Stalking Darkness

32

The moon had passed its zenith by the time Seregil came back to Blue Fish Street. It had been a pointless day overall. With the Beggar Law in force, most of his more valuable contacts had fled or gone to ground. Those that he had managed to track down had no fresh information on Plenimaran movements in the city. If the enemy was in town, he was keeping a low profile.

Weary as Seregil was, however, the sight of the unlit lanterns in front of the inn brought him up short. A tingle of presentiment prickled the hairs on his neck and arms. Ducking quickly into a shadowed doorway across the street, he scrutinized the courtyard for a moment, then drew his sword and crept cautiously across to the front door.

It was slightly ajar.

Leaving it untouched, he crept around to discover the back door open as well. He pushed it wide with the tip of his blade, tensed for attack, but there was no sound from inside.

An unlucky door filled his nostrils as he entered the kitchen; the stale, flat smells of a cold hearth and lamps left to gutter out on their own. Taking out a lightstone, he saw nothing out of place, except for Rehire’s pallet, which was missing from its place near the hearth.

On the second floor the signs were more ominous.

Thryis and her family were not in their rooms and only Cilia's bed appeared to have been slept in;-the linens were thrown hastily back, and the coverlet hung awry over the side. Next to the bed, an overturned chair lay in the shattered remains of a washbasin.

A grim heaviness settled in the pit of Seregil's stomach as he moved on to the guest rooms at the front of the inn. Only one had been occupied. The unlucky carter and his son lay dead in their beds, smothered with the bolsters.

The hidden panel leading to the stairs up to his rooms appeared unhampered with from the outside but opening it, he found that the warding glyph at the base of the stairs had been tripped. There were spots of blood on the lower steps, and several were smeared where more than one person had stepped in them before they'd dried. The glyphs farther up were simply gone. Still gripping his sword in his right hand, he drew his poniard with his left hand and mounted the stairs.

The doors at the top of the stairs stood open, showing darkness beyond. If there was anyone lurking in the disused storage room, it was best to find out now while there was still a chance of easy retreat. Fishing a lightstone from a pouch at his belt, he tossed it into the room. The stone skittered noisily across the floor, illuminating the few crates and boxes scattered there. No one jumped out to attack, but the floor told a tale it didn't take Micum Cavish to read; people had been in and out of his rooms, quite a number of them. Some had been dragged and some had been bleeding.

The final warding glyph on the door to the sitting room was gone, too. Taking a deep breath,

Seregil flattened himself against the wall next to the door frame and slowly turned the handle.

A band of eerie, shifting light spilled across the floor at his feet, and with it came a horrendous slaughterhouse stench. Weapons clutched at the ready, he stepped inside. Even with all the warning he'd had, his first glimpse of what lay beyond struck like a blow.

Several lamps had been left burning, and pale, unnatural flames danced on the empty hearth.

Someone had turned the couch to face the door, and on it four headless bodies sat as if waiting for him to return.

He knew who they were even before he looked past them to the heads lined up on the cluttered mantelpiece.

The strange light cast their features into tortured relief: Thryis, Diomis, Cilia, and Rhiri seemed to look with dull incomprehension toward their own corpses, which some monstrous wit had arranged in attitudes of repose. Diomis leaned against his mother, one arm draped over her bloody shoulders.

Cilia sat next to him, slumped against the remains of Rhiri.

There was blood everywhere. It hung in congealed ribbons from the mantelpiece and pooled on the hearthstones below. It had dried in scabrous crusts on the pitiful bodies. There were great sticky smears and handprints on walls.

There had been a struggle. The dining table had been knocked sideways, spilling a sheaf of parchment onto an already blood— soaked carpet. The writing desk was overturned in a litter of quills and parchment, and the shelves to the left of it had been pulled down. As he stooped to inspect the mess more closely, something in the shadows beneath the workbench caught his eye, stopping his breath in his throat.

Alec's sword.

He dragged it out and examined it closely. Dark stains along its edge showed that Alec had put up a fight before losing it. Gripping it by the hilt, Seregil was surprised by a brief, irrational burst of anger.

I told him to stay at Watermead!

The door to his bedroom was shut, but bloody footprints led inside. Taking a jar of lightstones from a nearby shelf, he kicked the door open and tossed them in.

An unearthly yowl burst out from inside and Seregil raised his sword in alarm. It came again, ending in a drawn-out snarl. Following the sound, he saw Ruetha crouched on top of a wardrobe, eyes glowing like swamp fire. She hissed at him, then leapt down and scuttled away toward the front door.

Nothing appeared to have been disturbed here except the green velvet curtains of his bed. He never used them, but someone had pulled them shut all around the bed.

Someone who'd left the bloody foot marks on the carpet.

Seregil's breath sounded loud in his ears as he forced himself across the room, knowing already whose body he'd find when he pulled the hanging aside.

"No," he said hoarsely, unaware that he was speaking aloud. "No no no please no—"

Gritting his teeth, he flung the curtain aside.

There was nothing on the bed but a dagger-a dagger with a hank of long yellow hair knotted around the hilt.

Seregil picked it up with shaking hands, recognizing the black horn grip inlaid with silver; it was the knife he'd given Alec in Wolde.

For one blinding second he seemed to feel Alec's thumb on his face again, reaching to smudge over the clean spot on his cheek.

"Where is he?" Seregil hissed. Grabbing up his sword, he rushed out into the sitting room again. "You bastards! What have you done with him?"

An evil chuckle erupted beside him and Seregil froze, scanning the room. The laugh came again, lifting the hair in the back of his neck. He knew that voice.

It was the voice of the apparition that had dogged him through the Mycenian countryside; the one he'd fought through a fever dream the night Alec had torn the wooden disk from his neck.

But this time there was no black, misshapen specter. The voice issued from the writhing lips of

Cilia's severed head.

"Seregil of Rhiminee and Aurenen!" Her glazed eyes rolled in their sockets, seeking him. "We found you at last, thief."

Diomis' jaws gaped with the same terrible voice.

"Did you think we would allow you to escape? You have desecrated the sanctuary of Seriamaius, and defiled his relics."

"The Eye and the Crown." It was Rhiri now, who'd never had a voice in life.

"Thief! Defiler!" Thryis spat out, her withered lips curling back in a leer.

"Defiler! Thief!" the other heads cried in moaning, joyless chorus.

"Aura Elustri malrei, his gasped Seregil, watching the grotesque performance with a mixture of outrage and revulsion. "What have you done with Alec? Where is he?"

They made no answer, but Rhiri's head tumbled to the floor and rolled at him, snapping its jaws and laughing, followed by the others.

"Forgive me, all of you." Feeling as if he were trapped in the worst of nightmares, Seregil raised his sword and hacked at the heads until only a scattered mass of hair and brains remained. In the midst of it he found four small charms, charred human finger bones wrapped with nightshade vine.

Choking back a wave of nausea, he cast a suspicious eye over the bodies, still slumped together on the couch.

"You deserved better than this," he whispered thickly. "Somehow-somehow I'll make this right."

Going back to his bedchamber, he pulled out his old leather pack and thrust in a few essentials. Then he wrapped Alec's dagger carefully in a large scarf and slipped it inside his tunic.

In the sitting room he took Alec's bow and quiver down from their hook over the bed and put them by the door, not allowing himself to wonder whether they would ever be needed again. The sword he slipped into his own sheath; he had no plans for sheathing his own until he was well away from here.

Skirting the mess on the hearth, he pulled the box of loose jewels on the mantelpiece free front a puddle of congealed blood and upended it into his pack. The spoils of years of casual pilfering tumbled out, glittering in the unnatural light of the fire. Alec had sorted them recently during a lesson on gem appraisal. A layer of bright rubies slid into the pack to fill the spaces between clothes and pouches, then emeralds, opals, amethyst, a handful of gold and diamond buttons they'd used for gaming stones.

His hands were beginning to shake. A lord's ransom spilled over the lip of the pack but he left the stones where they fell. Cinching the pack shut, he carried it to the door, then turned for a last look at the home he'd inhabited for nearly thirty years.

He'd been happy here, perhaps happier than anywhere else in his life. Now all of it-the books, weapons, tapestries and statues, the shelves of accumulated relics and curiosities-all of it was nothing more than stage dressing for the mocking tableau centered around the mutilated corpses gathered at his hearth.

Taking a large lamp from the table, Seregil whispered a quick prayer and emptied the oil over the bodies. Then he gathered every other lamp within reach, flung them against the walls, and scattered a jar of firechips over the spilled oil. Flames sprang up, quickly spreading out into sheets of hungry, purifying fire.

Shouldering the packs and weapons, Seregil fled down the stairs, leaving the doors open behind him.

As he hurried past Cilia's room on his way to the kitchen stairs, however, a muffled cry brought him to a halt. Dropping everything but his sword, he dashed into the room and flung the overturned chair aside. There, tightly wrapped in thick blankets to keep him still, Luthas lay squalling in his small trundle bed.

Cilia had heard her attackers coming. In what little time she must have had, she'd hidden her child, overturning the chair and pulling the blankets down over the edge of the bed to cover him from view.

He must have been asleep when I was in here before, Seregil thought, gathering up the furious child.

And if he hadn't cried.

As Seregil turned to go, he caught sight of himself in Cilia's mirror. The image reflected there, white-faced, eyes black with rage, might have been his own vengeful ghost.

Smoke poured down through the ceiling boards as he hefted the pack and weapons again and carried Luthas downstairs. In the first, thin light of dawn, the familiar back courtyard had an unreal look, like a familiar place seen in a dream just before it transforms into something sinister. The weight of pack, swords, and child pulled at him, sapping his strength.

"Thank the Lightbearer, there you are!" a familiar voice called.

Turning in confusion, Seregil saw Nysander's young servant Wethis coming around the corner of the inn on a sorrel horse.

"I saw the smoke from up the street," Wethis told him, reining in. His clothing was torn and he had a bandage wound around one hand, Seregil noted with a fresh pang of dread. "When no one answered out front—"

"Everyone's dead," Seregil told him, his voice coming out thin and strained. "What happened to you? What are you doing here?"

"The Oreska was attacked last night," Wethis answered, his voice cracking with emotion. "It was terrible. Nysander— They found him in the lowest vault—"

"Is he dead?" barked Seregil.

Wethis flinched. "I don't know. Valerius and Hwerlu were with him when I left. They sent me after you. You have to go at once!"

Seregil dropped his gear and thrust Luthas up at the boy. "Take him, and have the rest of this brought to the Oreska. And see that the rest of the horses get out of the stable before the whole damn place goes up."

Leaving the boy to fend as well as he could, Seregil dashed into the stable and bridled Cynril.

Patch nickered at him from the next stall. Alec had taken the time last night to feed and cover her before going up, never suspecting what lay in wait.

Mounted bareback, Seregil rode out past Wethis and away from the burning inn without a backward glance.

The world seemed strangely muted as he galloped toward the Oreska. The streets, the pale morning sky, the sound of Cynril's hooves-all had a vague, muffled air, as if he were observing the scene from a distance through one of Nysander's magnifying lenses. But somewhere behind the protective barrier of shock, the anguish was building.

Not yet. Not yet. So much to do.

He pelted on through the streets, through the Oreska gate and the scented gardens, not slowing his horse until he reached the House itself. Reining in, he leapt from the saddle and took the steps two at a time.

The atrium reeked of smoke and magic. The mosaic floor was scorched and cracked, the dragon design nearly obliterated. Where the arched doors leading to the museum had been, there was now a gaping hole partially blocked by rubble.

Afterward, Seregil could not recall how he got upstairs, or who had let him into the tower, but when he finally stopped running, he was at Nysander's bedroom door and Valerius was blocking his way.

"Is he alive?" Seregil panted, heart hammering in his chest.

The drysian nodded, frowning. "Yes, for the moment at least."

"Then let me pass. I've got to talk to him!"

Seregil tried to shoulder past but Valerius grabbed his arm, holding him back with considerable insistence.

"Gently, Seregil. Gently," he warned.

"By all the medicine I know, he shouldn't have survived such an attack. A good many others weren't so fortunate. But all the same, he won't let any of us ease his pain as much as we should until he's spoken with you. Be quick and don't tax his strength. He's got none to spare."

Stepping aside, Valerius opened the door and followed Seregil in.

Nysander lay on his side beneath a clean white sheet. His eyes were shut, his face slack.

Hwerlu knelt at the end of the bed, tears streaming from his strange horse eyes as he played a song of healing. Two unfamiliar drysians, a woman and a boy, stood chanting softly nearby.

Valerius exchanged a brief word with them and they withdrew.

Seregil went to the bed and knelt beside Nysander. The wizard's breathing was so shallow Seregil could scarcely hear it.

"What happened?" he whispered, gently touching the old man's cheek. It was as cold and moist as clay.

"There was a great noise in the night, like thunder and battle," Hwerlu told him, still playing as he spoke. "The sound of it woke us in our grove. As I ran to the House, I saw a dark shape rise above it, very large. It disappeared against the darkness of the sky.

I ran on, and inside I found a scene of such carnage—"

The centaur's fingers faltered briefly on the harp strings. "The intruders had brought swordsmen as well as wizards. So many dead!"

"But how?" Seregil asked in disbelief. "How did they get so many in? Illior's Hands, this is the Oreska House!"

"Through the front gate, and the sewers, it appears,"

Valerius said behind him.

"The sewers? But I thought that had all been taken care of after Alec and I found out about Rhythel."

"As it turns out, the authorities concentrated only on those routes that might lead toward the Palace. It's also possible someone was paid to turn a blind eye here and there. Whatever the case, just after the alarm went up, another group, mostly swordsmen, burst through the garden. How they got in unnoticed is another mystery, but the main attack seems to have come up through the vaults."

Seregil sank his head into his hands. "All those dead gate— runners this winter. By the Four, if I'd gotten to Rythel sooner, we might have been able to stop this!"

Nysander's eyelids fluttered slightly.

"Mardus," he whispered, the word scarcely audible.

"It was Mardus, I saw him, a dyrmagnos, more—"

His voice failed, but his lips kept moving.

Seregil leaned down, placing his ear close to Nysander's lips to catch the faint words.

"Eater of Death." It was hardly more than a breath, but unmistakable. Nysander shuddered and closed his eyes, fighting a wave of pain. Yet he struggled on, forcing the words out breath by breath. "Where-Alec?"

"They took him, left me this." Seregil pulled out the dagger and held it up for Nysander to see.

The wizard gazed at the lock of hair, then squeezed his eyes shut as another spasm wrenched through him.

"It's not your fault." The words felt like ashes in Seregil's mouth. His emotional defenses were beginning to erode, laying bare the first jagged shards of rage and grief lying just beneath the surface.

"It has begun," Nysander gasped out, his agitation clear. It took every ounce of will he possessed to go on shaping the words. "One place and one time-in Plenimar, beneath the pillar of the sky— The temple-temple—"

"A temple in Plenimar. Where, Nysander? Damnation, you have to tell me where!"

"Synodical—"

Nysander murmured regretfully as blackness surged over him again.

"What? Nysander, what does that mean?" Seregil turned to Valerius. "Isn't there anything you can do? Alec's life may depend on it!"

Taking Seregil by the arm, Valerius drew him away from the bed. "Give him a little time. He must rest or he may never recover. You look like you could use some attention yourself. I'll call for Darbia."

"I don't need anything," Seregil hissed through clenched teeth, straining to see over the drysian's shoulder as the larger man urged him toward the door.

"I've got to know what he meant! It may be too late already."

"If he doesn't rest now he'll never be able to tell you anything again. A few hours, perhaps less. Don't leave the tower, I'll come to you as soon as I've finished here. Now get out!" With a final none-too-gentle shove, Valerius thrust Seregil out into the corridor and shut the door in his face.

Seregil stood there, alone in the corridor, Alec's dagger clutched in one fist. Smoothing the lock of hair between his fingers, he spoke half aloud the words he'd bitten back in the sickroom.

"Tell me, Nysander, can your magic protect him now?"