Frostborn: The Master Thief (29 page)

“Which means,” said Ridmark, “he doesn’t trust whoever hired him. He’s going to hide it in Thainkul Balzon, and then go to meet with his backers.”

Morigna scowled. “Probably he wants to ask for more money.”

“Perhaps,” said Ridmark.

“Then we need not confront him at all,” said Gavin. “Morigna’s rats will see where he hides the soulstone, and once he leaves we can simply take it back.” 

“I think it would be better,” said Kharlacht, “to take him alive.” Ridmark looked at the orc. “If we take him alive, we can make him tell us who hired him. It is still a long journey to Urd Morlemoch, and the more knowledge about our enemies that we possess, the stronger our position.” 

“Kill him and take the soulstone,” said Morigna. 

Caius raised his eyebrows. “That is rather brutal.”

“He stole from us,” said Morigna, “and took something of terrible power, all in the service of men and creatures that threaten the world. We would be well without our rights to kill him. And if he is dead, he poses no further threat.”

“I agree,” said Azakhun. “I do not presume to command, only to advise. But a thief has forfeited his rights, and the gods of stone and silence frown upon those who steal from their fellows. Kill him and reclaim your stolen goods.”

“The Dominus Christus counsels mercy,” said Caius.

“The Dominus Christus!” said Morigna, her voice rising with annoyance. “Tell me, Brother. Will the Dominus Christus descend from his throne to reclaim the soulstone? To stop the Frostborn? If he had wanted this thief spared, he should not have let him become a thief.”

“Jager saved my life,” said Calliande.

Ridmark looked at her. “When?”

“During the fight at the Crow’s Helm,” she said, voice quiet. “One of Mournacht’s spells stunned me for a few moments. Everyone else was fighting the Mhorites. One of the Kothluuskans would have killed me, but Jager took him first.”

“What?” said Morigna. “Why would he do that? It gained him nothing.” 

“Perhaps he was trying to gain your trust for later treachery,” said Kharlacht.

“No,” said Ridmark, frowning. “If Calliande was slain…it would have been to Jager’s advantage.” He did not want to think on that, how she might have died in the Challenge against Imaria, slain for Ridmark’s crimes. “If she had been killed in the fighting, there would have been no one to stop Imaria from bringing any number of false charges against us. In the chaos Jager could have escaped with ease.”

“A man may be a thief,” said Caius, “but that does not mean he is a murderer.”    

“We will decide what to do when we find him,” said Ridmark. “Come. Azakhun, walk with me. All of you, do not speak unless it is necessary. I do not want to alert our quarry.”

He lifted his leather wristband and led the way, the others following him.

###

Jager descended the stone steps, the light of the glowstones ahead stabbing into his eyes. 

The dwarven ruins awaited. 

He suspected the builders of Coldinium’s catacombs had stumbled into the dwarven ruins by accident. The dwarves had not yet founded their Enclave when the catacombs had been excavated, and therefore had not been there to warn the Comes when the workmen found the ruins.

The stairs ended in an unfinished gallery, stone niches lining the walls. A rough stone wall waited at the far end of the gallery, the light from the glowstones streaming out through a wide gash in the rock. Beyond he saw a massive hall of the dwarven ruins, the walls and floor and ceiling built from polished gray stone. Glowstones shone in the arches overhead, and hundreds of stone tiles, each about one foot square, covered the floor. Every tile had a gap of about an inch around it, and each tile bore a different dwarven glyph. Stepping on the right glyphs offered a safe way across the hall.

Stepping on the wrong glyphs brought a rather less pleasant result. 

Here and there piles of bones dotted the hall, scarred and slashed from heavy blades. 

Jager leaned against the wall for a moment, taking deep breaths. He knew the safe paths through the glyphs, had spent weeks triggering the tiles one at a time to learn the trapped ones. But he needed to concentrate to do it properly. After everything he had survived, it would be a cruel irony if he tripped and fell to his death on the blades of a millennia-old dwarven trap. 

Mara needed him to live. He repeated the words over and over in his head, a litany to drive himself forward. Jager did not know how he would get back into Tarrabus’s domus, how he would find the proof he needed. The task seemed almost insurmountable. 

One step at a time.

He took one more deep breath and headed toward broken stone of the wall, preparing to enter the dwarven hall.

“Jager.”

The voice sent a bolt of alarm down his spine.

Jager spun, reaching for the dark elven dagger, the weapon Tarrabus had called a soulcatcher. 

Ridmark Arban stood at the top of the stairs, staff in his right hand. Calliande waited at his right, white light glimmering around her fingers, Morigna at his left, purple fire crackling in her free hand. Caius, Kharlacht, and Gavin all had their weapons drawn, and an armored dwarf in a masked war helm stood with the friar. Azakhun, Jager thought, given the dents in his cuirass.

For a moment they regarded each other in silence. 

“Well,” said Jager at last, his mind racing for a plan, any plan, “you appear to be quite lost.”

“Given that you are about to climb into a trap-filled dwarven ruin,” said Ridmark, “we may not be the only ones.”  

“Truly,” said Jager. “A pleasant coincidence, then. The exit is that way.” He waved his hand. “You may go about your business in peace.”

He was exhausted and in pain, but he would be damned before he showed weakness to a man like Ridmark of the Arbanii, to the son of a noble of Andomhaim. 

Calliande stared at him, a frown on her face as Jager’s fingers coiled around the hilt of the soulcatcher. 

The chorus of whispers started in his mind once more.

“I think you know why I am here,” said Ridmark.

“Actually, I don’t,” said Jager. “You should be dead. Tarrabus hates you, and the most honorable Dux of Caerdracon does not seem the sort of man to forget a grudge. I thought he would have crucified you by now.” 

“He tried,” said Ridmark. “Calliande persuaded him otherwise.”

Jager made an elaborate mocking bow. “The Magistria must be most persuasive.”

“She is,” said Caius. 

Calliande made no response, her eyes still fixed on the soulcatcher.

“Plainly,” said Jager. If he used the weapon, he could twist their shadows against them and escape in the chaos, as he had in Tarrabus’s domus. Yet the very thought made his skin crawl. And it might not be necessary. If he fled through the trapped hall, they would not be able to follow him. 

Ridmark took one step down the stairs. “Should we dispense with the games, or shall we trade witticisms for a while longer?”

“I would prefer witticisms,” Jager said. “I’m ever so good at them.” 

“The soulstone,” said Ridmark. “We would like it back. And we would like to know who hired you to steal it.”

“Or what?” said Jager. “You’ll kill me?”

“No,” said Ridmark. “Only if you make us. But it needn’t come to that. Simply leave the soulstone upon the ground, tell us who hired you, and then depart. We will let you go in peace, and seek no vengeance upon you.”

“Oh, you won’t, will you?” said Jager. Yet he almost believed Ridmark. He had seen the man fight, had seen him march out to fight Mournacht in a duel. This man did what he said he would do. 

“Yes,” said Ridmark. “I will let you go in peace. Perhaps we can even aid you.”

Jager laughed. “I would like to see that.”

Yet he wavered. He needed help against Tarrabus. Yet Ridmark was still a noble of Andomhaim, and Calliande a Magistria. Such people had brought nothing but misery and pain into Jager’s life.

“We can,” said Ridmark. “I think you have gotten in over your head.”

“Is that a joke about my height?” said Jager. “How gauche.” 

“If you’ve stolen that soulstone in hopes of selling it,” said Ridmark, “you do not know how dangerous of a prize you have found. If you have been hired to steal it, your patrons will kill you the minute you hand it over to them.” 

“Do you think so?” said Jager, keeping his tone light. Yet Ridmark’s words disturbed him. The Gray Knight’s guesses had been uncannily accurate.

“And if you have been coerced into stealing it,” said Ridmark, “we may be able to help you.”

“How?” said Jager, more of his anger seeping into his voice than he would have liked. “How can you possibly help me? You couldn’t save yourself from Tarrabus. How…”

“Then it is Tarrabus,” said Ridmark. “He has some hold over you, doesn’t he?”

Jager felt himself go cold. He remembered Tarrabus’s warning about seeking help from Ridmark. The Dux sought to turn Mara into a weapon, but if Jager asked Ridmark’s help, Tarrabus might kill Mara out of sheer spite. 

“He is a ruthless and brutal man,” said Ridmark, “and he will kill you once he has the soulstone.”

And he would kill Mara, if Jager helped Ridmark. But perhaps Ridmark could help him. The man had defeated a female urdmordar when he was but a Swordbearer of eighteen, or so the tales went. He had survived in the Wilderland for five years. Well, so had Smiling Otto, but he had walls and mercenaries and a catapult. Ridmark had only a staff and a gray cloak. 

Jager’s fist tightened against the dagger’s hilt. 

No. He had trusted a knight of Andomhaim once, and it had cost Jager’s father his life.

“I am sorry about this,” said Jager. “Really, I am. But if I help you…it will cost me more than you can possibly imagine.”

He started to draw the dark elven dagger from its sheath.

And then Calliande gasped.

“Stop!” she shouted. “Stop! I remember! I’ve seen a weapon like that before. Jager, for the love of God, stop!” 

He was struck by how beautiful she looked, so fierce and urgent and keen, her blue eyes ablaze with intensity. Of course, she was no match for Mara, but Calliande…he suspected if she gave a speech, men would cheer and raise their swords and follow her to whatever goal she sought. 

“What?” he said.

“That dagger,” she said. “It’s called a soulcatcher.”

“I knew that,” said Jager, though he had only learned that a few hours before. 

“Do you know what it does?” said Calliande. 

“It commands shadows,” said Jager. “I’ve used it twice before, and…”

“If you use it a third time, here and now, you will regret it for centuries,” said Calliande. “Maybe even millennia.”

“What are you talking about?” said Jager, though he felt a surge of alarm.

Twice. One in Cintarra, and once in Tarrabus’s domus. The whispers. The whispers in his mind when he held the dagger…

“The dark elves used soulcatchers to steal the life force of their enemies and enhance their magical prowess,” said Calliande, her voice low and urgent. “But they loved cruelty, appreciated it as an art. Sometimes they gave soulcatchers to their slave kindreds, to the orcs and the halflings and the manetaurs. A dark elf could use a soulcatcher without harm. But if a mortal used a soulcatcher to command the shadows three times…”

Jager’s fingers trembled against the dagger’s hilt. “What? What happens after the third time?”

“He would transform,” said Calliande. “A soulcatcher was one of the ways the dark elves created their war beasts.”

“Are you saying,” said Morigna, “that if he uses that weapon, he’ll become a…what? An urvaalg? An urshane?”

“No,” said Calliande with a sharp shake of her head. “An urhaalgar.”

“No,” said Jager, shaking his head to cover the tremor in his limbs. “No.” His father had told stories of urhaalgars, as had his mother before her death. They spoke of creatures that flowed through the darkness like smoke, with eyes of bloody fire and talons that dripped poison. “You’re lying, the way Magistri and nobles always lie.”

“Not about this, Jager,” said Calliande.

Jager hesitated, fresh dread churning in his gut. Mara had refused to speak of her father, the dark elven prince of Nightmane Forest, but she had told him that the dark elves created their war beasts from both mortal and animal blood. Urvaalgs had once been normal wolves, and ursaars bears. The more powerful creatures, like the urshanes and the urdhracos, had once been mortals with dark elven blood, the offspring of dark elven lords and their enslaved mortal mistresses. That had always been Mara’s fear, that one day her dark blood would overwhelm her and twist her into a monster, a fear that Tarrabus Carhaine threatened to make real.

And had the urhaalgars once been halflings like Jager? 

He remembered the horror he felt every time he had touched the dagger. Had his flesh and bone and blood known of the danger, even if he had not?

His hand moved away from the soulcatcher, even before he realized he had in fact made the decision.

“Thank you,” said Calliande gently. “Jager…that would have been very bad.” 

“Give us the soulstone,” said Ridmark. There was no gentleness in his voice, but he was calm and confident. “And we can help you against whatever hold Tarrabus has over you.”

“No,” said Jager, his voice a hoarse croak “No. There are always promises…and they are always broken.” What would Ridmark do once he learned that Jager no longer had the soulstone? “I will rely on myself, and no one else.”

He dashed for the opening to the dwarven ruins.

“Jager!” said Ridmark, but Jager ignored the shout. If he could just get through the trapped hall, he could slip away from them. Of course, he did not know how they had tracked him down in the first place. Calliande’s magic, perhaps, or Morigna’s? Well, he could worry about that later. If he…

A low, wheezing laugh brushed his ears.

It was coming from one of the empty niches in the gallery wall.

Jager whirled, snatching his short sword from his belt.  

An old man rose from one of the niches. He looked ancient, so old that his head was little more than a skull draped in loose skin, his ragged hair and beard hanging tangled around his skinny neck. He wore a crumbling black robe, dust and cobwebs clinging to the rough cloth, and his eyes…