The Darkling Child

It was not more than thirty minutes after he arrived when the tavern door swung open and Mallich appeared. Usurient had chosen a table near the back of the room that allowed him a clear view of those who entered but forced the latter to search a bit in order to find him. Mallich was quick, however, finding him almost at once and moving over to the table to sit.

  Usurient signaled for a tankard and leaned back again in his chair. “I can order you something to eat, if you wish.”

  Mallich glowered. “You can stop being clever. If I weren’t persuaded to listen to your offer, I wouldn’t be here. So let’s get on with it. Say what you have to say.”

  So Usurient did, detailing the destruction of Arbrox, the failure to find and finish Arcannen, the subsequent killing and hanging of Desset, and his own determination to ferret out and put an end to the sorcerer. He covered it all quickly and sat back to measure the other’s reaction.

  “Desset.” Mallich scowled. “No great loss there. He wasn’t worth his weight in pig spit. So you don’t see this as revenge for someone as worthless as Desset. Perhaps you think revenge might suit me better?”

  Usurient shrugged. “That isn’t for me to say. But this is a rather obvious chance to bring Arcannen to bay, isn’t it? And who deserves such a chance more than you?”

  “But you are the one he threatens. You are the one at risk. You see this as a preemptive strike. Get to him before he gets to you.”

  “He won’t get to me so easily. But he’s a nuisance, and I want him gone. Same rules as before. Find him; kill him. No restrictions on how you do it. Anything you need, I will get it for you.”

  Mallich regarded him for several long, uncomfortable moments. The tankard of ale arrived and the hunter drank from it, sat back, and regarded him some more.

  Finally, he said, “I don’t like being used.”

  “You are a hunter, aren’t you? You do work for hire. You are arguably the best there is. I would certainly say as much, if asked. So of course you are being used. That is the nature of our arrangement; it always has been.”

  Mallich drained his tankard, leaned back. “All right. I’ll take your offer. This is my price.”

  He named it. Usurient wondered where he would find such a sum, but decided he would worry about that later. “Done,” he said. “What else do you need?”

  “A visit to the prisons, with you as company. I will find the men I need to help me there.”

  Usurient felt a faint shudder slide through him. “You don’t mean to take Bael Etris, do you? I can’t allow that.”

  Mallich rose, stretched, and looked down at him. “If you want this done, you do what I tell you to get it done. Meet me at midday at the prisons. If you’re not there, we forget the whole thing. If you choose to object to the decisions I make, we forget the whole thing.” He leaned down. “I know how to use men, too, Dallen.”

  Then he turned away and was gone out the tavern door.

  FIFTEEN

  Midday of the following day was cloudy, gray, and oppressive, and it mirrored Dallen Usurient’s mood as he waited for Mallich just inside the entrance to the prisons at Sterne. The building was a two-story stone-block monolith with barred windows and watchtowers, and it looked just exactly like what it was intended to be. The guards were members of the City Watch, men and women trained for and assigned to this particular duty, and they all wore matching blue uniforms with prison insignia. Guards staffed all entrances and passageways and the watchtowers at the corners of the building. The smells that permeated and the gloom that shrouded every part of the building reflected the grim and hopeless nature of the prisoners lodged within.

  Usurient was engaged in reviewing his decision to send Mallich in search of Arcannen, wondering anew if he had made a mistake. He had not counted on the other man turning to prisoners to accompany him on his hunt, believing he would settle for his animals and one or two men from the old days. One or two men not locked away. But the more he thought about it, the more sense it made that the other would come here. Mallich did not intend to risk losing anyone else he cared about to this endeavor—not after what had happened to Mauerlin. Instead, he would take men who had no future and about whom he cared absolutely nothing. Their loss would not impact him, and it might even be that he expected to lose them and they were meant to serve as little more than a distraction for his quarry.

  But Bael Etris? Usurient shivered at just the mention of the man.

  He leaned back against the wall, forcing his nerves to steady. Etris had once been a member of Mallich’s cadre of hunters, a proficient tracker and a ruthless killer, useful in certain situations, but sometimes unmanageable and always unpredictable. He overreached himself when, two years back, while serving Mallich—but under Red Slash auspices nevertheless—he killed an entire family of Southlanders who were rumored to be magic users. It wasn’t so much that he killed them as that he did so without making sure he had the right family—which he didn’t. And it wasn’t even so much that as what he did to them. When he was finished, there was barely enough left to identify them as human and nothing to say which parts belonged to which person. What was clear from the carnage was that the man had enjoyed his work to a degree that verged on madness.

  It was brutal and unnecessary, and the Federation High Command had tried Etris for murder and mayhem and sentenced him to life in the prisons. There the man had found a new calling, a fresh challenge to his twisted worldview. Within the first three months, he had killed three other prisoners. Within the first six, he had killed four guards, as well. After that, he was confined to solitary indefinitely and not allowed out save for one hour a day so that he could exercise by walking around the perimeter of a twelve-by-twelve-foot open pen. Even then he was kept under heavy guard.

  Etris had been left to rot, and there wasn’t anyone Usurient knew who thought this wasn’t as it should be. Men like Bael Etris did not belong in the larger world. They barely belonged in cells where they could be caged like the animals they were.

  And now Mallich wanted to let this creature out.

  Usurient had racked his brain all night trying to find an excuse for not doing so, a reason that the other man would accept, any alternative that would appeal. But Mallich was not the sort to adjust his thinking without good reason, and in this case he had made up his mind when he had accepted the job of tracking down Arcannen that he would take Etris with him.

  Who else did he intend to take?

  “You don’t seem happy, Dallen.”

  Mallich was standing right in front of him. He had been so absorbed in thinking about Etris that he hadn’t heard the other come up. He straightened, making an effort to appear casual. “I was just wondering how you plan to keep yourself alive if you have Bael Etris sleeping next to you.”

  Mallich gave him a crooked grin. “You needn’t worry. I can manage him. It’s you who should worry if I fail to come back from this. He genuinely hates you.”

  This was true. Usurient had instigated the court action that had resulted in Etris’s imprisonment. For all intents and purposes, he was responsible for what had been done to the man. Not that he regretted it. But he would have preferred that Etris remain where he was rather than be set loose again.

  “He might kill you just to get to me,” he pointed out.

  Mallich shook his head. “I will treat him like one of my oketar, only with less patience and a very short leash. He won’t be able to get near me. Now, are we through discussing this? Because it really isn’t your concern, is it? So can we go to his cell and speak with him?”

  Usurient nodded reluctantly. “Wouldn’t it be better if you went alone?”

  “Why? Don’t you want to come with me? Does he frighten you so?”

  Angered by the other’s impudence and recognizing a challenge when he saw one, Usurient stalked over to the guard station where visitors were required to sign in. From there, they went through a steel door, down a hallway, up a set of stairs, down another hallway, and finally through another steel door into a
short corridor that was so quiet, it seemed to Usurient you could hear the walls breathing.

  At the far end, the guard released a lock on a floor-to-ceiling sliding steel panel and then rolled the barrier back to reveal a set of bars separating them from Bael Etris.

  The prisoner sat on a hinged bed frame staring at them. He was unusually small, barely more than five feet, his prison clothes hanging on his slender frame as they might on a scarecrow. His limbs and body, however, were ridged with muscle and ritual scars, and you could feel the power radiating off him. His face was oddly beatific—smooth, calm, devoid of expression—almost child-like until you looked into the strange green eyes and saw the madness reflected there.

  “Usssurrrient,” he whispered in what came out as a slow, drawn-out hiss. “Have you come to beg my forgiveness?”

  He rose and came to stand a few feet away as he looked up at them, his gaze shifting from one face to the other. Then he spat on Usurient through the bars.

  The Commander of the Red Slash flinched in spite of himself. But Mallich stepped forward to block an effort at retaliation. “Your fate rests with me, Bael. So perhaps you ought to stop acting like a child and listen to what I have to say before you do something you’ll regret.”

  The other cocked his head. “I never do anything I regret. Only what I fail to do in a timely manner.”

  “Are you finished pissing around?”

  “Oh, I’ve no quarrel with you, Mallich. None at all. I’ve never had one with you. You weren’t the one who had me locked away. You weren’t the one who betrayed me. I have no wish to anger you. Say what you came to say. I will pay close attention.”

  His voice was soft and appealing, a clever and practiced tone. Usurient wiped the spit off his face and clothes, thinking of ways he could make the man’s life so unbearable he would beg to be killed. But that wasn’t an option. Not yet, at least.

  “I am going to track a man into the far eastern shores of the Tiderace. I require someone with your skills to join me in my hunt. If you agree to come, you will earn your freedom by doing so. Are you interested?”

  Etris cocked his head, his arms folding close about his small body. “Who is it you track?”

  “The sorcerer Arcannen.”

  Etris smiled. “Rumor has it he is already dead. Would you kill him a second time just to make sure?”

  Mallich smiled back. “He is not dead; he is alive. And I would kill him as many times as I could for what he did to Mauerlin. But neither of us will speak of that again, will we?”

  Etris shrugged. “What of your companion? Does he travel with us?”

  “So that you might find an opportunity to kill him? No. He remains here in Sterne. This sort of work is best left to men like you and me.”

  Bael Etris pursed his lips, then shifted his gaze to Usurient. “Understand something, Commander. If I am released, I will do whatever Mallich tells me to do to hunt down and kill the sorcerer. But when that work is finished, I will come looking for you. If I find you, do not expect me to show you any mercy.”

  Usurient laughed aloud. “You tell me this and still expect me to set you free? Why in the world would I even consider doing so after such a bold statement?”

  The little man’s grin was wicked and sly. “You wouldn’t have come here in the first place if you had any other choice. Whatever I say or do at this point, you will free me. You want Arcannen dead as much as Mallich does, that much is clear. Now let me out.”

  “Tomorrow, at sunrise,” Mallich interrupted. “I will bring you all the weapons and gear you need. We leave for the coast from here.” He paused. “But let this be a warning. No tricks while we’re out there alone. I’ll have you tied to a crince, Bael. You even look the wrong way and it will rip out your throat.” He smiled. “Just in case you were thinking of trying to rip out mine.”

  Then he reached for the sliding steel door and slammed it shut.

  —

  In the underground refuge of Arcannen, beneath the ruins of Arbrox, Reyn Frosch stumbled muddle-headed and sleepy-eyed from his bedroom into the central living quarters of Arcannen to find Lariana already busy preparing breakfast. Or was it lunch? He wondered suddenly what time it was. How long he had slept?

  “Good morning,” the girl greeted him from the kitchen area. Her strange, exotic features brightened as she caught sight of him.

  “Is it morning?” he asked, his voice rough and oddly strange to him.

  “You are asking the wrong question. You should be asking what day it is. You’ve been asleep for two days.”

  He stopped where he was. “Two days? How could I have slept that long?”

  She walked away from what she was doing to bring him a cup of steaming tea. “I gave you a little something to help you sleep. You were in need of rest. Are you hungry?”

  He nodded, still in a daze. She took his arm, led him to a small table, and sat him down. A moment later he was eating fry bread, smoked meat, dried fruit, and cheese. He had never been so hungry.

  She sat down across from him, watching. He was aware of the whiteness of her skin, its flawless surface radiant. Her green eyes stayed on him as he looked at her, locking with his own. He remembered she had slept with him that first night, but he could not remember her leaving. In fact, he could not remember anything after falling asleep save the warmth of her body pressed close against his.

  When he was finished, he cleared his throat in the ensuing silence. “I guess whatever you gave me worked. I didn’t wake once. Two days?” He shook his head and smiled. “Best sleep I ever had.”

  “Most snoring, too, probably,” she added. “I had to leave you to it pretty soon after you drifted off.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t be. It’s worth it to see you looking so much better.”

  She cleared his dishes, and he wondered again at how much he had come to like her in the short time they had been together. He had found her intriguing from the first, but most of that was because of her unusual looks. By now, what he was feeling ran much deeper. He felt happier and more settled than he could remember ever being before.

  She came back to the table, walked to his side, and bent down to kiss him on the cheek. “I liked sleeping next to you. Being with you made me feel happy.”

  Reyn grinned. “I felt like that, too.”

  “Do you want to go outside, take a short walk?”

  “Through the bones of the dead? Charming.”

  “No, there’s another choice. Wash and dress, and I’ll show you.”

  When he was ready, she took him through the sorcerer’s quarters down the back hall to a second door. This door was ironbound and heavily warded by locks, but she opened it easily and took him out into a stone passageway, up several sets of stairs, and outside into the open air. The day was overcast and windy, the clouds scudding along from south to north, and the taste and smell of the sea filled Reyn’s nostrils.

  They were standing on a promontory above the ruins, looking down on the crumbling walls and collapsed roofs, the bones of the dead clearly visible in gray patches within the courtyards and open chambers. Seaward, waves crashed below them against the rocks, and to the west the land spread away in a rocky, barren terrain that ended far distant where mountains rose against the horizon.

  Lariana put her arms around Reyn and pulled him close to her, leaning her head against his chest. He reciprocated, and they remained like that for a time, neither of them saying anything as they stared out at the landscape and breathed the salt air.

  “This way,” she said finally.

  She released him and led him down a path that ran along the ridgeline south, picking her way while she held his hand as she might a child’s, her honey-streaked hair flying out behind her in the wind. They walked for more than a mile, pausing now and then to look out at the sea, to study rock formations, to watch the flights of birds winging their way through the damp haze.

  “Where’s Arcannen?” Reyn asked her.

  She s
hrugged. “He took the Sprint to one of the coastal towns yesterday and hasn’t been back. He said he had some business to take care of. Do you miss him?”

  He smiled in spite of himself. “Not much.” He paused. “Tell me something more about yourself. You’ve barely said anything.”

  She neither demurred nor hesitated. She simply responded, telling him about her life as the child of a Rover chieftain, of her parting with her family when she was barely thirteen and was told she was to be given to a rug merchant as his bride in exchange for certain valuable wares, of her flight east to the Southland cities of the Federation, and of her subsequent education at the hands of various wealthy and influential men who sought to keep her for their own, but could never hold on to her. He was more than a little surprised by her candor, her admission of the harshness and subjugation she had endured and somehow put behind her. She seemed untroubled by what she had weathered to reach this point in her life, and she avoided saying much at all about her arrangement with Arcannen beyond declaring that she intended that the sorcerer should one day mentor her in the use of magic.

  “But you,” she said. “You were born with magic. It’s always been a part of you. What must that be like?”

  They were sitting on a rock bench, looking out at the ocean, feeling the spray on their faces one minute, the wind the next. He looked at her in wonder, the question so strange he had trouble finding anything to say.

  “I don’t know how to answer that. I think it’s wonderful and terrible both. It can be good and bad. Magic is unpredictable. It does things to you, even when you don’t want it to.”

  She stared at him. “Are you saying you wish you didn’t have it?”

  “Sometimes I feel that way.”

  “But it makes you special, Reyn!” There was an unmistakable urgency in her voice. “No one else is like you. Everyone wants what you have. I want it!”

  “Maybe you should be careful what you wish for.”

  There was disbelief mirrored in her eyes. “Maybe so. But I don’t feel that way. I don’t know that you should either.”