Etchings of Power (Aegis of the Gods) (34 page)

“Exactly my point,” Mirza said, his eyes lighting up. “What if it’s just the Streams that need to find the same peace to exist in harmony?”

“Maybe you’re right. We can ask Teacher Galiana—”

“We can’t ask anyone, Ancel. Remember, we’re not supposed to know about the Chronicle of Undeath.”

Ancel smiled. “We don’t need to refer to the tome. We have the note left by this killer to use. It’s more than enough to start with and—”

Charra snarled. From outside, a blood freezing scream pierced the air.

“What in Amuni’s name…” Mirza swore as he rose to his feet and rushed to the door.

The scream changed to incessant shrieks.

Driven by the urgency of the wails, Ancel ignored his boots, snatched up his sword, and followed Mirza. He took the stairs by twos and threes, his bare feet slapping on the wood whenever he landed.

Mirza crashed out the back door to the Dancing Lady a few steps ahead of him. Ancel skidded to a stop in water, mud, and filth in the alley with Charra splashing at his heels. The daggerpaw focused down the lane, a warning rumble deep in his throat. Glass lamps at the front and rear of the inn and the adjoining buildings provided dim light that did little to dispel the alley’s deeper shadows. Wiping rain from his eyes, Ancel followed what drew Charra’s attention.

A person in what appeared to be wet, red silks lay on the ground. Someone wearing a dark cloak crouched over the body. Blood streamed away from the prone form.

The squatting person in the cloak glanced up. Their eyes widened.

Ancel caught a glimpse of honey colored hair and a smooth face more like a young boy’s than a man’s. In his hands, the youth held two weapons, no longer than short swords, but they reflected no light. It was as if the weapons drank the illumination from the lamps along the walls in the alley.

A yell echoed behind them from the alley’s entrance.

Ancel snatched a look over his shoulder. Several dark liveried men with swords brandished were running down the alley pointing toward them. He turned to see gold hair fleeing into the dark. Charra bounded after the youth.

“Wait,” Mirza shouted when Ancel made to follow his daggerpaw. “We shouldn’t follow him, not in the dark. Let’s not add ourselves to his list. Charra can handle himself. Besides,” he gestured toward the body on the ground, “his bodyguards are already here and the regiment should be here soon too.”

Ancel shivered as he peered down the alley, his clothes so soaked they stuck to his body. Charra’s gray-white form, obscured by the deluge, disappeared among the shadows. He knew his friend was right. To follow would be folly, if not fatal.

Within moments, booted feet were thumping and splashing toward them. Six merchant’s guards in chain mail with boiled leather peeking from under the metal sleeves, the Charging Boar of their blue and green surcoats wetly plastered to their armor, surrounded the young men. Eyes glared from inside hooded cloaks. An old guard with a potato for a nose and a pitted face pulled his hood back and stepped forward with his sword raised.

“No, these two had nothing to do with this,” said Innkeeper Callan who stepped out from the back door. The pear shaped man shouldered his way through the guards. “They were upstairs when the screams began.” His eyes shifted when he looked at the body on the ground, and he wrung his hands before wiping them on his soiled apron.

The pit-faced guard strode by Ancel and Mirza, water swirling around his boots. He sheathed his sword and signaled to another soldier. Together, they flipped the merchant’s body over.

Ancel shivered more from the sight than the cold rain beating down on him. He’d never seen such terrible wounds before. Entrails hung out, and steam rose from the corpse. The man’s face was an unrecognizable mess. Not even Charra could do such damage.

“Seize those young men,” the old guard ordered, his voice drowning out the rain.

Rough hands snatched Ancel from behind. He twisted, and a fist as hard as a brick struck him on the side of his face, and his sword clattered onto the cobbles. Stars danced in his vision coupled with the ground rushing to meet him. Before he could muster a coherent thought, he found himself struggling to catch his breath as a boot mashed his back and kept his face pinned into a rancid puddle among the broken cobbles. His eyes stung from the bilge. Sputtering to catch a breath served to fill his nostrils and mouth with the foul smelling and even worse tasting runoff.

A loud growl echoed in the alley.

From somewhere in his stupor, Ancel heard the frantic cries of the guardsmen. He thought he recognized Danvir’s deep bellow. Was that the sound of steel clashing against steel?

As Ancel regained his senses, the man above him cursed. The weight of the boot against Ancel’s back lifted. Retching up the filthy water, he crawled to his knees. Sure enough, the metal clang of swords and the shouts and grunts of exertion sounded all around him. Mixed in were moans, plaintive cries and Charra’s snarls and growls.

Head down, eyes still stinging, Ancel could just make out armored legs stumbling about. He reached out blindly along the ground until he felt his sword hilt, then he struggled to his feet. Lightning flickered, brightening his surroundings. Thunder rumbled and drowned out the noise of the rain drumming against the slate roofs and pattering on the cobbles.

Danvir and Mirza, swords in hand, stood over the bodies of two dead guardsmen. Charra cooed next to two others, their armor pierced in over a dozen places by his bone hackles, their blood pouring like the deluge.

The daggerpaw’s gaze was locked on a slim figure dressed in clinging gray pants and a shirt. A black cloak hung limp as the person inspected the corpses of the other soldiers. Honey colored hair spilled down the figure’s shoulder and back. There was no mistaking the dual short swords that seemed to drink the light from the alley’s lamps.

The bells of the Streamean temples tolled.

Lightning skittered across the sky once more, casting the alley into daylight for several heartbeats. The killer turned to them.

Sword held out before him, Ancel edged closer to Charra.
How didn’t I recognize those eyes earlier?

“Come,” Kachien said, sheathing her black weapons. “We have to leave now if you wish to live.”

CHAPTER 26

Ryne Shimmered across the field.

Decades had passed since he last used this ability. So much so that he’d almost forgotten the rush it brought. Every time he Shimmered, it felt as if he stood at the edge of a precipice and flung himself into the depths. His stomached clutched with the sudden falling sensation. The light beam where he would land pulled until it swallowed him, and they became one. To a person without the power to see, he would vanish and reappear at the location he targeted. To those who could see, he simply moved at blinding speed.

“Go! Kill, tear, maim, destroy. The world is at your fingertips. Take them, they deserve death. They killed yours. You kill theirs. One good turn…”
On and on the deep voice droned whenever his Scripts drew in more Mater, the energy caressing his ears with vengeful whispers.

His head filled to the brim with the words as his body embraced the need to kill. The voice built into song. A chaotic opera with blaring instruments playing a rousing rhythm. Sakari had named it his kill craze, and rightly so. Ryne cackled with the thought. A maniacal sound he didn’t recognize as his own voice.

The second voice attempted to find purchase, but this time it gibbered.
“No. Calm yourself. Harmony. Seek it. Calm. Kill only if you must. Draw back, peel away. Subdue the power of the Scripts.”

Ryne sneered. He slammed his thoughts shut against the second voice’s pleas.

Heat exploded from him like the mouth of a volcano, an insane cackle erupting from him once again.

A grin splitting his features, he reached the middle of the field and spun to face his pursuers. He’d yet to meet man or beast who could hold onto Mater longer than he could without losing their sanity or dying from the pressure on their mind and body. The languishing shadelings proved no different.

Across the myriad copses, rutted trails and open fields, the shadelings now ran instead of Blurring. As expected, with their long leaps and bounds, the wraithwolves had separated themselves from the darkwraiths in the long chase. They continued to open the distance, so lost in their own murderous frenzy they no longer ran as a pack.

The first beast leaped across the trail to Ryne’s field. Ryne Shimmered to the wraithwolf before it landed in the knee-high grass.

He drew his sword with his right hand. The Scripts triggered. Light raced down the blade as if a fire chased fuel, and the sword rose in a backhanded slice to meet the leaping wolf.

Green eyes winked out as the creature’s head parted from its shoulders. Before the slice reached the highest point, Ryne was already drawing the weapon down and sheathing it. The wraithwolf’s flesh dissipated like ash blowing on the wind, the powdery substance never reaching the ground, the smell of roasted meat filling the air.

The next wolf gained the field. Ryne repeated the same attack. With each kill, the pressure from his kill craze eased a miniscule amount. Clouds scudded across the sky as the sixth wraithwolf managed to land among the grass while Ryne was finishing off the fifth.

Black fur ruffling with the wind, the shadeling bounded through the grass, muscular arms and legs pumping, its eyes ablaze, snarls issuing from its gaping jaws. Ryne relaxed as the beast drew shade, Blurred, and emerged within reach of him. Hot breath and froth from the shadeling’s maw brushed Ryne as its jaws snapped. Long, poisonous claws slashed.

Ryne stepped around the attack, and within the same motion, he called on the Scripts of the twin moons. His arm flashed up in a circular motion and back down, the move mimicking the shape of the moons. The wraithwolf’s left arm went flying into the night followed by a pained scream from the monster. Ryne sheathed his greatsword.

The shadeling retreated, circling him tentatively. Ryne dropped his sword arm, inviting it in, and the wraithwolf took the bait. It Blurred once again, swiping and snarling at his right side.

This time, Ryne pictured dust swirls carried on the wind and moved with his Scripts. He spun beyond the slashing claws in a full rotation. His sword came out and up. The strike lopped off the creature’s right arm. The wraithwolf mewled in terror with the loss of two limbs as it stumbled forward and fell, the acrid aroma of its burnt flesh rising in smoky wisps.

As the twin moons cleared the clouds, their silvery surfaces illuminating the field, the wraithwolf struggled up onto its legs. Smoking stumps were all that remained of the arms. No blood flowed from the wounds. Ryne’s lips twisted into a hideous smile with the knowledge that the cauterized wounds wouldn’t allow any living appendage to grow back.

The wraithwolf teetered for a moment before steadying itself. Frothing slobber flew from its maw, and with a piteous cry, it pushed off those powerful legs and flew headfirst. Ryne leapt up on currents of air essences, one with the Flows. His sword swooped down like the leathery wings of the legendary Hengen etched into his Scripts. No sound passed from the monster as the head went spinning. The black-furred body shriveled and dissipated.

Shuddering, Ryne turned to face the other wraithwolves. The fight had taken longer than he wanted. The beasts, however, stayed on the other side of the trail, pacing back and forth, green-eyed gazes never leaving him. Within moments, several darkwraiths joined them. These too did not cross the threshold. Instead, they waited.

Ryne’s insides burned with the craze. He hadn’t killed enough to abate its pull. His body trembled as he fought to resist the urge and rush into a headlong attack. Cackling maniacally, he focused on the gathering shadelings. They would be his release. Here, he would begin to avenge Carnas. Here, he would make right what happened to Kahkon. Here, he would appease his power.

If he died in the process, then he would finally be released from a world that never was his. A world where he’d wreaked havoc, where he’d sown suffering, fear, and grief. Such a fate would be just repayment. Faces of the dead flitted through his mind. The time was now. He commanded his Scripts.

The second voice came roaring into his mind, this time it didn’t gibber or plead. It questioned and ridiculed his foolishness. What of the good he’d done? What of the many lives he’d saved over the long years? Did those not counterbalance the suffering he caused? What of his purpose? What of the one who would show him the way that Halvor mentioned? Was he willing to die without knowing? What of the shadeling army and the suffering and chaos it would bring?

Caught between the warring voices, Ryne threw back his head. He didn’t abandon his hold on his Scripts. Instead, he pictured those depicting the Forms—the earth, the mountains, the metals, the trees and brush around him. Through the Scripts, he drew on the essences of the earth that pressed dirt into stone, stone into metal, and metal into precious jewels. The power of the Forms built within him like the vast Nevermore Heights to the north. With it came strength, an unwavering determination, steadfastness to match the very bedrock forming those mountains.