She was only a stride away from it when the next wave flowed around her feet, picking up the object and floating it toward shore, then bringing it back on the outflow. Scooping it up as it went by, Maddie straightened to examine it more closely, Carissa peering over her shoulder. As she realized what it was, a chill spread from spine to back and shoulders, neck and arms. For on her flattened palm stood a tiny dragon, carved of red stone, its wings outstretched, tail hooking out behind, pinhead crystalline eyes glittering in the sun.
The world shifted about her and she felt as if she’d been kicked in the chest. A red dragon. Flying.
“Oh,” Carissa said. “That’s an Esurhite fetish. Soldiers carry them for protection.”
Maddie looked at her blankly.
“And it couldn’t have floated all the way from Esurh because the currents are wrong.” She plucked it off Maddie’s palm and turned it over in her fingers. “In fact, it might not have floated at all—that bird could have brought it straight here on the wing.”
“You’re saying Abramm’s fears are correct and there are Esurhites on the Gull Islands?”
“Well, I doubt this will convince Admiral Hamilton and his cronies, but that’s as reasonable an explanation for this thing being here as any.”
If Carissa was right, the danger was here, too, not just in Chesedh. Time was every bit as short as Abramm feared. Could it possibly be Eidon’s intent for her to leave now, when she might be able to help unlock the secrets of both the regalia and the fortresses? Secrets that, as Leyton suggested, might mean the difference between life and death for them all?
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence you were the one to find it, either,” the princess said, holding the tiny dragon out for Maddie to take back. She smiled thinly. “Looks like you’ve got your answer, my dear: you’re supposed to stay.”
Carissa dropped the figurine into Maddie’s outstretched palm, and Maddie stared at it, feeling destiny swirl around her, yet unable still to see it clearly. Then, before she could wrestle her thoughts into any kind of coherent order, one of the men cried out behind them, “That’s no school of fish. That’s a body!”
She turned with Carissa to see all three men racing out through the incoming breakers toward the pale mound that floated beneath the column of gulls—a mound she saw now was very obviously not a mass of fish but something far more gruesome.
————
Madeleine had still been sitting by her fire studying the Words of Revelation when Abramm and his party, dressed in the gray tunics and woolen mantles of rank and file armsmen, joined the corps of soldiers awaiting them west of the King’s Bridge. Notified beforehand that a group would be meeting up with him that morning, the commanding officer accepted them without comment and without apparent recognition.
The trip was made without incident, and by the time they were climbing the fortress switchbacks, the sun was up and Abramm nursed a rising tension. Philip and his commanding officer had finished their interrogation of the Esurhite captives not too long before Abramm left the palace. As hoped, they had come away with more than the southlanders intended to give them, concluding that the Esurhites had indeed intended to take the fortress, though not alone and not immediately. They also suspected there might be some who’d not been caught and were hiding in Graymeer’s tunnels. And almost certainly they would seek to set up an etherworld corridor to connect the place with their homeland so they could funnel through enough men to eventually take and hold the fortress. This was particularly troublesome news coming on the heels of Trap’s report that Carissa claimed to have seen Rennalf yesterday. Not once, but three times.
Reaching the top of the switchbacks, they rode through the sequence of newly installed gates in the repaired barbican and main outer wall. After six months of work, Graymeer’s was no longer a collection of crumbling, roofless, griiswurm-infested structures. The interior buildings now included a new barracks, stables, and granary in the inner ward, while the officers’ quarters on the third terrace had been reroofed and fully refitted, becoming habitable almost three months ago. And the work continued apace. Scaffoldings stood everywhere, along with pieces of construction equipment and diminishing piles of rubble.
The maze of tunnels beneath them, unfortunately, was another story. Though the upper levels had been scoured of spawn by the blast of Light Abramm had released when he destroyed the first corridor six months ago, those below remained infested. It was a constant battle to hold ground gained, and no one knew how far the tunnels descended. Still, they had been holding it, and given Graymeer’s history, things were going well.
Once the officers’ quarters had been completed, Abramm had stayed overnight once a week, as much to supervise the work as to reassure the men that it was safe. Only in the last fortnight, when coronation preparations had kept him way, had the rumors sprung up again—tales of ghostly voices, of malevolent pools of darkness, and most recently, of a barbarian warrior who walked the deep dark passages with the green eye of the ancient hill god, Hasmal, glaring from his forehead.
Now, as the returning soldiers disembarked from their wagons near the gate, Channon led the king’s group up to the inner ward, where Graymeer’s second in command, Lieutenant Brookes, awaited them at the stables. After they had dismounted, Brookes saluted Channon, bowed to Duke Eltrap and Lord Ethan, and in keeping with Abramm’s instructions, entirely ignored the rest of them as he introduced the three armsmen who had been first to surprise the Esurhites in the tunnels yesterday.
Then he led them around the back of the stables to a doorway in the middle west tower and down a narrow winding stair with Abramm safely sandwiched in the middle of the entourage. Kelistars tucked into niches along the outer wall lit the spiraling stairwell and the corridor it emptied into. Lasting about twelve hours from the time of creation, kelistars made a welcome substitute for candles and torches and, some believed, helped to keep the corridors free of spawn.
The door-lined corridor led to another stairway, this one switchbacking, narrow and very steep, its walls and ceiling finished with quarried stone. Connecting the fortress with the cove below, the upper part of this ancient passway had emerged relatively unscathed from the barbarian occupation. Only as it approached the bottom of the outcropping did the arcanely carved tunnels intersect it, and then only in four places. A heavy, iron-bound wooden door had been installed between that compromised portion below and the fortress itself, a door the Esurhites were breaking through when Graymeer’s defenders had confronted them.
It was to the small chamber that preceded this doorway that Brookes led them, where three armsmen were wrestling a new door into position under the watchful eyes of a fourth. All four looked up in surprise, and then the three with the door laid down their burden and hastily saluted.
Brookes motioned them back against the chamber wall, and Trap and Ethan stepped forward to examine the door. Two bright blond planks lay between the age-darkened boards of the original, the latter bearing the black scoring indicative of Esurhite Shadow magic.
Trap noted as much in his comments and questioning of Brookes, who agreed with his assessments. Abramm listened with only half an ear. The moment he had entered this chamber, a cold creepiness had crept over him, icy fingers of wrongness dancing up the back of his neck. His eyes kept returning to the fourth armsman standing in the darkened lower corridor below where the steel door hinges protruded from the wall. The armsman had stood to attention like the rest when Abramm’s party arrived and, like them, now watched Trap and Ethan—particularly Ethan—as they examined the walls and questioned the men Brookes had brought with them. But Abramm noted a subtle tension in his stance, as if he were on the verge of fleeing. Or attacking.
He was a big man, clean-shaven, his frizzy blond hair drawn back into a tail at his nape. Though he stood in the shadows, Abramm could see his face quite clearly. The features were rugged and weathered, the hard mouth bracketed by deep, harsh lines, the eyes radiating crow’s-feet. There was something abo
ut him, though, that made Abramm think he was not an armsman at all. He carried himself wrong. And despite his bland expression, his jaw was tight, his shoulders tense, and his hands poised on the sword belt at his hip.
Most perplexing of all, he looked familiar. . . .
When Ethan stepped over the door and passed directly in front of Abramm, the big man turned as if watching him closely. Abramm must’ve gasped or flinched when he saw a glint of emerald light flash at the base of the armsman’s throat because immediately the man’s eyes shifted from Ethan to Abramm himself, and the moment they did they narrowed and flicked to the scars on his face. They widened a hair, his brows twitched up—but then his gaze returned to Ethan, apparently unconcerned.
“And you say they tried to use the fearspell and their fireballs upon you, Sergeant?” Trap said, directing his question to one of the armsmen Brookes had brought with them.
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied. He went on to describe the encounter, but already Abramm was returning his attention to the man in the shadowed corridor.
Who had vanished.
“Plagues!” he cried, leaping across the door to follow.
“Sir! Wait! Where are you going?” That was Channon, alarm ringing in his tone.
Abramm heard the hiss of steel on steel behind him as his men followed after him. His own blade was already out as he raced down the corridor, surprised at the way the light carried so far from the chamber. He could see the weathered stones, the twists and turns and bumps in the floor as clearly as if he still stood surrounded by kelistars. And up ahead, he could even see his quarry, turning out of sight.
He’s gone into one of the rhu’ema-made tunnels.
Trap was on Abramm’s heels now as he raced for the junction and turned into a passage hewn through solid obsidian. He heard footsteps ahead and recalled the last time he’d been down this deep, drawn then by receding footsteps, as well. . . .
“My lord, please,” Trap cried behind him. “I can’t see a blasted thing.”
What in the world is he talking about? Abramm wondered. The corridor was dim and shadowy, but still light enough to see from the kelistars behind them. Besides, with the way the man ahead of them glowed with green fire, what more did he need?
A little caution might be wise.
But that man isn’t an Esurhite. He looked more like a barbarian. . . . What would a barbarian be doing this far south? What would he be doing in my fortress? The thoughts flew through his mind as he raced down a steep ramp.
Not a barbarian. But how about Rennalf of Balmark?
The ramp spit him into a circular chamber in time to see Balmark disappear down one of several openings. Abramm dashed in pursuit, around a curving corridor, up a short stair, and through a doorway into a long, lowceilinged chamber at the midpoint of which his quarry was now drawing to a stop.
As the man turned back, Abramm heard Trap’s muttered oath from close behind him, and several things registered. That the man before him was unarmed yet smiling, while on either side of him, dark-featured men in dark tunics stood frozen in various positions of rising and sitting, all of them staring in open astonishment at the three men who had so suddenly burst into their midst.
Now the border lord made a hurling motion at Abramm, who conjured his Light shield instinctively. But there was nothing to ward, only a strong gust of wind that caught the front of his cowl—already pushed back on his head from his run—and hurled it onto his shoulders, revealing his blond hair and telltale scars to all the men in the chamber.
And somewhere off to his right a low, astonished voice called out in the Tahg, “It’s the Pretender!”
CHAPTER
9
Everyone jolted into action simultaneously. Swords grated from scabbards as shouts echoed through the chamber, and Abramm’s own men flooded around him into the room. In a moment they had closed with the enemy, their swords alight with Terstan fire, leaving Abramm standing there in the midst of them with no one to face. He saw the big border lord cuff one of the Esurhites across the side of the head and crumple him to the floor before disappearing into the back of the chamber.
Racing after him, Abramm found a narrow, twisting slit that spilled him into yet another slag-walled corridor. Sensing movement to his right, he turned to meet it, twisting aside as he brought up his rapier—only to realize that Balmark waited on his weaker left side. As the border lord’s blade drove up toward Abramm’s chest, he thought to bat it aside with his gloved left hand, but the stiffened limb had barely twitched into movement when the steel plunged into his side.
He felt nothing at first, twisting back and off the blade as his own rapier deflected the border lord’s auxiliary dagger. Rattled, he backed another step to break contact and regroup, part of him shocked the man had bested him so easily, another part recognizing the desperate need to maintain concentration.
Balmark grinned at him. “Not quite the dangerous, invincible warrior ye thought ye was, eh? Lost a bit more than ye imagined, I guess.”
He raised the rapier, and Abramm brought up his own blade, refusing to entertain the self-recriminations already gathering at the edges of his mind.
Balmark continued to leer at him. “Ye think ye can take m’ wife from me, melt down our sacred stone fer yer sovereigns, and not pay fer it?”
He straightened a bit from his crouch, his expression hardening as the amulet at his throat flared. “Drop the blade.”
He said it quietly, but Abramm felt the power of Command wrap about his arm, weighing it down, pulling at his fingers. He stepped back again, letting the rapier’s tip fall, feeling the sword’s hilt shift in his loosened grip, his eyes never leaving Balmark’s. The other man noted the changes and his lips twitched with satisfaction. He let his own blade tip drop as he stepped toward Abramm, radiating menace and intimidation. “Drop the blade.”
Abramm let the rapier tip fall farther, nearly touching the rough-hewn floor. Balmark stepped toward him again, the power of his aura crowding in on Abramm’s awareness. Then, just as he came into range, Abramm whipped the blade up, slashing diagonally at the man’s face. The border lord lurched back, the cut in his brow gushing dark streams of blood into his eye and down his cheek. He wiped quickly at the eye with the back of his left hand, blinking furiously, and barely managed to deflect Abramm’s follow-up attack.
Abramm stepped back and around with his left leg to present only his right side and sword arm toward his opponent, increasing his reach even as he brought his useless left arm out of the action and reduced the size of the target he made.
Balmark came at him with a furious barrage of strokes, rapier alternating with dagger, forcing Abramm inexorably backward down the dark, curving passage, the emerald glow of Balmark’s amulet reflecting eerily off roughhewn obsidian walls. Abramm suspected the border lord was maneuvering him into a trap—anything from an arcane menace to a backward tumble down an unexpected flight of stairs. Worse, he was being pressed farther and farther from his comrades and ever deeper into the Shadow-held warrens. Soon he felt the familiar warding aura of griiswurm, and not long after that glimpsed their tentacled forms clinging to the walls and ceiling around him. But try as he might, he couldn’t find the right combination of strokes and footwork to turn the momentum in his favor.
A fetid, stomach-turning smell wrapped around him, coupled with an inexplicably familiar buzzing, like a hive of honeybees . . . and yet . . . not.
More griiswurm tangled across the walls, and the passage widened as the stench grew thicker. The buzzing writhed across his skin like the prickling that filled the air during a violent lightning storm. Balmark’s amulet flared, reflecting eerily in the man’s eyes, so that the rhu’ema that lived in it seemed to be looking directly at Abramm. He felt its hatred and its desire to destroy him. But he also felt its fear.
Something brushed the back of his neck, and he flinched, glancing up and around. In that moment of distraction, Balmark lunged. Abramm parried clumsily, lunged in a counterthru
st that was blocked by the other’s dagger, and suddenly the border lord’s rapier speared Abramm’s forward-bent thigh. Shock jolted him, again not from the pain but from dismay that his defenses had been breeched. The second time in ten minutes. It was like being back in Katahn’s compound, a neophyte, constantly punished by pain for his failings. Balmark was right: he had lost more than he’d guessed.
Again the border lord attacked, forcing him backward. He twisted off balance on his bad hip, then stumbled into a veil of tough, sticky cobweb that stopped the momentum of his fall even as it clung to shoulders, head, and back. He froze, realizing instantly that he had been driven into a nightsprol’s lair, where struggling would only bind him tighter.
Balmark grinned and straightened out of his crouch, well out of the reach of Abramm’s rapier. The buzzing was louder here, the prickly sense of power coursing wildly over his flesh. To his left, green light reflected off streamers of webbing.
Both men panted heavily now. The border lord wiped his eye again, his face covered in the blood that had flowed from the cut on his brow. His grin widened. “Ye’ve provoked the wrath o’ the Great Ones with yer blasphemies. Now ye’ll pay fer it.”
The little twinges and shivers that had been vibrating through the webbing told Abramm the lair wasn’t abandoned. Now the nightsprol approached, albeit cautiously. Perhaps it could sense the Light in him. Or maybe Balmark was holding it at bay, forcing it to wait while he killed Abramm with his own hand, then left his body for it to dispose of.
Abramm’s fingers tightened on the rapier’s hilt.
Suddenly a shout echoed up the corridor behind the border lord, drawing him around as Abramm recognized Trap’s voice and shouted back. Instantly Balmark whirled to Abramm and charged. Having his right arm free of the webbing, Abramm parried crisply, sliding his blade under the incoming thrust and into the muscle along the bottom of the man’s forearm. The border lord recoiled, then charged again to strike with his dagger, forcing Abramm to twist back and away, thus miring himself more deeply in the nightsprol’s binding silk. His target missed, Balmark staggered forward, and the thick web seized his dagger. Cursing, he flung himself backward before his arm could be caught, leaving the weapon behind.