Bloodfire Quest

16

In that same darkness, in Arishaig, the assassin Stoon slipped down mostly empty streets and alleyways, avoiding the drunks and homeless that huddled in the shadows and staying clear of the voices that whispered now and then from doorways and alcoves where men like himself carried on their business. He was wrapped in his cloak and hooded against the possibility of being recognized, and his tall, lean frame gave him a sinister appearance to the one or two who caught sight of him on his way to his meeting with Edinja, causing them to move quickly away.

Why she had decided on a meeting at this time of night was troubling. Why she had asked that it be conducted at her home rather than in the quarters of the Prime Minister was equally so. She had invited him there only once before, when Drust Chazhul was newly dead and she was still in hiding. But since then, all of their meetings had taken place in the bedchamber of her official living quarters, and he had come and gone through the secret passageways he had used when in service to the unfortunate Drust.

A less confident man, a less skilled professional, might have thought twice about the change in meeting places, might have read into it that it signaled a shift in the direction of the wind, one that might sweep him away. But Stoon was not such a man, and to refuse to meet with her as she asked or to seek a change of venue would only demonstrate weakness. So here he was, creeping along through the city well after midnight to the spectral, forbidding tower whose black stone façade and gargoyles was recognizable—and religiously avoided—by everyone who resided in Arishaig.

The grounds lacked walls and gardens to distance the tower from the streets that bordered it on two sides, leaving it close up against the corner crossing, casting its shadow like a giant predator. There were stories about Edinja’s residence: of screams and shrieks emanating from within, of foul smells and strange rumblings, of moving shadows glimpsed behind the curtained windows—things that were clearly not entirely human.

He had seen none of this in his single visit. Nor heard the sounds or smelled the scents. Stories whispered by superstitious people, he had decided after he had departed. Rumors that perhaps she herself had created to warn off the curious.

He skirted the tower’s rough edges when it came into view, avoiding the front entry because he knew he was never to go there, moving instead to a tiny door just off the street that was sheltered by shrubbery. He moved quickly and without hesitation, resisting the urge to stop or give further thought to what he was doing. There was no point. If her intentions were bad, he would not be able to tell from out here.

Once through the door and inside, he climbed a spiraling stairway that took him to the rooms at the apex of the tower where she made her bedchamber. As he neared the end of his climb, he saw the soft glow of candlelight emanating from her open door and felt a small measure of relief. If she had meant him harm, she would not have bothered providing him light with which to see. Not when she saw so much more clearly then he in the dark, and had the services of Cinla to help dispatch those she suddenly found too troublesome to bear.

His footsteps were soundless on the stone steps, his passage less evident than a breeze, yet before he reached the doorway she was calling to him.

“Come, Stoon. Don’t keep me waiting. Isn’t this just like old times?”

The corners of his mouth twitched in response—the closest he ever came to a smile. He went through the door and found her reclined on her lounger, the big moor cat that served as her protector and familiar sprawled in front of her. Given its position, he decided he was not being invited to go directly to her, so instead he moved to a chair that had obviously been prepared for him. A comfortable throw was draped across its arm and a glass of wine set next to it on a small table. A candle sat beside the wineglass, its flame a bright flicker of light in the near darkness. A second candle burned on the table next to her.

“Mistress,” he greeted, giving her a small bow.

As always, he was dumbstruck by her beauty. Dusky skin, silver hair, slender limbs, and angular features gave her an exotic look. She was distinctive and stunningly lovely. But as with those snakes whose bite was instantly fatal, it would be a mistake to venture too close without exercising caution.

“Try the wine,” she said to him, sipping at her own. “It is quite wonderful, and we are celebrating this night.”

He picked up the glass and drank. He didn’t hesitate. Life was a risk when you consorted with venomous creatures. The wine slid down his throat easily and warmed him deep in his belly. “Extraordinary,” he said, keeping his eyes on her.

“Aren’t you going to ask me what we are celebrating?”

He shook his head. “You will tell me when you are ready. I would not presume to rush you.”

“Oh, you are so very cautious!” she exclaimed. She put down her glass and straightened, clapping her hands in approval. “I rather like you that way. I am celebrating us. Today it is exactly one year since we began our relationship and entered into our agreement to be lovers and co-conspirators. Do you remember now?”

He did not, precisely, but smiled and raised his glass to her. “A fine agreement it was, too.”

“Wasn’t it?” She clasped her hands in front of her and leaned forward. “I thought it fitting we meet here to commemorate our union. Now tell me your news.”

He nodded. The reason for this meeting in the first place. “Our creature in Arborlon has sent word that the Druid expedition has failed and that the order was all but destroyed in the process. Only two of their number survive; the rest were lost. Those two have returned to Arborlon with a handful of others. Apparently, the Druids are no longer any kind of threat at all.”

She smiled. “If a single Druid lives, they are a threat. Make no mistake about that, Stoon. Still, the destruction of the order and the fact that the Druids have abandoned Paranor—now, that is something to build on. But their search did not succeed, you say?”

“Apparently not, although we still don’t know what it was they were looking for. Whatever it was, it apparently ate them up and spit them out. Even the Ard Rhys did not return.”

Edinja considered, a frown creasing her smooth brow. “What should we make of that, I wonder?”

“Indeed.” He took another drink of the wine. “There is more. Another expedition has been mounted by the Elven girl, Aphenglow Elessedil, one of the two Druids who survived. A much smaller expedition, formed in secret and with little notice.”

“And its purpose?”

Stoon shook his head. “Unknown, as yet. Nor do we have information regarding its destination. We will know everything eventually, of course. Our creature will find out. But, for now, we know only that it departs Arborlon soon, probably today. This has all come about very quickly. I sense a need for haste and a certain amount of desperation.”

He paused. “One thing we do know: Aphenglow was given the blue Elfstones, the so-called seeking-Stones, by the Elven King. It was done secretly, without the knowledge or permission of the Elven High Council. It appears she is looking for something.”

Edinja’s frown deepened. “What could be so important that the old King would allow this?”

She was silent a moment, thinking. Stoon finished off his wine and considered the advisability of leaving his seat long enough to pour himself more from the decanter he could see sitting on the sideboard. But in the end he decided to remain where he was.

“She flies an airship on this latest expedition?” Edinja asked suddenly.

Stoon shrugged. “I would presume so. Our creature seemed to suggest as much.”

“My creature,” she corrected him instantly. “Be careful not to lay claim to any part of what isn’t yours.”

He bowed deferentially at the coldness of her voice. “Of course. I apologize. Your creature. I would never suggest otherwise, Mistress.”

Her smile was quick and hard. “I didn’t think so.”

She rose and walked over to him, took hold of his hands, and brought him to his feet. She wrapped her arms loosely about his waist and brought him against her so that their faces were close.

“I want you to go after her,” she whispered.

There were few tasks in this life that Stoon was reluctant to undertake, but this was one of them. The memory of his near-death experience at Paranor was still fresh in his mind. Bad enough that he had been foolish enough to attempt to overpower Aphenglow Elessedil once. But to risk his life doing so a second time smacked of madness.

“Mistress, I would do anything for you that I believed would advance your cause. But I have encountered this girl once, and once was more than enough. I do not expect that if I were to come up against her again, I would survive it. She is extremely dangerous and more than a match for me.”

Edinja reached up to touch his lips with her finger, running the tip back and forth slowly. “Since when do you accept failure so willingly?”

“I do not like admitting this, especially to you, but I must accept realities I cannot change. My instincts warn me to avoid her. They foretell my death at the hands of this girl.” He paused, sensing her displeasure, realizing he had crossed a line. “Nevertheless, I am yours. I will go after her if you command it. Tell me what you would have me do. Do you still wish it of me, knowing how I feel? Because if you do, then I will go.”

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him tightly against her. “My big, brave assassin. Afraid of a mere child.”

“Call it what you will. I believe in instincts and hunches and foretellings. They have kept me safe more times than I care to remember. They warn me now about Aphenglow Elessedil. She is no mere child, Mistress. She is too much for me.”

Edinja Orle laughed, and her laughter was filled with sly cunning and tinged with a clear hint of disparagement.

“What if I were to give you help in this matter?”

He hesitated. “What sort of help?”

“The sort that will tilt the scales in your favor.”

He shook his head. “What exactly I am expected to do about her? Am I tracking her to discover what she seeks? Am I to take the Elfstones away from her and bring them to you? Am I to dispose of her or make her my prisoner? What is it you are asking?”

She stood on tiptoes, and her hands wrapped around his neck as she kissed him on the mouth. He never felt the small sliver of glass she embedded deep under his skin. “Whichever you deem appropriate. It’s your choice.” She released him and stepped back. “I seek answers. I need information. If what she is doing is dangerous to us, you make one choice. If she can be persuaded to ally herself with us, you make another. If she lacks any discernible use, you make a third. You are a free agent in this matter.”

“I am to make my own decision regarding the Elven girl?” He could hear the disbelief in his voice. “That is bold. What if I choose wrongly? What if you disapprove?”

She shrugged. “You face the consequences. Are you not prepared for that? Does that not enter into your thinking whenever you undertake a task for me? You chose the time and place to dispose of Drust Chazhul. You knew what you were risking then, yet it did not stop you from doing what you saw was needed. What good are you to me if I cannot depend on you to act on your own and act wisely? What is the point if I must always be there beside you?”

He considered, saying nothing for a moment, his sharp eyes locked on hers. She was taunting him by asking these questions; he could feel it.

“I thought you had decided not to attack the Druids as Drust did. I thought you wanted to keep the order intact and to subvert it to your own purposes.”

“That was before the order was broken. All the Druids but two are gone.” She shrugged. “It might be better to finish them off and start over. I could make myself Ard Rhys. I could choose my own followers and establish my own order.”

He found this arrogant and dangerous, but he kept his thoughts to himself. It would be a mistake to underestimate Edinja Orle. She was determined and ruthless in spite of all her smiles and sweet words, and if you were an obstacle in her path you were likely to find yourself crushed.

“Tell me something of this help you would give me,” he said finally. “How would you give me an edge if there were to be another encounter with Aphenglow Elessedil?”

She walked back to her lounger, picked up a heavy robe, and threw it over her shoulders. “I will do better than tell you. I will show you. Wait here with Cinla until I return. Drink as much of the wine as you like. Dream sweet, wicked dreams of me.”

She crossed to the back of the room and touched something in the wall; a jagged section of stone swung open with a grinding sound. She passed through, and the section of wall closed behind her, leaving Stoon alone with a watchful Cinla.

She was gone for almost two hours. During that time, he finished off the decanter of wine, wandered her bedchamber and perused her possessions, stood looking out the window at the city, sat looking at Cinla—who never moved—and took long moments to consider if perhaps he had gotten in over his head. Edinja Orle’s seduction of him had been welcome enough, the lure of her promises and her ability to deliver on those promises a far better risk than the one he’d been taking by remaining with Drust Chazhul. But she was a viper and fully capable of turning on him without warning, and he did not think himself the least bit safe from her venom.

By the same token she was irresistible, and the attendant risk in staying with her was intoxicating. He was balanced on a wire, and whichever way he tumbled he would likely be killed. The only reasonable choice was to stay on the wire.

When she returned, she materialized in a rustle of clothing and a shimmer of silver hair. She brought him awake from where he dozed in his chair. Then she led him to the hidden door in the wall and from there to a stairway that descended through the tower and deep underground. Together they passed down countless steps, and the air grew stale and the stone damp. She said nothing as they went, her eyes on the way forward, her hand clutching his. He followed dutifully, thinking as he did so that this is how it would be until the end, that he would always allow her to lead him, even to what one day would prove to be his death.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, a passageway burrowed ahead through a scattering of smokeless torches and shadows. They traversed it in silence, and he began to hear whispers of voices and the rustling of movements from ahead, muffled and unrecognizable. He could not identify their source or their purpose, but they sent chills down his spine and unpleasant images through his head. They grew louder the farther in he went, and the effect on him grew more pronounced.

At the end of the passage was a huge iron door. Edinja touched it lightly twice, so quickly he could not remember afterward which bolts in which sections she had fingered, then the door swung open in a creaking of iron against iron.

Stoon had seen many strange and terrifying things in his life, and there wasn’t much that could give him pause. But he was not prepared for what waited behind that heavy door.

“Cat’s blood!” he hissed softly.

Men shambled about a cavernous chamber of stone blocks, iron racks dripping with chains and shackles and, in the dim recesses of the far back wall, cages. But these were not men in the accepted sense of the word; these were something else entirely. Resembling men, they stood mostly upright and were possessed of two legs and two arms, but they were otherwise misshapen in unnatural ways, their faces so severely blunted and warped that their features had virtually disappeared. They muttered and huffed like cattle as they trudged about the chamber, but they did not converse. They seemed to know what they were supposed to do, but they paid no attention to one another or to anything that was going on about them.

“What are they?” Stoon asked.

Edinja was smiling. “They are my creatures. Assembled and shaped in ways that I alone determined. Answerable only to me. They do what I wish without argument. They carry out my orders without question.” She looked at him. “Is that not the sort of servants everyone wishes they could have?”

He nodded, thinking as he did so that no one wanted creatures like these prowling around their homes. No one but Edinja. These were aberrations—humans mutated into monsters, men made into beasts. Where had they come from? They might have been men once, even if they were clearly something much less now. What had she done to them? They looked to have had their brains reconstructed, their ability to think and react scrubbed down and selectively erased.

“Come,” she said, taking his hand and pulling him forward. “Meet your new companions for your voyage.”

She took him to the cages at the back of the room, passing them by until she came to the final three. In each was a prisoner of reasonably normal appearance—big, heavily muscled men who had seen hard work and lived hard lives. Ragged and dirty, they screamed curses at Edinja as she stood safely out of reach. They grasped the bars and shook them violently, throwing themselves against the cage doors so hard Stoon wondered that the chains securing them did not give way.

“Not very well behaved, are they?” she said to him, stepping away so that a handful of her creatures could lumber forward and begin their work. They opened the cage doors and hauled out the prisoners one by one, dragging them like wild animals across the chamber floor to be securely shackled and chained to heavy wooden tables set side by side. Stoon could not help but notice the stains in the wooden planks; many of them had been made by blood.

Though enormously strong, Edinja’s captives were no match for her creatures. Though they struggled mightily, they were held down and secured, their heads and bodies immobilized. Flexible metal funnels with clamps and short tubes were forced into their mouths and down their throats. The prisoners wailed and roared in fury and terror, thrashing wildly but unable to break free.

Then Edinja said to him, “Do you have your knife?”

He nodded, pulled it free from beneath his clothing, and showed it to her.

“Cut yourself. Across your palm.”

He hesitated a moment, then did so. She took his bleeding hand, held it over a beaker, and let the blood drip into the muddy fluid contained inside. After a moment, she moved his hand away, swirled the liquid around in the beaker, and nodded. “Watch.”

She stepped over to the men on the tables, going to each in turn, prodding their throats while whispering until—even though their mouths continued to gape and their bodies to strain—they could no longer make any sounds. Once they were quiet, she began pouring doses of the liquid from the beaker into the funnels and down their throats. The liquid steamed as it disappeared into the funnels and the bodies of the prisoners convulsed. Edinja poured and whispered, moving from the first to the second to the third, three times each until the beaker was emptied and her captives had grown silent and unmoving.

She removed the funnels from their mouths. Then she turned to Stoon and beckoned him closer. He came reluctantly, not wanting any part of this, already wishing he had said nothing to her about his fear of Aphenglow Elessedil. When he was beside her, she gripped his arm in both delicate hands and held him close.

“Watch.”

The prisoners were beginning to change. Whatever magic she had employed, it was remaking the men in front of his eyes. One after another, they took on a different look, their features tightening and stretching, their bodies growing larger and filling out with muscle, and their eyes snapping open and growing feral and dark with animal hunger. Hair sprouted in knots from their faces, from their arms and legs, from their hands and feet, all of it thick and dark.

When the change was finished, they had taken on a different look entirely. Now they more closely resembled animals than men, creatures built to hunt and kill. Their bodies powerfully built, their faces wolfish and equipped with muzzles and sharp teeth. Their eyes snapped open and they looked about with a predator’s cunning, clearly taking the measure of things, growling and snapping at the air they breathed, flexing and straining against their bonds.

Edinja stepped forward to where they could see her clearly. At once they went quiet, watching her intently. She spoke to them in small hisses, her voice too indistinct for Stoon to hear any words, though the response of her new creations was clear enough. They were listening and they were doing so because she was now their master.

“Come, stand beside me,” she ordered. “Let them smell you.”

Again, he stepped forward obediently, aware of the hungry gazes now shifting to find him, of the looks that said he would be nothing more to them than prey should they be set free.

When he was next to her, she began making fresh sounds—animal noises, small grunts and growls—and he could see her newly created creatures were listening. He watched the once-men shift their gazes from her to him, fixing on him, watching intently.

“There,” she said finally. “It is done. They are yours to command. They will do what you tell them, and they will act as your protectors against anything that threatens you. They will hunt all day and all night, if you ask it. They will fight until they win or are destroyed. They are enormously strong and impervious to pain and weariness. They feel nothing and require no care. You can set them a task, and they will pursue it until it is completed.”

She paused, giving him a wicked smile. “Even a Druid will have difficulty standing against all three of them. Even one as troublesome as you find Aphenglow Elessedil to be.”

“But they will not kill her if I do not ask it, will they?” He remained unsure of these creatures. “I need to know, Edinja. Will they do exactly what I tell them with Aphenglow Elessedil?”

She gave him a sharp look. “Why are you suddenly so concerned for her? What are you saying?”

He had unwittingly crossed a line, but he was quick to recover. “This has nothing to do with being concerned for her. I need to know what I can expect of your creatures. If it becomes clear that the best course of action is to kill the girl and seize the Elfstones, then these creatures should be perfect. But what if there is good reason to keep her alive so that she can be brought to you? What if she has information that only you can extract? Will these things let her live or will their animal instincts govern them in spite of what I ask?”

“They will not go against your wishes. They will do as you ask.” She paused. “But that’s not what’s bothering you, is it? You are afraid they might turn on you.”

He shrugged. “I would be a fool not to consider the possibility. They don’t look as if it would trouble them much.” He hesitated. “I want to test them here and now. I want to see if they’ll do as I say.”

Without answering him, she walked back to the tables on which her creatures lay and released their chains. They sat up at once, cat-quick and eager. But they did not try to attack her. Instead they crouched atop the tables as if waiting for direction.

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Tell them what to do. Tell them to get back into their cages. Give them a command.”

He did as she asked. Without hesitating, the three bounded off the tables and loped back across the room to their cages, pulling the doors closed behind them after they were inside. Edinja walked over, snapped shut the locks on the chains that secured the doors, and turned back to him.

“I need the truth behind the failed Druid expedition so that I can understand what is happening. I want you to find the girl and her companions and track them. I want you to discover what it is they seek. If it involves magic in any way, I want to know. I want both of the Elessedil sisters brought here to me. With the Elfstones.”

“Is that all?” he deadpanned.

She smiled. “You are my right hand, my steady guide, my dependable and loyal consort. I rely on you to do what is needed.”

He shrugged. “I will do my best.”

She came over to him, once again took hold of his hands and looked deep into his eyes. “I hope so. Because I will know if you don’t.”

Then she reached up and kissed him ever so gently on the mouth.