Book of Kinsey: Dark Fate (The Dark Fate Chronicles 2) (20 page)

The sound of Kinsey’s popping joints was subtle, but it must have been something Sargon had been waiting to hear, for he whipped his head around despite the discord around them. When the old priest’s gaze found Kinsey hunched in the initial transformation, he nodded once and made his way to Thorn’s side, folding his hands into the sleeves of his robe in anticipation.

Skin and clothing tore from Kinsey’s body, showering the map and those nearby with blood. A roar of pain escaped from his maw, and he slammed his monstrous hand onto the table. The dense oak surface yielded under the pressure from his claws as if the hard wood was actually soft cheese.

As with his last transformation, Kinsey found himself wanting to fight against the rage but forced himself not to. The flurries of anger swirled around his fading resistance but found no purchase and flowed past, leaving him to remain conscious and unburdened. Once again, he made his way through the tempest of fury to peer out through the Dakayga’s eyes into the world beyond.

The angry voices that filled the chamber had given way to cries of surprise and fear. Those closest to Kinsey stumbled away from him in shock. Splatters of Kinsey’s blood lined the many faces that gaped in awe at his sudden transformation.

The rage pressured Kinsey to destroy the unbelieving faces, but once again he was able to halt the claws as they began to rise from the scarred surface of the table. Kinsey staggered away from the group, his claws leaving great gashes in the wood. Calm. I must be calm, he thought desperately while the fury howled at him, pushing him to destroy the dwarves and their mockery. He turned away from the assembly and channeled the raging fury at the furniture he found in front of him. Heavy chairs and end tables sailed across the room like children’s toys to smash into pieces against stone walls. The tiny effort was not enough to sate the beast, and so Kinsey roared, hammering his fists into the floor repeatedly. Cracks spiderwebbed around the edges of his fists as they drove into the polished granite again and again, but it wasn’t enough. The edges of his vision darkened—the rage was winning. His thoughts blurred; fishing, Erik, his mother. None of the images he conjured staved off the closing darkness. He was doomed, as were those foolish enough to remain in the room with him.

“Jocelyn.”
The name emerged from the chaos like a branch swirling in rapids. The encroaching madness halted as he seized upon it.

An image of the beautifully stubborn woman materialized in Kinsey’s ravaged mind. Her golden locks swung about her shoulders as she shook her head and planted her hands on her hips. She did not speak, only stood there, looking at him.

It was enough.

The rage ebbed away, and Kinsey slumped to his knees. Slowly, Kinsey’s thoughts coalesced around his mental incarnation of Jocelyn.

Knotted muscles in Kinsey’s shoulders relaxed as he felt himself begin to change once more. His breath became labored as his body shrank. The heavy fur fell in matted clumps from his shaking limbs and began to dissipate into the ephemeral smoke. He struggled to his feet and turned to face the heads of the ten most powerful families and their generals, clutching the tattered remnants of the once-fine outfit to him.

The silence from Kinsey’s entrance could have been a carnival compared to the nothingness now. Even the hissing of logs in the hearths was muted. Still shivering, he looked from face to round-eyed face. None of the gathered hierarchy appeared to even breathe until Gurney Borjornin shifted, breaking the tableau as he cleared his throat to speak. “Well, I guess that settles it, then.”

The lower mines were dangerous. The torch Tagen held aloft was insufficient to illuminate the many twisting paths and bottomless pits that one had to traverse between destinations. Twisted ankles and drops into the void were the least of the potential dangers, though. Murderous creatures lurked in the darkness of the Deeps. Few months passed without a miner or two going missing with only a severed safety line or a piece of shredded clothing left to indicate where they had been. Legends of deep-dwelling monstrosities swelled like the tide every time a dwarf went missing, but every attempt to delve into the mystery had only paid dividends of more questions and more deaths. Tagen did not care.

He stomped through the dim corridors, daring the reclusive beasts to try him tonight. The heavy clomping of his boots was occasionally broken as his feet found an isolated puddle. The splashing tinkle of the water being cast about did nothing to assuage his mood, and his damp feet did even less. His rage had subsided somewhat since the war council had adjourned, but his nerves were still raw. One of his servants might never speak again after the beating he had given the man, but at least the master of the first house was master of himself again. Mostly.

Torch in hand and anger in tow, Tagen mumbled to himself, “Damn Thorn to Mot’s pits.” That half-breed, bastard offspring that Thorn had paraded with pride—
pride!
—in front of the ten houses had sealed away any chance for Tagen’s ascension just as assuredly as any collapsed mine shaft. All his work to sway Beordin Silvervein meant nothing now. No one would vote to remove a Dakayga, and allies he thought bought and paid for had suddenly changed their tunes.

The dim tunnel faded away as his vision clouded in the face of the swelling anger that rose every time the traitorous faces of his “allies” swam before him. Tagen paused to lash out at the jagged wall with his heavy boot, flaking away bits and pieces of stone while a fit of cursing washed through him.
Later,
he finally thought, as the fury subsided. When he was king, he would have the time he needed to punish those who had betrayed him and enjoy their suffering.

Tagen smiled bitterly into the darkness. To salvage the remains of his wrecked plans, he would have to abandon his political games and maneuvering. From this point on, he would need to rely on more
direct
measures.

Tagen wiped at his nose and began to stomp forward once more.

The Deeps were treacherous, but they did offer one thing Tagen needed tonight: privacy. The list of dwarves that would venture this deep was short, and the list of those who would do so at this hour was shorter still. Regardless, any unfortunate that happened upon him could be easily disposed of with virtually no questions following their disappearance.

Eventually he reached his goal, a small alcove that had been lined with a clever inlay of stone bricks. The ornate carvings in this niche were a rarity this far away from the main passages of the kingdom and impossible to mistake for those who knew of them. Tagen stepped into the shallow recess, ground his torch out, and waited.

As the dark closed around him, his thoughts drifted to the coming battle and all the pieces that could be in play.
The chaos will serve me, Thorn,
he thought bitterly. Even if that mongrel of a grandson of his was a Dakayga as it seemed, the battlefield could be the half-breed’s undoing. Being Dakayga did not mean being indestructible.

The scrape of boots on stone pulled Tagen’s attention back from his gleeful consideration of that ugly demon head on a hobgoblin pike. He placed his hand on the hilt of his sword and peered out into the darkness.

The darkness began to yield as a small globe of light swayed into view. The glow was devoid of color or flicker, without so much as a shift of shadow in the source to indicate a wick or taper. Heavy moisture in the air forged a spectral halo around the ball of light, obscuring any details of the figure holding it aloft.

“Ignatius?” Tagen asked from his niche. He tightened his grip on the sword at his hip.

“Aye, Tagen,” Ignatius replied. The voice that crawled through the passage had a rasp to it that spoke of years of abuse, though Ignatius would be just past his prime and had many decades of life before he would be considered elderly. Tagen could remember ringing sermons that echoed from the stone halls sixty years ago and the honey-smooth voice that had preached them. Much had changed, it seemed.

The dwarf’s silhouette came to a stop not far from Tagen, but the globe of light drifted forward seemingly of its own volition, rearing above Tagen’s head and illuminating both dwarves with its phantom light. Tagen almost took an involuntary step back from the ruined face that was revealed.

Ignatius’s voice was not the only thing that had changed. The once-smooth and handsome features of the exiled priest were now a bed of puckered scars and weals that ran the length of Ignatius’s face past his neck and disappeared into a roughly tailored shirt.

Tagen shook away his shock and stepped from the alcove, removing his hand from his sword. Whatever had befallen Ignatius had no bearing on this meeting. Tagen had called him, and the disgraced priest had come. “Are ya prepared ta do what needs doin’?”

Ignatius sneered as he spoke. The twisting scars pulled at his mouth, slightly slurring the words. The same gravel filled his voice, and Tagen suspected that the scars were not just decorating the outside of the dwarf’s throat. “If it means ma return ta Mozil and vengeance on Brunahlen, I be ready.”

Tagen smiled at the disfigured priest. “Then we must speak o’ those I be needin’ ya ta kill.”

’T
IS
always so damn cold on the mountain,
Thorn thought as the frigid breeze swept the gray braids of his beard into a twisting dance. The depths of the mountain kingdom were always chilly but had none of the bone-numbing knives of the unfettered wind. He pulled at his fur-lined cloak in hopes of shielding himself from the cold, but nothing short of solid stone could deflect such icy wind. His guards huddled at the entrance, where Thorn had told them to stay.
No sense in everyone freezing ta death.

This would make the fourth time he had ascended to the summoning horn since the night of Kinsey’s revelation to the war council, and it would be the last time Thorn would try to summon the Ursus. It was not uncommon, historically, for the great bears to be slow in response, but time was drawing short. If no response came this day, then any answer thereafter would be too late to assist the dwarven people in the coming battle. The Ursus could move quickly when given good cause and would easily be able to catch the troops that had been moving south for some time now, but first the elusive bears had to be reached.

Most of the other races considered the Ursus to be nothing more than a larger version of a common cave bear. The dwarves knew better. Although the giant creatures certainly appeared similar to their smaller cousins, they differed in a few key ways. The Ursus could speak, after a fashion, for a start. So far as Thorn was aware, there was no written language amongst the Ursus, but the spoken language that they did have allowed them not only to form loose bonds between themselves but also with the dwarves with whom they shared their mountainous home. Another distinguishing difference was that most common bears were solitary creatures as a rule, while the Ursus maintained a loose pack mentality not unlike that of wolves.

Elves, dismissive of intelligent life other than their own, hunted the Ursus as if they were vermin. Before the dwarves of Stone Mountain came to reside with their brothers in the Dales, Brixtal Dalenrod, lord of the western range, rescued several cubs from the long-eared hunters.

Since that time, the Ursus had taken part in the defense of Mozil on occasion. Notably, it had been the sheer power of the great creatures that had enabled the dwarves to defend against the elves when the two nations had come into conflict some fifteen hundred years prior. The elves had been shocked at the appearance of the bears on the field and had been completely unprepared. Deprived of their hunting tactics and equipment, the elves had been unable to slow the lumbering rush of the giant bears. Heavy, rigid brows protected the eyes, and layers of dense fur and fat had proven effective armor against the normal elven longbows. Shafts often lodged in the fur and sometimes even pierced the flesh, but it was a rare shot that felled an Ursus in charge. In the end, it had been the elves that yielded the field that day. Relations between the dwarves and elves had never been exactly cordial, but since the conflict, they had become nonexistent.