The Swordmage Trilogy Bundle, Volumes 1-3 (13 page)

Running on dry sand was easier than moving through the ever-shifting throng of people in her way. It seemed that every time she made a few steps headway toward the inn, she was buffeted backward, to the side, or had to detour around some reveler who, lost in the music, disregarded any attempt for her to slip past expediently. The struggle felt like it went on forever, but she was finally free. She slipped into an alleyway, comforted by the cool blackness there and the relative silence.

Getting her bearings, she was able to deduce that she wasn’t too far off from the inn. If this inn met up with a road parallel to the main road, she could cut a few minutes off her trip by following the alley down to its end. Wanting nothing more than to be in the comfort of the inn, in her bed, fast asleep, she decided to risk it.

The alleys were a stark contrast to the well-lit streets. The blackness seemed to engulf her as she walked and she found herself trailing her fingers down the fieldstone wall beside her, a comforting presence that kept her focused and confident that she was still moving in the right direction. The night seemed to lighten ahead, and Tia saw that her alley joined another at right angles. There must be a lantern or oil lamp down the far alley that was shedding pale, butter colored light over the joint where the walls of the pathways met.

Tiadaria had almost reached the pool of light when a robed figure backed into the alley ahead of her. Momentum carried her another few steps before she was able to stop. The robed figure clutched its stomach, the cream-colored robes stained with blood. So much blood. It slipped through the figure’s clenched fingers and spattered onto the moss etched stones. Tia felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up and she pulled her belt dagger free, ignoring the now familiar jolt that went up her arm and settled into the base of her spine.

No sooner was the blade free than a massive black shape bounded into the alley. It struck the robed figure in a blur, sending it crashing against the wall. There was a moist thud and the body slid down to a sitting position, its legs sprawled grotesquely outward. Tia shifted into the offensive stance the Captain had taught her, but even as her instinct took over, she felt her stomach clench as the beast turned its full attention on her.

Eyes glowing with blue fire, it snarled, its powerful legs bunching, preparing to spring. There was a scream from the alley behind Tia. Someone, possibly one of the revelers from the square, had stumbled into the alley and found something horribly at odds with the pleasantness of the evening.

The creature’s ears swiveled, its fangs glistening with spittle in the dim light of the far off lantern. With a low growl, it leapt off the way it had come, leaving Tia standing there with her blade in her hand and a body at her feet. There were shouts behind her now. She knew that she should sheath the dagger and check on the robed figure laid out before her, but she couldn’t seem to make her body obey. Her arm dropped to her side, the dagger clasped lightly in fingers made nerveless by shock.

Someone grabbed her and wheeled her away from the body, pushing her up against the wall. They plucked the dagger from her hand.

“He’s dead,” someone said. It was a man’s voice, flat and devoid of emotion.

“Let me through,” someone snarled, and the growing crowd reluctantly parted enough for a man clad in silver armor to squeeze through. He carried a large lantern and it registered somewhere in the back of Tia’s mind that it was a street lantern. They took them off the poles. That’s obviously how they lit them. It made perfect sense. Another part of her screamed that none of this made sense. That there was no single part of any of this that made any sense at all. She wanted to silence that nagging voice, to tell it to shut up and leave her alone, but it kept nagging at her, like the echo of a pebble dropped down a deep well.

“She stabbed him!” That voice was shrill, a woman’s on the verge of hysteria. “I saw it.”

“There’s no blood,” Tia heard herself say. She meant on her dagger. There wouldn’t be any blood on the dagger, since she hadn’t done anything. A slow thought bubbled up to her. Someone had taken the dagger, she didn’t know who.

“There’s plenty of blood, you silly bitch.” A man’s voice, hard and vindictive.

“Silence!” The knight’s roar caused the crowd to back up a few steps. He lifted the lantern and shone it directly into Tia’s face. She squinted against the light, but recognized him easily. It was the knight she had spoken to in the square. How long ago had that been? It seemed like years. If there was any time for the Captain to appear, as if out of nowhere, like he did...now was that time.

“I know you,” the knight said slowly. “I spoke to you earlier this evening.”

Tia nodded, feeling bile rise up in the back of her throat. She was determined not to add humiliation to the events of the evening by vomiting all over her boots, or worse, the knight himself. A leaden hand went to her throat, fighting back the wave of nausea that crashed over her, threatening to carry her away.

The gesture was ill-advised. The knight held the lantern closer. A flicker of, something, flashed across his features. So quickly that Tia wasn’t sure she even saw it. His thick fingers went to the end of the scarf and tugged it free. The thin fabric unwound itself readily, as if it was eager to give up her darkest secret. As it fell, there was a gasp from the crowd. Her collar stood out in black damnation against her pale skin.

“A slave!”

“Run her through!”

“Take her head!”

“ENOUGH!” The knight bellowed, bringing the butt of his halberd down on the pavers so hard that a few sparks leapt from the bottom of the weapon. “You lot go about your business. There will be no vigilante justice here tonight. Not while I still stand.”

He glowered at them, and the crowd began to disperse. In a few moments, the only men standing in the alley were the knight and two men clad in robes identical to that of the corpse. One of them held her dagger. He was turning it over in his hands, holding it toward the light of the knight’s lantern.

“There’s no blood on this dagger, Valyn.” The man tipped the blade toward the knight, showing him the proof. He used the tip of the dagger as a pointer, first at the cobblestones and then at the body. “Plenty of blood on the stones and his robes. You’re not going to tell me this dagger struck the blow.”

“I’m not going to tell you anything, Faxon.” Valyn propped his weapon against the wall and scrubbed at his face with his now free hand. “Now, slave, tell me exactly what happened.”

“She has a name, Valyn.” Faxon stepped forward, the other robed man a step behind him, a living shadow. “What’s your name girl?”

“Tiadaria, Sir.”

“Where is your Master, Tiadaria?”

“The Captain had a meeting with Torus in the palace.”

Faxon and Valyn exchanged startled glances. It was obvious that whatever answers they had expected from her, this wasn’t it.

“The Captain,” Valyn muttered, as if he couldn’t believe his ears. “You don’t think she means--”

“Who else is referred to as The Captain, by practically everyone in the Imperium, Valyn?”

“I don’t believe it. Not even for a minute.” A flush began to creep up from his neck and colored his cheeks.

“Easy, Valyn.” Faxon clapped the man on the shoulder before he turned back to Tia. “Just to be clear, you’re saying that your Master is Royce MacDungren? Former Captain of the Grand Army of the Imperium and war hero to the realm?”

Tiadaria nodded.

“Great Gatzbin’s gonads,” he swore softly. Faxon motioned for his shadow to lift the body. “We need to get to
the palace, Valyn. Right now.”

~~~~

Royce MacDungren, Former Captain of the Grand Army of the Imperium and war hero to the realm was furious. White-hot anger boiled just below the surface of his carefully composed and impassive facade. The crier had come racing into the council chamber with news that a slave had murdered a mage. The Lord-Knight of the Guard and Master Faxon were on their way to the palace, he said. He took two breaths fit for a dragon, and then asked his
sovereign if his grace cared to return a message. Heron thanked him for his service and dismissed him.

The wizened
King turned to Royce and Torus, subjecting them to a scrutiny that would have made lesser men pale. “What do you boys know of this?”

“Nothing,
Your Grace.” Royce replied quickly, the lie bitter and heavy on his tongue.

“I won’t tolerate liars, Royce, not even a man as highly decorated and honorable as yo
u. Your jaw could have cracked walnuts when the crier said slave. So what’s going on?”

In for a fraction, in for the crown, Royce thought. Though the recounting was hurried, he ran the
King through the events of the last few weeks. He omitted the fact that there were two bodies burned down to ash and bone off the trade road to the far south of King’s Reach. There was such a thing as too much honesty. When he had finished, the King shook his head, scratching the wisps of hair over his ears.

“You certainly don’t like doing things the simple way, do you Royce?”

Torus snorted. The King eyed him for a moment before he went on.

“Would she have done this?”

“No,” Royce replied emphatically, shaking his head. “I don’t know what happened out there, but she wouldn’t murder someone.”

“Not even to keep her secret?” Torus’s voice was quiet and measured.

Royce looked at him. The doubt was justified. Slaves were known to go to desperate lengths to keep their status a secret. To keep the shame and indignity at bay for as long as they could. The figures here didn’t sum. Royce was positive that whatever had happened, the girl hadn’t been the aggressor.

“No.” His simple reply held grave weight behind it, and Torus turned away, unable to hold his gaze.

“Enough, you two.” The King lowered his rickety frame into a sturdy chair and poured a glass of wine from a flagon on the council table. “We’ll get to the bottom of this soon enough.”

No sooner was that said than Valyn and Faxon entered with Tiadaria. Another man in a robe followed them. Royce recognized him as Adamon, a mage and Grand Inquisitor of the Academy of Arcane Arts and Sciences.

Royce swallowed hard against the sudden lump in his throat. Inquisitors had one role and one role only: to mete out justice to errant mages. There were many forms that justice could take, but the most severe was censure. The ritual would sever the link between the mage and their magic. In many cases, it was a fate worse than death.

Deprived of their connection to the Quintessential Sphere, the energy of all things, the mages would often go mad. Those that
didn’t often turned to suicide to end their torment. The few that remained were hollow husks, shells of the men and women they had once been. They were referred to by many as the lost, and Royce couldn’t help but agree. There was a difference between living and merely existing.

So why was Adamon here? Had they learned Tiadaria’s secret, and by extension, his? Confronted with a reality that countermanded the natural order, had they sought to censure the girl? The talent for using both spell and steel was one that Royce had thought was limited to his bloodline. Tiadaria proved that untrue. How many others in the world had the ability? How long would it take for the Academy to discover their existence and hunt them down?

The Academy had little tolerance for rogue mages, those who didn’t receive formal training from childhood and had been overseen in their strict hierarchy. If they had discovered that the girl was a slave as well as a mage...

Valyn dropped to one knee before the
King, his salute dismissed by a half-hearted wave from the sovereign. The mages bowed respectfully but did not kneel. Their haughty demeanor had always ruffled Royce’s feathers. He wondered if they’d retain their smug and superior airs if he told them that he too, was tapped into the Quintessential Sphere. He reined in his savage thoughts. Bouncing back and forth between fear and hostility was a good way to get killed. He forced himself to breath, struggling to attain an inner calm that matched his passive exterior.

“Alright,” the
King said, looking each man in the eye in turn. “What’s going on?”

The sudden outburst from all sides that resulted from that simple question would have been comical under any other circumstance. Valyn and Faxon both took up their tale at the same time, with Tiadaria chiming in with her own explanation just a moment after. Shaking his head, the
King held up his hand for silence.

“If I may,” Adamon said quietly, stepping between Faxon and Valyn and approaching the
King. “The slave was found in possession of this dagger.”

The inquisitor produced the weapon and offered it to the
King, hilt first. The King took the offering and turned it over in his hands as Adamon continued.

“An Initiate was murdered tonight, a stone’s throw from the market square. I don’t know why he was outside the Academy past curfew, but that seems to be going around.” He looked at Tia and she dropped her eyes. “I do know that the dagger you now hold did not kill him. The wound was torn, not made by as sharp or fine a blade as that one. The girl, it would seem, is innocent of murder. As for her presence in the city...” He nodded to Royce, who stiffened at the gesture. “Regardless of why she is here, she is, and she is the only witness to what happened in the alley where a promising young mage lost his life.”

The King turned the blade over in his hand. Royce wondered how long it would be before he recognized it. Royce had carried that blade every day for nearly thirty years, had stood side by side with the King with it on his belt so often that he had lost track of the occasions and events. Now this girl, a slave, carried it. Certainly he would see the meaning in that, if he chose to see it.

He looked directly into Tiadaria’s eyes and she blushed under the shrewd appraisal. They stood that way for several moments, separated by three feet and seventy-odd years. He flipped the blade in the air, as deft as a man less than twice his years, and caught the blade neatly between thumb and forefinger. He offered it to the girl, who hesitated only a moment before she accepted the offering and slipped it back into the sheath on her belt.

“What’s your name, girl?”

“Tiadaria,
Your Grace.” She dropped to one knee, a perfect mimic of the gesture that Valyn had made before. Royce dared look at Torus, who no longer seemed to be as openly skeptical of the girl or her role in the killing. His eyes landed on Royce and he shrugged, as if to say it was out of his hands. It was definitely out of their hands, Royce thought. This impromptu performance would play out between Tiadaria and the King. The rest of the players would wait in the wings until their lines were called.

“Lady Tiadaria,” the
King began with grave formality, “please tell us about the events that transpired tonight.”

“Against the Captain’s orders, I decided that I wanted to explore the city, so I left the inn and found my way to the market square. There was a girl there singing and a woman playing an instrument as big as
she was that I haven’t ever seen before. I even saw Sir Valyn making the rounds. After the song was over, the people started dancing and things got very crowded. I was worried about people finding out about me...”

She trailed off and Royce felt for her as her hand went to her neck and touched her collar. If it weren’t for that damned collar, things might be different. To her credit, she quickly regained her composure and went on.

“Anyway, I was worried about being discovered, so I decided to go back to the inn. I wanted to get there as quickly as possible, so I figured that the alley that ran between buildings would take me to the road behind the stables. I was almost to the turn between the alleys when the mage backed into the intersection.”

“He was already wounded; there was blood all down the front of his robes. Then this...thing, I think it was a
Xarundi, threw him into the wall. There was a shout behind me, and that’s when Valyn and the others showed up.”

“Sir Valyn,” the
King corrected her absently. “What did the beast look like?”

“It was at least as tall as the mage and it stood up on its feet. I think it had black fur, but I couldn’t really see. It had its side turned to me. Before it ran off, it turned on me, and
those
eyes will stay with me the rest of my life. It’s like they were smoldering coals, but blue instead of orange.”

Royce watched the startled look that passed between the girl
’s three warders. Had it been any other time, in any other place, their bewilderment would have been amusing. There wasn’t anything funny about this. Not even remotely. Faxon was the first to regain his composure. He grasped Tia’s shoulder and turned her toward him.

“You’re absolutely certain?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“She’s telling the truth, Faxon.” Torus sighed, running his hand over his close cropped scalp. “That’s why the Captain and I are here. Every living thing in Doshmill was massa
cred and there were signs of...Well, many of the bodies were desecrated. Then they burned the village to the ground. We think it was a warning.”

“A
Xarundi...Within the city?”

Royce thought Valyn looked like a man drowning, searching desperately for the end of a rope. In truth, he didn’t blame him. The
Xarundi had come close to extinguishing mankind once before. The losses the Imperium had taken during the last war were staggering. He shuddered to think of what would happen if the beasts were to attack in force again. There were still those old enough to remember the previous incursion. The panic would be hard to quell.

“Your
Grace,” Faxon put in quickly, “Adamon and I must return to the Academy immediately. If the Xarundi have returned, or plan to return, we must notify the Head Master tonight. There isn’t a moment to waste.”

The
King nodded. “Agreed. Please bring my regards to Maera. In the meantime, we all need some rest. We’re not going to be able to do anything tonight. I believe we should all try to get what sleep we can. Valyn, if you’d be so good as to send a few extra patrols?”

“Yes,
Your Grace. Without hesitation.”

Valyn saluted and, turning on his heel, stomped off. Faxon and Adamon followed, leaving Tiadaria with Royce, Torus, and the
King.

“Royce,” the
King said quietly. “You’ve given so much of your life to your King and country that I hesitate to ask you to put your life on the line yet again.”

“But you will anyway.” Royce smiled.

“Yes.” The King seemed his full age now, bent with the years and the weight of the duties he must now delegate.

“It is my honor to serve.” Royce crossed his arm over his chest in a soldier’s salute.

Torus stepped forward; following Royce’s lead, and saluted.

“It is my honor to serve
, Your Grace.”

Royce was startled, but not really surprised, when Tiadaria stepped forward, her salute as crisp as either of the soldiers.

“It is my honor to serve the One True King.” There was a ring of defiance in her voice and Royce wondered what exactly she was rebelling against at this moment. Her capture? Her slavery? The threat to the Imperium? It could be any, all, or something entirely different.

Others would have wilted under the shrewd measuring look that Heron Greymalkin, fourteenth of his line
and Sovereign Lord, now leveled on Tiadaria. Royce noted with approval that her gaze never wavered. In fact, the only indication that she was aware of the King’s scrutiny came from the tips of her ears, which had started to turn red in embarrassment.

“You are an odd slave, girl.” The
King waggled a finger at her. “Most slaves have their rightful place beaten into them.”

“With respect,
Your Grace, my rightful place is at the Captain’s right hand. Where he goes, I follow. His field of battle is my training room, his home is my refuge. His honor is repaid by my loyalty.”

Heron turned to Royce. “She sounds like you did, when your father was alive. Scant wonder she carries your blade.”

“So you noticed.”

“Of course I noticed,” the
King snapped. “I’m old, not daft. But being old means I need my sleep. Get out, the lot of you. Be back at midday for the war council.”

* * *

It was well past midnight when they left the castle. The air was cold and Tia was sorry that she no longer had the scarf wrapped around her neck to protect her from the biting chill. Torus had excused himself just beyond the mouth of the cavern, claiming other business he had to attend to before he slept. That left Tia and the Captain to make their way down deserted streets under the black, moonless sky.