Lament (Scars of the Sundering Book 2) (3 page)

“Sounds like he’s okay to me,
Deli.” Kale released his grip on Pancras long enough to turn and face his
sister.

“Indeed.” Princess Valene nodded
in agreement. “I’ve never heard of the dead feasting on bread and wine. Lady
Milena and I will leave you to your reunion. A guard will be just outside in
case you need assistance returning to your chambers.”

Delilah tilted her head in
acknowledgement. After the two humans departed, Kali and Edric moved into the
room and closed the door behind them. The drak sorceress spun on Pancras.
“Okay, spill it! How did you do it? You died in our arms.”

She joined with her brother in
standing before Pancras, stared up at him, and awaited an answer.

“I do not know.” The minotaur
sighed and shook his head. Pancras uncovered his withered arm and flexed his
fingers. His friends gasped as the skin cracked and creaked like old, dry
leather. “It was not without a cost, it seems.”

“Is that… are ya diseased?” Edric
backpedaled at the sight of Pancras’s arm.

“I’m not certain. I suspect
whatever force is responsible for my revivification exacted this”—He waved his
withered hand—“perhaps as a reminder?” He slid off the slab, knees buckling as
his hooves touched the floor.

Clutching the top of the slab to
remain upright, Pancras chuckled. “Looks like I might need some help to our
chambers.”

* * *

Pancras regained his strength in
only a few days, but additional snowstorms further delayed their departure. The
minotaur took the opportunity to rest and study the route to Muncifer. Kale was
happy to see his friend up and moving around again, though he didn’t understand
how Pancras was alive. In the end, Kale was satisfied that the mysteries of
magic were beyond his understanding. Being alive was better than being dead, in
Kale’s opinion, and distancing themselves from Almeria and the dangerous
political games the humans liked to play was the best way the drak could think
of to ensure that all of them remained alive.

As the weeks passed, the snows of
winter melted, fading crystal white vistas into dirty slush and muddy streets.
The soggy, wet chill soaked into peoples’ bones, and he was grateful for the
chaos that gave him wings and fire-breath, which kept a warm flame within him.

With the help of Edric and Kali,
Kale visited every tavern, alehouse, and gambling den in Almeria while leaving
his sister to study her grimoire. Though she didn’t say it, he understood she
appreciated the solitude. Pancras kept to himself most of the time, poring over
scrolls and tomes Lady Milena and her brother brought him as he sought an
answer to the question they all wanted answered: why was he alive?

It was a question Kale intended
to leave to those smarter than he. In truth, he was eager to return to the
road. Of the five of them, only Pancras had been to Muncifer before, and the
stories he told at dinner piqued Kale’s curiosity.

“Muncifer was once a proud
dwarven city.”

Edric raised his goblet to this.

“It was until The Sundering, that
is. When the world broke, Muncifer was exposed. Great rifts and cracks in the
earth opened up. Half of the city fell away into the Maelstrom. When the world
was healed, it remained exposed. Most of the dwarves left, seeking solace with
their brethren living under the mountains.”

This was a familiar story for
Kale. It nearly destroyed the world. He wasn’t sure what caused it; some said
it was the death of one of the gods, Rannos, the Dragon Father. The fae fled,
arcane energies infusing the world diffused, and whole nations were destroyed.
Since the healing of the world began, magic returned and the fae reappeared,
but in every corner of Calliome, evidence of The Sundering remained. The chaos
rift through which he was thrown before they left Drak-Anor was one such scar.

“Aye, the dwarves left, and the
minotaurs moved in.” Edric drained his goblet and belched.

“Minotaurs and humans.” Pancras
reached across the table and helped himself to another slab of meat from the
roast the kitchen sent up. “There were some draks and a few dwarven traders now
and again.”

“Draks?” Kali perked up. “What
clans?”

“I don’t know, Kali. I didn’t pay
much attention to draks in those days.”

Delilah elbowed her brother in
the ribs. “And now he can’t get enough of us.”

“Are we going to be able to make
it there by Spring’s Dawning, Pancras?” The more the snow melted, the more Kale
worried about their timetable. “It’s a long way away, and it’s getting warmer.”

“About six weeks away, by my
reckoning.” Edric poured himself another goblet of wine.

“Spring’s Dawning is marked by
the rise of The Plow, Kale.” Pancras offered half of the slab of meat he had to
Delilah. “Tinian’s Eye is still in the sky, and The Plow doesn’t appear until
that’s been gone several weeks.” The drak sorceress declined with a shake of
her head.

Terrakaptis taught Kale about the
constellations of stars in the sky, or tried to. There were so many to
remember, each with their own story, and Kale had trouble recalling all of
them. “Do you really think the humans will let us leave?”

Pancras glanced at each of them
as he thought for a moment. “Yes, I believe they will. The princess has been
very gracious these last few weeks.”

Pancras’s confidence assuaged
Kale’s concerns. He couldn’t overlook, though, that it was his friendship with
Kali that involved them in Almeria’s politics to begin with.

Kali cleared her throat. “We
should acquire mounts, I think.” She eyed Kale from across the table, her
burnt-orange scales flashing in the light from the room’s candles and lanterns.

Edric grunted. “I hate horses.”

Delilah squinted at her brother.
“We’ve never ridden them.”

“I have an idea about that.” Kali
nodded at Pancras. “The Firescale village is a few days west of the city. They
have mounts that won’t be jittery around draks and minotaurs, and they’ll give
us a better price than anyone here will. With mounts, we’ll easily make up the
time it takes to detour.”

Pancras scratched his chin and
nodded. “All right. I like that idea. Let’s spend a few days wrapping up our
affairs here and then resume our journey.”

Kale raised his goblet. “Hear,
hear!” The others joined him in his toast.

After dinner, he walked down to
the palace grounds with Kali. Since the gardens were soggy from melting snow,
they kept to the paved paths. The two draks walked arm in arm, through the
garden. Between the spongy grasses and bare flowerbeds, there wasn’t much to
see, but it was a diversion from being cooped up within their quarters.

“It’ll be nice to get back on the
road.” As bored as he was hanging around the palace, Kale hoped for an uneventful
journey to Muncifer.

“I’m nervous about returning to
the village. It’s been years.” Kali shook her head and kicked a rock off the
path. “I fear seeing the damage Reznik did.”

Lord Reznik’s salt mine under the
city enslaved most of the draks from Kali’s home village. Having disrupted that
operation and freed the slaves were memories Kale could take away from Almeria
and be proud of. “I wish we could stay and help rebuild.”

“Maybe you and your sister can
come back with me when all this business with the wizards is over.”

“Yeah, maybe.” Kale wondered if
his sister would be interested in relocating to a village of draks and leaving
behind their friends in Drak-Anor. The thought appealed to him, but he would
have preferred for the Firescale village to be farther away from Almeria.

“One thing’s for sure: I’ll be
glad to get away from all these humans.”

Kali laughed in agreement.

* * *

Pancras kept to himself in the
weeks following his apparent resurrection. He didn’t eschew dining with his
friends or socializing when they approached him, but he did not seek out the
company of others. Instead, he reflected on his experience, despite having no
memory of death itself.

That he had no memory of it
troubled him.

His withered right arm and the
dark haze at the edges of his vision troubled him as well. While he attended
the Arcane University, Pancras learned that rites existed to resurrect the
dead, but the specific rituals associated with those rites were lost with The
Sundering, and all carried with them terrible costs. Pancras couldn’t recall
anything in those rituals that resembled what happened to him.

On warmer days, he walked into
town and scoured book sellers and temple libraries for volumes that might hold
the answers he sought. It was clear after a few failures that Almeria was light
on resources and those educated about certain arcane matters. There were
temples aplenty, but none dedicated to the goddess of magic, Selene.

“They don’t have an Arcane
University, though, do they?” Delilah glanced up from her grimoire as he
groused to her in front of the fire. “Why would they have a temple of Selene?”

“She’s not an obscure or dead
god, Delilah. She’s the daughter of Tinian, sister of Apellon and Anetha.
They’re well-represented here.”

“Yeah, well, they also say
they’re civilized; yet, they had a salt mine under the city staffed by slaves
that no one knew about.”

“You make a good point.” Pancras
slumped in his chair and sighed, rubbing his right arm. The warmth of the fire crackling
in the hearth did not seem to affect the chill that lingered in his withered
limb. He decided to change the subject before she buried her snout in her
grimoire.

“I think it’s time we return to
the road. The worst of the winter’s storms should be over.”

“Good. The sooner this business
is over with, the better. I want to go home, Pancras.”

Pancras agreed.

A gust of wind from the opening
doors caused the hearth to flicker. Kale and Kali bounded into the room,
laughing. Delilah forced a smile onto her face and snapped her grimoire shut.
The other two draks took no notice of Delilah and Pancras and helped themselves
to some wine from a jug on the dinner table.

Pancras gestured to the grimoire.
“Learn anything new lately?”

“As a matter of fact, I’ve been
learning tons of earth magic. Some water magic, too. I don’t know how the book
decides what to show me.” She opened the book to the page she last read. The
symbols and writing were still undecipherable to Pancras.

“Perhaps you’re just learning
techniques in the order in which Gil-Li wrote the book?” That made the most
sense to Pancras.

“Maybe.” Delilah leaned over to
peer around Pancras’s chair. “Hey, lovebirds! Pancras says we’re leaving soon,
so separate yourselves and get to packing!”

“Packing?” Kale brought his
goblet of wine over to the chairs in front of the fire. “We’re leaving
tonight?”

“No, not tonight,” Pancras shook
his head. “Nor tomorrow. Possibly the day after. I still have a few errands I’d
like to run in town.” He pointed a withered finger at Kale. “And you still have
to pick up my horn tips from that jeweler.”

“I forgot!” Kale smacked his
forehead. “Things got so crazy with you dying and all. I’ll go get them first
thing.”

Pancras smiled. In truth, he’d
forgotten, too. “I’ll go with you. I need to find something to cover this arm
with. Maybe a leatherworker has a sleeve or something with a glove.”

“A black glove?” Kale poked at
Pancras’s arm with a clawed finger. Pancras smacked the digit away. “You can be
mysterious with it.”

“That’s what I need: to draw
attention to myself.”

“Will it matter much where we’re
going?” Kali cocked her head. “Muncifer is more of a minotaur city than human,
right?”

Pancras faced her. “About
fifty-fifty. Or it was twenty-five years ago. The humans there tend to be more
tolerant than they are here.” He hoped the situation in Muncifer had not
changed drastically since he was last there.
A lot can change in a
quarter-century.

* * *

The next morning, Delilah busied
herself with packing, while Kale and Pancras went into town to take care of
last-minute errands. Meanwhile, Kali volunteered to track down Edric. Half of
the time, the dwarf didn’t return to the palace at night and staggered with a hangover
to their quarters in the middle of the following day.

Delilah took the liberty of
sending a messenger to fetch Lady Milena so she could inform the humans of
their plans. Delilah didn’t feel any obligation to be polite to the knight and
the princess, but she figured they’d want to be notified Pancras was leaving.
To their credit, the humans were true to their word and didn’t try to convince
Pancras, or any of them for that matter, to undertake any tasks or favors over
the last several weeks.

Lady Milena arrived before any of
the group returned from their errands. She seemed surprised to find Delilah
alone. “Where is everyone else?” Her armor clanked as she entered the room. To
Delilah, the thought of having to be clothed in that constrictive, noisy metal
all day was incomprehensible. The knight cocked an eyebrow and regarded
Delilah, resting one hand on the hilt of her sword.