Obsidian Ridge (24 page)

They moved as a group, each trying to reach the same goal, converging on the back center of the audience chamber and the raised dais that was now a swarming mass of shiny black beasts. They hacked, shoved, and slashed, aware even without words that every strike counted, that every moment they were unable to see their king meant that the chances of him coming back to them was diminished. And they fought all the harder for it.

A shout rang out through the hall. This was not the sound of a dying man. It was not the horror of a solider being torn to bits or the shriek of pain the beasts let out when pinned to the floor. No, this was the victorious shout of a conqueror, the sound of a man who led through not only his words but also his actions.

It was the defiant roar of a king.

The mass of twisting black flesh burst up and away from the throne. And in the middle, appearing from the attacking beasts like a phoenix from the flames, Korox Morkann arose.

His helm had been torn from his head. Bits of blackened

flesh streaked his armor. Blood covered his face. But he arose nonetheless, a beacon in the dark, a sight to behold in the middle of his besieged audience chamber. “To me!” he shouted.

The king cut down the black beasts with each swing of his blade. His soldiers pressed in, clearing the floor between them and him until finally they had reached their goal. Until they were beside him.

Regrouped at the top of the room, the king led his army onward. Diving back into the flood of attackers, he made them pay for their impudence—and they made him pay right back. For every beast the king and his warriors slew, two soldiers fell.

It was a war of attrition. Had he stopped to think about it, Korox would never have fought this way. He never would have willingly sacrificed so many of his brave men and women to fight such a foe. But he had not started this war, nor had he picked this battlefield.

Slowly the audience chamber cleared. Slowly they grew closer to victory, pressing the invaders in an organized fashion out the door and toward the portcullis. If they had to, they would clear Klarsamryn one room at a time until they took back that what belonged to them.

Bursting through, they swept into the great hall, pushing back the invaders all the while. Victory was within reach. The light at the end of the chamber came in over the drawbridge. If they could reach the entrance, they could win back the day.

Mere moments away from completing their victory, their momentum stalled. Their push came to a halt as the light at the end of the drawbridge went black and a huge second wave of beasts from the Obsidian Ridge crashed into the front of the palace.

It flooded past the portcullis, swamping the great hall, turning the tide on King Korox and his warriors.

The creatures scampered up the walls, filled the ceiling, and surrounded the remainder of the Erlkazarians in the great hall. The king’s offensive became a defensive, and the surviving warriors encircled their king, preparing to fight to the death. The beasts closed on them, their numbers growing by the moment.

Then, just as quickly as they had arrived, the creatures stopped. They held their ground, pawing at the floor, growling at the soldiers, their advance halted.

“What are they doing?” asked Captain Kaden, his eyes wide, his back to the king.

“I do not know,” replied Korox, breathing hard from the exertion. “But something tells me we’re about to find out.”

The mob of horrific beasts parted, lining up in an organized row and leaving a narrow passage that stretched out under the portcullis and across the drawbridge. What had been a chaotic, bloodthirsty horde had become a disciplined, organized army standing at attention.

Down the center of their ranks walked a hunched, disfigured man.

He wore the trappings of a mage—robes instead of armor, a wand in his belt instead of a sword, and wrinkles upon his face instead of scars. He walked upright on two legs, had two eyes, arms, and hands, but that was where the similarity between this figure and the rest of humanity ended.

His spine curved over itself as if it were trying to turn his whole body into a giant question mark. His back rose higher than his head, one shoulder more elevated than the other, and was marked mostly by a large, misshapen hump. His face, covered in blackened boils, was caved in, making his eyes bulge as he scanned the waiting beasts along the drawbridge.

Despite his disfigurement, the man was actually quite tall, due mostly to the length of his long, spindly limbs, which he used to great effect, moving through Klarsamryn at a rapid clip.

Arriving before the circle of Erlkazarian warriors, the man peered into the crowd.

“I am Arch Magus Xeries,” he announced, his voice echoing as if two people were speaking his words at the same time. “I demand to see your king.”

King Korox pushed his way through the Magistrates, Watchers, and soldiers. Each one he passed, he reassured with a knowing glance or a quick word.

“Don’t go, my lord,” pleaded a blood-covered man. “He would have to kill us all to get to you.”

“Let us hope it does not come to that,” replied the king.

He moved on, his warriors reluctantly stepping aside. When he reached the edge of the compact circle, he stepped through, into the opening the beasts had made, and looked up at the disfigured man.

“I am King Korox Morkann, ruler of Erlkazar.”

Xeries examined Korox, as if using some invisible test to prove the validity of his claim. After a moment, he nodded, seemingly satisfied that this was indeed the man he was looking for.

“I will make this brief,” said Xeries. “I am losing patience with you. I have come personally to collect your daughter. Where is she? I want her now.”

King Korox took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I wish I knew,” he said. “My daughter has been missing for four days now.”

“Yio-do not-not toy-toy With-with me-me, morta.-mortal!” shouted Xeries, his voice rising,, exaggerating the echo and making it sound as if he were repeating himself.

King Korox looked back at the soldiers then again up at Xeries. Even if he did know where his daughter was, he still hadn’t decided if he would turn her over to this monster. Weighing his personal feelings against the needs of the kingdom, there was no one clear choice.

“I am not one to waste the lives of my people so carelessly,” said Korox. “I simply cannot give you what you ask for. It is not within my power.”

“Then make it within your power,” demanded the arch

magus. “For every day that you make me wait, a new terror will be visited upon these lands. The first day the crops will wither and die. On the second day, the water will dry up, turning everything for as far as the eye can see into a desert. And on the third day”—he waved his spindly arms, encompassing the beasts beside and behind him—”I will unleash the rest of my army and lay waste to all of Erlkazar.”

Xeries pulled his arms back into his body, making himself much smaller. “I shall take your daughter from your own hands or from the ruins of your kingdom. Either way, she will be mine.”

+

There she is,” whispered Quinn. “She’s still alive.”

He had followed Mariko’s trail of personal runes all the way to this… place. It wasn’t a cave, or a room, or anything like any of the other spaces he had seen inside the Cellar. If he had to describe it, he would have said it was more like a mansion, carved from stone, right in the middle of the hallway. The passage they had traversed had simply grown wider, and there it was—a huge replica of an opulent home, chiseled “Out of the natural cave.

Someone had taken great care to recreate every detail. It had open windows and balconies. It had doors and a porch. It even had a tiled roof—which was where Quinn and Evelyne now perched.

They looked down into a courtyard in the middle of the mansion. Almost a dozen of Erlkazar’s lesser-known underworld figures were present. They busily moved back and forth between three fully functional Elixir distilleries. They had managed to turn the confines and horrors of the Cellar into a hub for their illegal business. How they got here, and more importantly, how they returned, were questions to which Quinn did not have the answers.

Then he saw something even more puzzling.

He pointed down at the man standing beside the tied

princess. “The fat one. That’s Pello Tasca. He’s the only one who’s supposed to be here.”

Evelyne squinted. “That one there?” She pointed to the same man. “I know him.”

“How?”

“He’s the one I crossed.”

“You’re saying Pello Tasca sent you here, to the Cellar?”

Evelyne nodded. “A did a job for him and his brother, and when it came time to be paid, they only gave me half of what they promised.”

“And they sent you here because you were unhappy with their payment?”

“No,” replied Evelyne. “I got even by burning down their storehouse.”

“I see,” said Quinn, but he didn’t really. “How did they manage to send you to the Cellar? When you said you crossed someone, I figured it was someone official, not an underworld boss.”

“When the brother and his men caught up to me, they dragged me to this woman. They called her the Matron. She sent me here. Had some sort of a device.”

“Right. So the Matron has unfettered access to the Cellar.” It was all starting to make sense now. “That’s how Mariko was sent here. And now the Matron thinks she can run her Elixir operations safely from inside.”

Quinn watched the activity down below. They all seemed preoccupied with their individual tasks, no one walking patrols or even guarding the entrances.

That’s when he caught sight of the horned man, and another realization struck—Jallal Tasca.

It was him. No doubt. Though his beard was gone, his face and body transformed, Quinn could clearly see the resemblance to his brother and to the man he used to be. Jallal was supposed to be dead. Quinn had punctured his neck and had watched him bleed out on the floor of the slaughterhouse. But something or someone had brought him back, and whatever or whoever

that was had drastically disfigured the eldest Tasca.

“Let’s sneak down the side, over in the corner. That’ll get us close to the princess and—” He turned to Evelyne as he spoke. But she was gone, replaced by a pair of Tasca’s burly guards.

A heavy club hit Quinn in the face, and his vision wavered. He tried to block the second swing with his right gauntlet, but he was not yet use to the lack of blades. The club hit him again, and the world went black.

+++++

A bucket of cold water hit Quinn in the face, and he started awake.

“Welcome to the Cellar.”

He had been stripped to his smallclothes and was being held by the arms between two men—the same two he’d seen before being knocked cold. His head throbbed, and one eye was swollen, partially closed.

“We’ve been expecting you.”

Shaking the water from his face, he looked up into the grinning, pointed teeth of Jallal Tasca.

“I thought you were dead,” said Quinn.

Jallal nodded, a look of fake contemplation on his face. “I hear that a lot.”

“I’ll bet.”

“What was it that made you finally recognize me?” asked Jallal. “The water?” He slapped the side of the bucket with his hairy palm.

“When I saw your brother and your Elixir operation here,” said Quinn.

“Oh this?” taunted Tasca, turning to look at the glass vats as if he’d just realized they were there. “This is just temporary, until we’ve dealt with you and put the king on the payroll.”

“And how do you intend to do that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied Jallal. “For you, I was thinking

simple torture. Nothing fancy, just some good old fashioned pain, stretched out for our enjoyment.” His eyes revealed his elation. “A little payback for the marks you gave me.”

Jallal ran his fingers over his neck and the smooth purple scars that had been left by the Claw’s blades.

“And the king? You can’t bribe him. Your coin and your favors are no good to a man of principles.”

“Maybe so,” replied Jallal. “But we have his daughter.” He pointed to Quinn’s left.

On the ground, beside and behind him, sat Princess Mariko, bound and gagged. She looked up at him, her eyes wide and alert.

“Are you hurt?” He tested the two men holding him, but they were both very strong, and they held him fast.

Mariko shook her head. She shot a nasty glare at Jallal, which told Quinn the whole story.

“The king’s not the only one who wants her,” replied Quinn.

Jallal chuckled. “That’s very sweet. Showing your devotion as you go to your death.”

Quinn gritted his teeth. “Perhaps you were dead when it arrived, but there is a huge black citadel floating over Llorbauth, and the arch magus inside is demanding that we turn over the princess, or he’ll lay waste to the entire kingdom.”

“Yes, yes, I’d heard. How unfortunate.”

“Do you really think the king is going to give you anything in exchange for his daughter? She’s safer down here than she would be with him.”

Jallal scrubbed his chin. “You see, that’s the beauty of all this. The Matron has already brokered a deal. We help him fight off this Xeries fellow, and he gets his daughter back.”

“And you get to run your Elixir operations unfettered, is that it?”

“After we dispose of you, yes.”

“Well, I guess you’ve thought of everything then.”

“Indeed, we have.”

+++++

Like every other place in the Cellar, there was more than one way to get inside the carved stone mansion. Lucky for Evelyne, she had noticed this one—just before those guards had arrived.

Evelyne pressed herself tight up against the cracked stone and looked out onto the courtyard. She could hear voices just off to her left.

“… how unfortunate.”

Directly in front of her, a fire raged underneath a strange glass contraption that looked like a giant, see-through centipede. A short, fat man moved back and forth, in and out of her view, magically tending to the fire and casting ice spells on other parts of the centipede.

Feeling around inside her pouch, Evelyne found the two globes she had taken from Quinn when they had first met.