Embers at Galdrilene (4 page)

Vaddoc nodded and Kaden stepped back. Emallya nudged her horse forward and they started across the bridge, the horses’ hooves sounding hollow against the wide planks of wood. A clear, empty night opened up before them on the other side. Emallya glanced back. Marden was still completely covered in fog. She turned away from the shrouded city.

Vaddoc took a deep breath. “Where do we go from here?”

Emallya stared to the west. “We head to Trilene.”

K
ellinar leaned against one wall of the alley and pressed the dirty, blood-soaked cloth against his side. Maybe the smell of refuse fermenting in the afternoon heat would deter the Keepers of Trilene. He doubted they would want to examine the narrow confines of the alley too closely.

Blood dripped from the cloth. He closed his eyes against a wave of dizziness. Someone had tried to kill him. Why? It didn’t really matter now. He remembered the roar in his head, the feel of the magic as it poured through his body and the feel of the air, every current ready to respond. Had he spoken to the air currents? No, that was impossible. In his mind, he saw the man lying with a broken neck in the market square.

“I killed a man,” he whispered to the empty alley. “I flaming used magic to kill a man. Burn it all, I can use magic. Why did this happen to me?”

The Keepers would never give up hunting him. An extension of the city guard, their main function was to capture anyone who displayed magical ability. There weren’t many who showed the ability and most turned themselves in. The Keepers weren’t gentle with those who tried to escape their grasp.

A hum crooned in his mind. Was it trying to comfort him? It felt like some other being or entity had set up living quarters in his head. He tried to ignore it. Hundreds of flies buzzed around him, landing on him with their sticky legs. He tried to ignore them, too.

“Maybe I’m already insane.” He should turn himself in, but all he could think of was getting away. “Well if you’re going to continue with this dragon-blasted lunacy, Kellinar, then you might as well flaming get on with it. You’re not going to figure a way out of anything if you stand here talking to yourself like a dragon-struck fool until you bleed to death.”

There was only one place to go…Serena’s. She was his best friend and could help. Or she might throw him to the Keepers. Magic might be where she drew the line on their friendship. Maybe that would be a good thing. The hum turned into a growl of protest.

He groaned and pushed away from the wall. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he moved slowly. He kept to the alleys and only crossed the narrow roads when forced to. The winding alleys would take him to Serena’s small apartment in a rundown boarding house on the far side of the Mallay District.

Pain made him stop several times. Hunched over, he leaned against slimy back walls and tried to take deep, slow breaths. At one point, he carefully peeled back the rag and looked at the tear in his side. His stomach convulsed; agony shot through his body. Bitter bile rose in the back of his throat. He brushed away the flies that landed on the wound and covered it back up. His head swam. He swallowed hard to keep from losing the contents of his stomach. With a shaky hand, he wiped away the cold sweat beading on his forehead and started off again.

He stood at the back door of the boarding house. He was there already? He couldn’t think clearly enough to form an answer. Shaking his head to try and clear it, he cracked the door open and looked to make sure no one was in the hall. He didn‘t want to chance being seen. Finding it empty, he slipped in and started up the first flight of stairs. Halfway to the second floor, his knees almost gave out as little black specks swirled across his vision. He hung onto the grimy rail and waited for the dizziness to pass. His eyes drooped closed and when he jerked them back open he stood in front of Serena’s door.

When did he finish climbing the stairs? He tried to remember, but couldn’t penetrate the haze in his mind. His arm felt almost too heavy to lift and he managed only a single knock. He leaned against the door and closed his eyes. He just needed to sleep for a little bit.

Serena sat at the small table near the tiny hearth in her room. She’d worked hard to make the grubby little place with its narrow bed more inviting. She still wasn’t proud of it, but it was what she could afford after being cast away from her family in the Dellar District. She’d been careful with her coin, though. A few more months of saving and she could leave the Mallay for someplace she didn’t have to chase rats from her room.

Spring had arrived early and the day felt unusually warm. With only one window in the room there was no air movement, but she refused to leave her door open to allow what little breeze there was to be pulled in from the hall. Without the door closed, she wouldn’t be able to read. Books and reading were illegal in the Mallay.

In response to the heat, she’d bound her hair into a bun and settled down with one of the few books she owned. Serena received only two free days a month from the tavern and she enjoyed the chance to relax.

A single knock at the door drew her attention from the book. Marking the page, she stood and hid it well before crossing the room to the door. She lifted the latch and stifled a scream as her friend fell into the room. “Kellinar!”

She gasped when she rolled him over. Blood covered his hands and caked on his shirt and pants. She peeled back the blood-soaked rag. A deep cut laid open his side below the rib cage.

His ice blue eyes drifted open. “Serena, I’m sorry.”

She raised her eyes to his ashen face. Pain etched lines around his mouth and eyes. “Sorry for what, Kellinar?”

“Couldn’t think…I didn’t know where else…” His eyes closed.

Serena looked at him in desperation. Why had he come to her? Why not a healer? She could heal the wound, but for a moment indecision held her. If she healed him, he could turn on her and she would end up in the Keepers’ hands again. This time she would die. This was a gaping wound, not a disease someone might be lucky enough to recover from.

She shut the door, knelt next to him, and took a deep breath. It didn’t matter. This was Kellinar and no matter what happened after, she couldn’t let him die. Serena laid her hands on the injury and closed her eyes. She reached out for her magic. In her mind’s eye, it was like a thousand threads.

Serena selected a few strands and mentally wove them together. Power flowed into her body, down her arms and through her hands. It expanded into the wound and she could see in her mind, the damage inside the injury. Working carefully, she laid the weave on the cut flesh and muscle and began to repair it. When she finally pulled her power back and let it dissipate, late afternoon light cast shadows across the room.

She sat back and looked down at him. His breathing was better. Though still too pale, his face held more color. Blood crusted in his short blond hair and his face was smeared with dirt. He smelled as if he had spent the day in the dirtiest alley he could find. His clothes were ruined and he needed to wash. She shook her head in exasperation. “What trouble have you got yourself into now? What trouble have you brought to my door?” His sleeping form offered no answers.

Though only a few inches taller than her and of a fairly slender build, he was still muscular and too heavy for her to move. After some thought, she rolled him onto the rug on the floor and placed a pillow under his head. Pulling her leather coin purse from its niche behind a loose stone in the hearth, she left him.

She needed to find Loki and learn what happened. Kellinar was a thief, but not one that would ever be brought in by the city guard; there was too much demand for his services by the High Houses of the city. If anyone would know it would be Loki, Kellinar’s bright-eyed young pupil. The youngster always seemed to know everything that went on in the Mallay before anyone else.

No one paid any attention to her as she left the building and for that she was grateful. It meant no one knew Kellinar had come to her. Until she knew what was going on, she had no intention of telling anyone where he was located.

The number of Keepers and city guards roaming the streets caught her attention. The Keepers would be involved for only one reason. She started paying more attention to the people walking past her and those gathered in groups around shop fronts and doorways. Whispers of “magic” and “escaped” reached her ears more than once. She wove through the crowds of people and past shopkeepers hawking their wares, looking for the little boy with sandy-blond hair.

The buildings of the Mallay, rising four, five, and sometimes six stories high, were laid out in no organized fashion. The warren of narrow streets wound around in a confusing maze of stone. Sometimes the buildings were so close together that a horse-drawn cart wouldn’t fit between. Other times, one building was built into the next and they bridged over the road from the third story up. It had taken her months to get used to moving through the Mallay. She had grown up in the Dellar, a district of the city where things were clean and laid out in a predictable pattern.

Everything about the Mallay spoke of the indifference to those who lived in the poorest part of the city. The Trilene, the highest level of the city, had private baths in the houses that were used for elimination, the washing of bodies, dishes, and clothing. All of the water and waste was washed down pipes with scented water. Those pipes drained into small canals in the Dellar D istrict, where they had communal bath houses for the same reasons. The waste was flushed directly into the canals, which poured off into the Mallay and ran under the city wall. What they ended up with in the Mallay was a wide, reeking, flow of sludge that ran through the district. There was no way to connect the district up with the canal, so they used the alleyways. Anyone in the Mallay caught dumping refuse into the canal was fined. The poor simply didn’t have the money to pay the taxes required to use the canal, therefore, they had no rights to it.

She passed an opening to one of the many alleys and crinkled her nose at the putrid smell that wafted from it. The alley itself was barely wide enough for two to walk abreast and filled with refuse of all kinds. She glanced at the interior, darkened by the deep shadows of the tall buildings and wondered if Kellinar really had spent the day in something like that.

She turned from the dark opening and found a sandy-haired boy standing next to her. Relief washed over her. “Loki, I’ve been looking all over for you. I need your help.”

The young boy looked up at her with bright blue eyes. “What do you want stolen?”

Serena sighed. “I don’t want anything stolen. I want information about Kellinar.”

The boy eyed her in wary silence.