Dark Fate: The Gathering (The Dark Fate Chronicles Book 1) (68 page)

An older human stepped out past Blaine to address Kinsey. The soldier’s voice was on the border of hostile. “I’m surprised you came back.”

Kinsey flinched at the man’s tone. “What is that supposed to mean?”

An uneasy tingle prickled the back of Sargon’s neck and he glanced around slowly. Soldiers with halberds lined the wall behind them. As Kinsey spoke angrily with the guard, they began to close ranks and move to surround the party of dwarves.

“You’re to be taken to the dungeons.” The older man gestured with his hand and the hovering guards rushed forward, encircling the dwarves with halberd points.

Kinsey looked around in shock. “Dallin, this is insane.”

Sargon placed a hand on Gideon’s arm. The general’s eyes blazed with anger, and Sargon could see the imminent violence in every twitch of his friend’s beard. Sargon shook his head when Gideon’s bronze eyes snapped to him. “No violence,” Sargon whispered.

Gideon’s face twisted into a grimace. “Aye? An’ maybe we should just fall on our swords and save ’em the trouble.”

“Damn ya, Gideon, this be ma charge from our king. Do as I say,” Sargon growled.

Gideon folded his thick arms and did his best to imitate a stone column. Sargon could hear the distinct sound of molars grinding, but he could spare nothing else for his friend.

Sargon turned from the general and stepped forward to address Dallin. “We be delegates from Mozil, boy. We’d hoped for a bit more courtesy from the likes o’ Waterfall Citadel.”

Dallin’s dark eyes cut from Kinsey to regard the old dwarf. “That may be so, but we have received no word of your coming.” The soldier pointed at Kinsey. “Him, however, we’ve been looking for. You travel with an alleged kidnapper, so you’ll all be held in the dungeons until we sort this out.”

“What?!” Kinsey shouted. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Don’t make this harder than it already is, Kinsey.” Dallin stepped closer to Sargon’s new ward and lowered his voice. “We’ll sort it out. Just stay calm, for Eos’ sake.”

Kinsey looked as if he were about to say something, but he swallowed the words with a bitter expression on his face.

“Take them,” Dallin said, motioning at the guards again, “and send a page to the palace. Let them know we have Master Kinsey Aveon.”

As the group was lead away from the gates. Sargon felt a hand on his shoulder.

“So much for yer heir apparent,” Gideon whispered roughly.

Sargon shot a surprised look at the general.
He does know!
Sargon nodded slowly with a disappointed sigh. It appeared he would indeed find his answers about Kinsey’s worth on this trip.

Jasper ran through the crowded streets, darting past fruit-filled carts, women balancing wicker baskets loaded with laundry on their heads, and old beggars perched on their corners. Navigating his usual paths through the maze of alleyways had become more difficult since the celebrations surrounding Prince Alexander’s wedding to the outland princess. The city was still filled to bursting with the many people who had come for the celebration.

Fortunately, difficult for Jasper meant almost impossible for the other boys who competed with him for running errands and messages. He breathed easily as he sped down an alley and hurdled the traces of an ox cart that blocked his path. No one knew Waterfall Citadel like he did, and that meant no one would get paid the way he did.

I can’t believe he came back
, Jasper thought as he turned a corner to find himself confronted with an impenetrable crowd of humanity and horseflesh. Smoothly, the wiry boy caught a low beam and clambered to the thatched roof of a low cottage next to the stable. Master Kinsey Aveon hadn’t been a well-known name until warrants for his and his elven father’s arrest had been issued throughout the city. How someone could be so foolish as to return to the Citadel, through the main gates no less, after such a decree, was beyond him. He would not miss a trip to the gallows when that fool was strung up.

The royal gatherer at the palace would pay well for this information if he could get it there before anyone else, but it was the expectation of the tip from the Dark Master that drove Jasper’s feet to fly even faster. His fingers were a blur as he found purchase on the masonry of a building, and he clawed for height before setting out once more on the rooftops.

All of the messengers in the city competed equally for the favor of the palace and the Dark Master, of course. They all hated Jasper, but that was okay with him. It was envy, he knew, and even if they hated him, they could never catch him or beat him.

The roofs ran out and he dropped through open air, snagging clotheslines on the way down to slow his fall. When his feet met the cobbles, he took to running again with almost no hesitation.

Jasper turned away from the beckoning light of an open street into another alley. He stumbled to a halt as the familiar chill he had been looking for wrapped around his thin shoulders.

“Speak, boy,” whispered a raspy voice from the shadows.

Jasper gulped, trying to swallow the sudden dryness in his throat. “Kinsey Aveon has returned.” He shivered in the cold that flowed from the blackness before him. “He’s been taken to the dungeons with a company of dwarves.”

Jasper’s breath began to form before him in wispy clouds of mist. Silence was the only answer for a few long moments. Jasper opened his mouth to repeat his information, but the voice came again, cutting him off.

“Do not make haste to the palace with this information.” The sound of several coins bouncing on the hard ground rang in Jasper’s ears. “There is another who must be told first.”

White fire burned into Jasper’s mind, tattooing a name onto his quivering brain. He fell to his knees and stammered, “As-as you say.” The cold evaporated, leaving him to shiver in the rank, humid alleyway.

K
ESH
leaned over the worn tome and flipped through yellowed pages in a flurry.
It’s got to be somewhere
, he thought as the flowing text became a blur. He slammed his fist down on the heavy book. “Dammit!” He pushed the old tome off the table.

Several people gasped as the giant book hit the hardwood floor with a resounding thud.

The chancellor ignored them, his hands prying open the dusty jacket of the next book,
The Wolf Bear of the Winewood: Environment, Prey & Purpose
.

Kesh’s stool, surrounded by piles of books, was in Waterfall Citadel’s Athenaeum, the center for learning and history that had been established three centuries ago by King Sevenren. The Athenaeum had become a sanctuary for knowledge and records, and over time the repository had become largest collection of written history in all of Orundal. It was here that Kesh had exiled himself in hopes of finding some record of the thing that had hunted him. It was inconceivable to him that something so destructive and so alien could exist without
someone
making a record of it.

Kesh had lost track of the number of volumes he had read in the past few days. He had begun by having the library attendants bring him books, scrolls, and fragments of natural history. Finding nothing there, he moved to scholarly dissections of the fauna of the jungle landscape of the Winewood. More than one book ended abruptly when the authors had gone out to gather more information and never returned, leaving their collaborators to finish the work to the best of their ability. Horrors abounded, to be sure, but nothing resembled in description or representation the walking nightmare he had witnessed that night at Ordair’s Keep.

Unfortunately, the wolf-bear was primarily a pack-based vegetarian but would hunt fresh game in the lean seasons. Kesh snorted with disgust and reached for a slim volume bearing the name
Theories of Unsolved Animal Attacks
.

The author apparently believed he could solve most of the mysteries of why animals would attack villages by tracking the prey migrations. These pages, too, began to blur before Kesh’s eyes as he read account after account of small groups of travelers being savaged, or children’s corpses being found. Just as he was beginning to lose hope with this book as well, one series of attacks in a spring some sixty years ago made him hunch forward and retrace the words intently.

Five hamlets far to the southwest of Waterfall Citadel had suffered violence. The first three villages had lost but a few people, and those few had been outside of the village at the time. The fourth village, though, had lost almost half of its residents to a single creature the people persisted in calling a “demon.” The fifth village, an insignificant speck named “Morhaven” of all things, had lost every solitary soul. Not even one survivor had been found.

Kesh threw himself into the accounts. He found similar stories to what he had witnessed at the old ruin in the villagers’ descriptions of the horrible, howling wail of the creature. The protective walls of the families’ homes hadn’t mattered in either of the last villages, as entire buildings were reported to have been torn asunder. Fate, and fate alone, had spared those few who had told the tale.

Kesh cursed when he came to the end of the account. The author began postulating ridiculously about wolf-bear packs—in spite of villager insistence that the creature was solitary. He pushed the book away in a mix of disgust and odd comfort.

It was good to have found
something
that validated his experience. He had begun to believe his encounter with the monster had been some vivid and horrible hallucination. On the other hand, the pedantic ramblings of “Sir Autor Bancroft” were less than useless when it came to finding a way to kill the damn thing.

He began digging through books, once more determined to find something he could use, when a hand touched his shoulder.

Kesh’s high-pitched scream echoed through the Athenaeum.

Every eye in the great room was riveted on him as he jumped off his stool to get away, sending books falling to the floor.

The face of a skinny young boy peeked hesitantly around the arm of a high-backed chair. He had dived behind it when Kesh, still shrieking and scrambling to one side, had begun to pelt leather-bound missiles at him.

The face disappeared behind the cushions once more when the boy spied
Theories
raised high, but Kesh lowered it slowly and looked around at the snickering patrons. Cursed sneaking people.
Can’t anyone just walk
normally
in this city?
Kesh snarled to himself and lowered the book. Aloud, he said, “Eos damn you, boy! Come out from there this instant.”

A waif of a boy dressed in palace raiment stepped hesitantly from the cushioned shelter. When the book had been dropped upon a stack of others, the page stepped forward with his head swiveling in search of listening ears. “Forgive me for startling you, Milord,” he said with a quick bow of his blonde head. “I have a message.”

The young page stepped closer and whispered, “Master Vinnicus has bid me come to you. You are to bring a group of prisoners to the base of the Cliffs of Judgment.”

Kesh frowned at the mention of the ghoulish gentleman who had become his new benefactor. He could never think of the man without goosepimples rising on his tender skin. Kesh shook the feeling from his shoulders. “What prisoners?” he snapped at the messenger.