­Defenders, remember? No, Arkald, I've just done you a favor.”

Arkald's whole body quivered. He could scarcely breathe.

“You work for me, now. I'll build you a whole new tower in Dellor where you can juggle corpses to your heart's content.” The Mad Prince smiled like a panther. “I'll even supply the bodies.”

Arkald was trembling now, so forcefully he could scarcely speak. He still wanted to run, to flee into the dark and the cold and never come back. “What's the . . . the catch?”

Sahand reached into a sleeve and produced a scrap of fabric stained with blood. “I have somebody I need you to find. Somebody too curious for their own good.”

“A League member? I can't do that. I'll be censured!”

Sahand pushed Arkald back into the mud and then slammed the heel of his boot into Arkald's broken hip. The world went white with pain for an instant. The necromancer realized he was shrieking before he actually heard himself. Sahand laughed down at him, as powerful and inviolate as a god. “Arkald, what makes you think you have any choice?”

 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

LONG NIGHT

T
yvian didn't sleep. He lay in his heated bed, between silk sheets, down-­stuffed comforters to his chin, feather pillows all around, and
didn't sleep one wink.
The very idea that he should have slept
better
in a smelly tent on the hard ground was enraging. He lay on his back, staring up at the darkness of his room, his arms crossed, and stubbornly waited for fatigue to take him. It would not.

It was all the ring's fault, of course. It continued to throb quietly throughout the night, and Tyvian cursed it yet again for ruining the triumph that was to be his first night home. He had planned it out in his head along the road. With every miserable indignity he suffered in the snow-­dusted wilderness between Galaspin and Freegate, he had forestalled his rage by plotting this very evening. He was to arrive home, bathe, dress well, eat pheasant, gloat over Alafarr, and then sleep like a babe in his comfortable bed, his every need and want fulfilled. Then, in the morning, he saw himself kicking in the door of whatever rat's nest Hendrieux had inhabited, feeding him to the gnoll, and whistling all the way to lunch at Callaix's on Angler Street. He even knew the table he would sit at.

Now it was all ruined. He
hadn't
enjoyed his bath. Gloating over Alafarr had been almost a complete failure. He couldn't sleep! In the morning, that meant glassy eyes with dark rings under them and a groggy feeling that would persist all day unless he drank astronomical quantities of karfan, which would then stain his teeth.
That
meant, Tyvian thought, when he stood over Hendrieux's bloodied body and smiled, the last thing the wretched Akrallian thug would remember would be how badly his teeth looked in comparison to the white shirt and coat he intended to wear.

“Dammit all!” he swore aloud, and assaulted a pillow with his fists. It did not satisfy him.

Rolling out of bed, Tyvian pulled on a silk robe and ordered a specter to bring a feylamp. With the light floating just behind his left shoulder, he padded through his darkened flat toward the kitchen. The rain continued its steady assault upon the skylights and long windows outside, filling the halls with the steady sound of water pattering on glass. He remembered then that he had intended to replace the glass with mageglass from the earnings the deal with the “Marquis du Rameaux” would have brought, since they muffled sound better and were unbreakable. He had even lined up a conjurer who could do the work. Of course, once Hendrieux had betrayed him and the “Marquis” turned out to be Alafarr, all possibility of acquiring mageglass windows vanished. Tyvian knew he would be forced to endure the sound of rain or the noise of the city for the foreseeable future. He cursed again.

In the medicine chest in Tyvian's kitchen was a ten-­hour sleeping draught of which he had only used two hours. He had purchased it from an alchemist recommended to him by Carlo diCarlo and knew it worked very well, as did a pair of customs officials in Eretheria who together had accounted for those two missing hours. He had only to find it, take it back to his room, down it in one gulp, and he'd be sleeping like the dead until mid-­morning. He would have sent a specter to retrieve the draught, but he had forbidden his servants from accessing the medicine chest, ever since the little busybodies had reorganized the whole thing by weight and he had nearly died trying to find a simple bloodpatch elixir.

In the kitchen the marble tiles were frigid under Tyvian's bare feet, and he shivered as a cold, wet draft blew up his robe. Frowning at the temperature, he manipulated the rune lock and opened the medicine chest. Finding the sleeping draught where it belonged—­under S—­he stuffed it into his robe's pocket.

Another cold breeze blew past his ankles. Where was the draft coming from? It wasn't like his specters to leave a window open in a rainstorm, nor was it likely they would forget to close the chimney flue after cooking. There was, however, a third possibility. He took a step forward, found the floor slick with frigid water and saw, at the extent of the lamplight, a specter-­driven towel wiping up the mess. That settled it.

Snatching a cleaver from the kitchen table, Tyvian threw the hood over the feylamp, blocking out the light. Feeling with his toes, he tracked the trail of rainwater back to a broken window in his study, whose shutters a third specter had already closed to keep out any additional rain. Moving silently, Tyvian eased them open and peered out into the dim night. There, affixed on a ledge a foot beneath his windowsill, was an iron grappling hook.

Somebody had invaded his home.

The question of who and why they were here was of immediate importance. Whoever had come in had been here for a matter of minutes, and the flat, though large, was not so large that the invader or invaders would be denied their objective for long. Thieves would be looking for valuables, and they wouldn't have had to go any farther than the study for those—­solid gold candlesticks, a spirit clock, and one hidden desk drawer that had a bag full of fifty gold marks—­yet nothing was disturbed. If not thieves, that left two options: rescuers for Alafarr or assassins for him.

Tyvian hedged his bets on the more likely of the two and stole back toward his own bedroom. The lack of light was no hindrance, since he had personally laid out every square inch of his abode according to his own specifications. Nothing would be out of place since the specters, who never slept, would never allow it. He glided silently and quickly through the pitch-­blackness of the night and didn't trip on a thing.

The invaders were not so lucky. Tyvian heard a clatter that he knew was the end-­table just inside his bedroom door being knocked over. He grimaced at his own good luck—­
had
he been asleep in bed, that noise would have woken him, but too late for him to do anything about it.

Coming up to his door, Tyvian lay flat against the wall just outside. Inside, he heard a man curse. “Kroth! 'E's not 'ere.”

“Shhhh!” a second man hissed.

“What?” the first man muttered, “If he ain't here, then it ain't a problem.”

“This bed's been slept in.”

Tyvian placed the accents—­Delloran, or very rural Galaspiner. Hired thugs, he guessed, but exactly who hired them wasn't immediately clear—­he had several guesses, though. Not that it mattered at the moment.

“Let's 'ave a light, eh?” the first man said, and shortly thereafter the soft blue glow of an illumite shard emanated from within Tyvian's room.

This was the moment Tyvian had been waiting for. He stepped into the door frame, cleaver cocked back. Inside, he saw two men—­one squat and broad-­shouldered and the other somewhat taller, but equally as heavyset. The squat one held a well-­oiled broadsword while the tall one cradled a loaded crossbow. Tyvian aimed for the larger target and threw the cleaver at the tall man's chest. It spun through the air and ought to have cloven straight through the assassin's breast bone, but instead Tyvian heard the sharp clink of chain mail being tested and saw the cleaver bounce off. The tall man clutched his chest. “Ow!”

“It's 'im!” the squat man roared, and charged. Tyvian ducked back as the tip of the broadsword sliced through where his head had been and embedded itself in the door frame with a meaty
thok
.

As the assassin struggled to free his weapon, Tyvian quickly stepped inside his guard and thrust a thumb into the man's eye as far as it would go. The man cried out in pain and released his sword to cover his face. “Oy! Kroth!”

The tall man had recovered from the shock of being struck and brought his crossbow to his shoulder. Tyvian slammed the door as he fired, serving the double purpose of trapping the broadsword and blocking the quarrel, which punched a full three inches through the other side of the door, stopping only a hairsbreadth from Tyvian's throat. Activating the lock, Tyvian smirked. “Pure oak—­worth every penny.”

At that moment the door shuddered as the men inside attempted to get out. Backing away, Tyvian estimated he'd bought himself two minutes, maybe more if they were now unarmed. The appearance of an axe-­head through the door's heart revised that estimate to something more akin to thirty seconds. Running through his contingency plans for this situation, he found few that didn't result in him fleeing his home in his robe during a rainstorm, meaning they were entirely unacceptable. However, with his sword in the room
with
the killers, he was left with only an array of kitchen knives to defend himself against two heavily armed and armored men.

“Get our guest out here!” Tyvian yelled to his specters as he ran back toward the kitchen. He snatched up a small double-­edged dirk in a sheath and stuffed it in his pocket, where his hand brushed across the sleeping draught.

With a violent crash, Tyvian's pure oak doors were reduced to splinters and the two assassins emerged, roaring. “Oy, Reldamar!” one bellowed. “Come out and die like a man!”

Tyvian snorted at the notion. Apparently, to them, “men” were supposed to die like idiots. He remained hidden and heard them thumping around the flat, yelling for him, but they didn't yet come to the kitchen. They were sticking together, which was smart, and searching systematically, which was also smart. These men were well trained—­not thugs, not assassins, but soldiers. Delloran soldiers came in two varieties: mercenaries who once worked for the Mad Prince Banric Sahand or mercenaries who
currently
worked for the Mad Prince Banric Sahand. Troubling . . .

Finally, Tyvian heard the sound he had been waiting for. Myreon Alafarr was half asleep and sputtering as she was dragged into the living room. “Here now, what nonsense is this? Unhand me, you wretched constructs!”

Both mercenaries immediately homed in on Myreon's protests. “You!” one yelled. “Where's Reldamar! Where is 'e, ye whore?”

The ring gave Tyvian a sharp jolt as he heard the two Dellorans strike Myreon to the ground. Clenching his teeth, he hissed, “I'm on my way . . . all part of the plan, you wretched thing.”

Tyvian stole quickly to the living room. The squat one, sword in hand, was kicking a prone Myreon Alafarr next to Tyvian's hand-­carved Verisi sofa, while the tall one scanned the surrounding gloom with his crossbow reloaded and recocked. Choosing his moment carefully, the smuggler leapt out of the shadows and threw the dirk, embedding it in the stock of the tall one's crossbow, just in front of the string.

The tall mercenary looked down and smiled. “Missed.”

“I did nothing of the kind.” Tyvian advanced as the mercenary pointed the crossbow at his chest.

When the tall Delloran pulled the trigger, the string intercepted the blade of the dirk, which cut it as it fired. The result was a crossbow bolt that flew only halfheartedly across the room at a speed and awkward angle that Tyvian found easy to catch. Already close to the stunned mercenary, Tyvian flèched, the bolt held in his hand like a short rapier, and pierced the mercenary's throat just below his chin. Eyes wide in shock, the tall man fell backward, blood bubbling through his lips.

Tyvian whirled to face the squat one, who had stopped kicking Myreon as soon as the smuggler appeared. He held his broadsword blade down—­a defensive stance. The barrel-­chested Delloran chuckled at Tyvian as he retreated. “Yer pretty smart, eh? Captain told us yer fulla tricks.”

He slashed at Tyvian, who retreated and winced as the mercenary's blade cut through a crystal candelabra. “I really wish you would focus on
killing
me and not damaging my property.”

“Told us you was funny, too.” The Delloran chuckled and dropped a downward cut designed to spit him in two. Tyvian darted to one side, narrowly avoiding the blow. The squat man displayed a set of mostly decayed teeth in a wicked leer. “What? No other knives? No fancy tricks? Ye can't run for always, mate.”

Tyvian retreated before the armored mercenary, letting him gloat and leading him into the dining room. He scrambled over the top of the table, placing it between him and the Delloran. “Perhaps we can talk about this?” Tyvian asked, pulling out a chair and gesturing toward it.

“Sure, come on over 'ere and we'll 'ave a chat, you an me.” The Delloran laughed, clearly pleased with himself. He circled toward Tyvian around the table, and Tyvian circled away.

“I meant in a more civilized fashion. Would you like something to drink?” Picking up on Tyvian's cues, the specters rushed in a pair of crystal glasses and a pitcher of chilled wine from the kitchen.

“Yeah—­yer blood,” the mercenary spat. He and Tyvian had now completed a one-­hundred-­eighty degree circuit of the table, with the Delloran standing right in front of the chair Tyvian had pulled out.

Tyvian smiled. “Won't you sit down?”

The specters pressed the chair against the back of the mercenary's knees, and the man stumbled back into it. He was pushed up against the table, his sword trapped underneath. Tyvian scrambled atop the table, the sleeping draught in his hand. Popping out the stopper, he stuffed it in the mercenary's mouth mid-­bellow and upended it. The squat Delloran ejected the small vial with his tongue, choking on the oily black liquid and trying to spit it out, but it was too late. Tyvian knew even if he had spit out six of the eight hours' worth of sleeping draught, there was still a full two that had slipped down his throat.

The mercenary's eyelids drooped shut and, in the middle of a curse, the man's head fell on the table. He snored like a bear.

Tyvian sighed. “Well, there goes any hope of getting my
own
beauty sleep.”

He wrestled the heavyset Delloran out of his chair and pried the broadsword out of his hand. Laying the soldier on his back, Tyvian held the tip of the heavy blade over his neck. The ring shot spiderwebs of agony through his hand and up his arm, and he retracted the sword as though stung. “Oh, very well, very well. I'll just have to kill him when he wakes up, though, you bloody stupid trinket.”