Resurgent Shadows (Successive Harmony Book 1) (24 page)

Caleb recognized the sound. He had heard it on the night that Rachel had died. The sound filled his every waking nightmare. He had thought it had been mortar fire, but now recognized it for what it was, the flaming breath of a Red Dragon.

A strangely cold sensation cut into Caleb’s back and shoulder. He nearly cried out in sudden surprise and pain, but Nepja clamped a hand over his mouth and pulled him down, at the same time pulling Faeranir off Caleb’s back with a hand wrapped in the folds of his robes. The weapon gave off a faint white glow and was already starting to freeze the robes the wizard had clamped around it.

Caleb felt the cold sensation creep down his arm and into his wrists. The pain there vanished and the bandages dropped away of their own accord. Perfectly whole, healed skin lay beneath. The terror Caleb had felt at the sight of the dragon turned to a calm peace as he reached out and took the weapon from Nepja. The glow faded instantly at his touch. His mouth hung open in stunned awe for only a moment before he was forced to tear his eyes away from the bow and his whole, unblemished hands.

Lando signaled for them to leave quickly, the patrol or whoever it had been following them no longer a threat. Sigvid’s eyes were narrowed as he glared at the wizard, but he didn’t dare utter a word until they were far from where the dragon and Jarome could hear them. Caleb hurriedly followed, placing an arrow onto his bow as he ran. Seeing the dragon had been terrifying, but Faeranir had given him healing and strength. He still found the dragon both frightening and awe inspiring, but he knew that he would never be stricken with the paralysis of utter horror again. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew.

They darted into a side passage as quickly and quietly as they could, following Lando’s silent lead. The mute boy flung open a door to what looked like an old janitorial closet, though there were signs that someone had lived in it at one point: scattered empty cans and detritus of old food wrappers.

They scrambled in after him and he shut the door quickly, throwing the bolt to lock it shut. Immediately Sigvid rounded on Nepja.

“What are you playing at wizard?” Sigvid demanded, bristling with suppressed anger. “Hiding there at the feet of a Red and listening to them talk about the God of Evil and Chaos! We’re nowhere close to where they’re keeping the prisoners are we?”

The wizard eyed him coldly, though otherwise ignored the shorter figure. Nepja’s thought-filled eyes kept looking up at Caleb as if he held the answer to whatever question was plaguing his mind.

Lando stood quietly by the door, watching them both.

“Answer me, man!” Sigvid demanded, stepping forward and grabbing the wizard’s shoulder roughly.

Nepja pulled himself out of Sigvid’s grip and Caleb noticed that Lando took a step forward, his gun swinging in Sigvid’s direction. Whatever it was that Sigvid suspected Nepja of doing, he wouldn’t stand a chance against Lando’s submachine gun at close range. Caleb casually stepped into Lando’s line of fire as Nepja sharply replied.

“There are far more important things than your precious companions, fool,” he snapped, his green eyes dancing with such intensity that even the stubborn dverger was forced to take a minute step backward. “I have no intention of risking my life to rescue anyone. There are things at work here that your tiny mind could never fathom!”

Sigvid roared in anger and pulled out both this axes, but before he could tackle the wizard, Caleb leapt in front of him and Lando brought his gun up and dropped his finger onto the trigger.

“Easy, Sigvid,” Caleb said quickly. “Let me handle this.” He pulled one of the axes from the dverger’s startled grip.

“Yes, Caleb, you handle this,” Nepja said condescendingly. “You who are so ignorant of your own world and your own history that you’re oblivious to what is happening around you. Yes, you’ll handle this.”

Caleb’s temper flared, but was well aware of Lando’s gun pointed directly at his heart.

“I know enough to know that there is a great battle being fought, one battle in an unending war. I know that a great evil is awakening and that the balance has shifted out of alignment. Chaos fights against Order and Order against Chaos.” The words tumbled out of Caleb’s lips unbidden, as if said by someone else, though they had a stunning effect on the wizard. Nepja’s countenance changed and took on a cold and calculating look, as if Caleb’s retort had given him new revelation.

“You never had any intention to help us find the dverger prisoners, did you?” Caleb demanded, pressing the advantage.

“You were just an excuse,” Nepja hissed coldly. “The men do not trust me and would not have allowed me to come back out of the tunnels alive had I ventured in alone. You just gave me the reason to have Lando show me how to get to the Dragonlord’s lair.”

“He at least seems to trust you,” Sigvid growled.

Lando had not lowered his weapon during the entire conversation and did not even blink as the other three glanced at him.

“He uses his brain and knows where his loyalty lies.”

“So us happening to overhear those men plotting death and destruction was just chance?” Caleb interjected, watching the wizard closely. Caleb didn’t know exactly what was going on, but he could sense that it was important.

Nepja’s eyes flickered to the left slightly, only a fraction, but Caleb immediately knew he was going to lie. Faeranir burned in his hand and he longed to draw an arrow and threaten the wizard into telling the truth, but couldn’t do so under Lando’s watchful eyes.

“There is no such thing as chance,” Nepja replied softly. “There is only destiny. The
what
and who’s are hidden from me, but the where’s and when’s are given me as Master of the Tower of Souls.”

“You’re lying,” Caleb said simply.

Nepja’s eyes flashed and the wizard reared up to his full height, the orb on his staff glaring in waves of light. Despite Nepja’s unimpressive height, Caleb suddenly realized that before him stood a man who possessed a power he would never understand, a man who could kill him in less than the blink of an eye. The wizard even had the moral incontinence to think nothing of it.

“How dare you question me!” the wizard roared. “I am the Highwizard of the Order of the Nine Towers. I am the Master of the Tower of Souls and the Bearer of the Staff of the Orinai I studied in all nine towers of sorcery and spent centuries learning the secrets of the Path of Souls. I have lived in squalor and poverty in this world while seeking the knowledge and means to perform my foreordained task of bringing balance to the forces of Order and Chaos! You know nothing of me and you know nothing of the war that has been fought since time began. You do not understand and you never will!”

There was a bitterness in the wizard’s voice that cut through Caleb’s anger. He recognized the pride and the arrogance beneath the resentment and also realized that if he and Sigvid were still alive, then Nepja still needed them for something.

“What do you want from me?” Caleb asked directly, ignoring Sigvid’s grumblings. He was through playing games with the wizard.

Nepja scowled at him, but Caleb thought he saw a glimmer of triumph in the wizard’s eyes that passed just as quickly as it came.

“What makes you think I want anything from you?” Nepja scoffed.

“Stop playing games, Wizard of the Nine Towers,” Caleb snapped, the words once again coming unbidden to his lips. “I would not be here if you did not want something from me. Last night you said I was out of place and questioned me constantly about what I was doing here. You saw how Faeranir reacted to the dragon and you saw the power it has. You need me for something.”

“I must keep the balance,” Nepja replied guardedly, again surveying Caleb with an air of cold calculation. “This Loran is trying to do something that cannot be done without tearing the fabric of the universe. They must be stopped, which means that many of the Red Dragonlords must die. Your weapon reacts to the presence of the Reds, almost in antithesis of it. It is your destiny to stand against them.”

“My destiny?” Caleb scoffed.

“Yes, your destiny,” Nepja hissed angrily. “At the moment you are an agent of Order, though others will be found if you should fail. The where’s and when’s of destiny are fixed, the who’s are not.”

“Riddles!” Sigvid barked angrily. “Don’t trust him, Caleb. He is no better than the clerics of Sayrin himself.”

Caleb raised a hand to stop the dverger, very aware of Lando’s gun only a few feet away. It didn’t really matter whether he believed what the wizard was saying or not. If they wanted to leave this room alive, he was going to have to agree to the wizard’s terms. It was not a question of trust, but a question of practicality and survival.

Beyond that, the wizard’s words about the Dragonlords echoed the words of his dreams and reminded him vaguely of something someone else had told him, though he could not remember who.

“Fine, Nepja Herfiligr, I will be your agent of Order on one condition.” Caleb looked the wizard directly in the eye.

“What is that?”

“You will take us to where they are holding the dverger prisoners and help us to free them.”

Nepja looked at him for a moment, his eyes hard and cold. “Done.”

Impatience forced Sigvid’s expression into a perfect scowl. Lando apparently knew where the prisoners were usually kept, though how the mute boy had gained this knowledge was a mystery. They had been forced to backtrack along the same route they had taken to get in and followed an alternate fork, avoiding many of the same patrols from which they had hidden earlier. Each time they dashed into the shadows to avoid detection, Caleb could sense the annoyance building in his short companion. The dverger grumbled under his breath and shot Nepja occasional looks of such contempt and suspicion that Caleb knew there would still be trouble between them. The wizard, for his part, ignored the openly hostile dverger, lost in his own thoughts.

Caleb didn’t know what to think. All of Nepja’s talk of destiny and his being an agent of Order left him confused and pensive. He did not believe in destiny any more than he believed that he was an agent of some supreme power. The known world was in ruin and there was no chance that humanity would survive. Eventually they would all die at the hands of the Dragonhosts, as Sigvid called them. The armies of golgent, trulgo, and fallen men were like a swarm of locusts, leaving an unavoidable swath of death and destruction in their wake.

But the Dragonlords were real, and deep within himself Caleb had a cold gripping feeling that their fate was somehow linked with his own. Perhaps Sigvid’s dream was right. The Dragonlords would hunt him, and he would hunt them in return. Nepja could call it what he wanted, an agent of Order or some higher calling, but for Caleb it was the call to survive and follow the one link he had to any semblance of hope. He knew that believing his dreams had any cogent hold in reality was irrational, but it felt right and he clung to it as dearly as he did to his own life.

“Why don’t we just kill these blasted patrols?” Sigvid grumbled after Lando signaled that it was safe for them to talk again. “It would be just as fast and then we wouldn’t have to worry about them on the way back. All this sneaking around is going to cause problems later on!”

“There you go,” Nepja said scornfully. “Thinking like a dverger and letting your axe replace your brain. If we killed them we’d bring every blasted Dragonspawn in the place down upon us and we’d never get out of here.”

Sigvid grabbed for his axe but Caleb stopped him, placing a restraining hand on the dverger’s arm.

“I’m sure you’ll get your chance to kill as many golgent as you would like on the way back Sigvid.” Caleb said softly.

Sigvid grumbled something inarticulate under his breath and let his axe drop back into the loop in his belt. He shrugged Caleb’s hand away with more force then was necessary and Caleb backed away, giving the dverger space. Generally Sigvid was far more rational and calm than any of the other dvergers Caleb had come in contact with, but since they had found Nepja, Sigvid had grown as surly and boorish as the rest of his kin.

“How much further is it?” Caleb asked.

Lando paused a moment and gestured at Nepja with his hands, ticking off three fingers in the light of the wizard’s staff.

“It’s right above us,” Nepja said, as Lando scrambled up a set of rungs set in the wall that Caleb had not noticed. “There are three guards at the door.”

“Finally,” Sigvid growled, his axe flying from his belt with a hiss. “Some heads to crack!”

Nepja ignored the dverger. The wizard’s eyes were unfocused and he was muttering under his breath. The light from his staff glowed brighter for a moment and Nepja waved his hand three times in the direction of the ceiling. “I have taken care of the guards. They are now asleep,” Nepja said quietly. The wizard slumped a little as if tired, but quickly righted himself.

“Why didn’t you do that before?” Sigvid spluttered angrily.

“Because the dragon and his Lord can sense the use of magic around them. Now, up the ladder quickly, we haven’t got much time for this damned fool rescue.”

As if in response to the wizard’s words, a thunderous roar echoed faintly down the corridor. Caleb shouldered Faeranir and scrambled after Lando up the rungs recessed into the wall. Sigvid, grumbling, came up after him and the wizard followed. Lando reached down and helped pull Caleb up the last few feet onto the floor above. There was surprising strength in the young man’s grip. The boy had pushed aside a section of tile that had been cunningly hidden in the floor above. This had obviously once been an escape tunnel within the city-fortress.

Caleb scurried out of the way and took stock of the hallway as Lando helped Sigvid through the opening. It looked as if they were in what had once been a workout room, but had since been converted to storage. It was lit by some flickering lanterns in sconces along the wall. Bags and crates stood against the far end of the hall, shoved up against old and dusty weightlifting and running equipment. Several of the bags had been torn open and the contents, mostly beans, rice, and other foodstuffs, had spilled out onto the tiled floor.

The hall stretched off the other direction to end in a pair of double doors that were askew on the hinges, their windows broken. Another hallway could be seen though the shattered glass, stretching off into the distance beyond. A few steps away, a pair of men and a mammoth trulgo slumped on the ground, drooling on the floor in front of a thick wooden door outfitted with two crossbars to hold it shut from the outside.

“Hurry!” Nepja hissed, pulling himself up through the hidden tunnel’s mouth.

Sigvid pushed passed Caleb and ran to the barred doorway, pointedly stepping on the trulgo’s head as he did so. The dverger tossed the bottom crossbar aside with ease and Caleb moved forward to help him pull off the top one. They wrenched open the door and stood back as a wave of putrid air washed back over them, carrying the musty smells of death and decay with it.

Soft cries of alarm greeted them from the darkness of the room within.

Caleb grabbed a lantern from its holder and raised it high to look into the room. Dozens of round, fearful eyes looked back at him, both human and dverger. They were filthy and destitute, the humans more so than the dvergers, who had only recently fallen into captivity, but all looked hungry and depraved. Some wore little more than rags, a fact that tugged at his memory as if it were somehow important.

“Come on!” Sigvid growled, gesturing behind him. “We’re here to rescue you!”

They stared at him blankly until one of the dvergers stood up and walked towards Sigvid, dried blood caking his beard and hair. As if this were some sort of sign, everyone else suddenly got to their feet in a mad scramble towards the door.

“Quickly now,” Caleb said as people rushed passed him. “Down the tunnels. Nepja, you lead them.”

Nepja looked angry at being ordered about, but swept down into the tunnel beneath with his lighted staff showing the way. The prisoners followed without hesitation, mindlessly plunging into the darkness. A woman, small and frail, clutching a bundle in her arms, was the last to leave the room.

In the light from the lantern Caleb could see other forms at the far end of the room, laid out in blankets that covered their faces. They did not stir and Caleb realized that they were shrouds, not blankets. Caleb shuddered and, on impulse, tossed the lantern into the room. The glass shattered and oil flooded the ground, quickly catching fire and enveloping the room in a hellish inferno.

Sigvid ushered the woman down the rungs, though she protested his agitation over her slowness. She clutched the bundle close to her with one arm and attempted to climb down the ladder with only her other arm for support, which was the reason for the delay.

Caleb waited for them to disappear through the opening and nodded to Lando. The boy had waited to be last in order to seal up the hidden entrance and cover their escape. Caleb leapt down into the passage beneath the room, not bothering to use the rungs. He landed on the ground and bent his knees to absorb the impact. Someone screamed near him, but he ignored it.

A burst of shots rang out from the room above and then Lando appeared in the opening, silhouetted against the light of the growing conflagration. The boy climbed into the hidden passageway and closed the door behind him.

“Sigvid,” Caleb yelled, ignoring the whimpers and whines of the escapees. “You lead the way with Lando! Don’t stop for any of the patrols! Kill them quickly!”

Caleb heard the blacksmith shout something back, but didn’t catch it. The group began moving forward though, so he assumed that the dverger had heard him. Lando ducked through the press of bodies running through the passage towards the light of Nepja’s staff without a backwards glance at Caleb, quickly vanishing in the maze of bodies.

Caleb unlimbered Faeranir and placed an arrow on the string, holding it in a ready position as he took up the rear of the entourage. The passages were narrow and full of twists and turns that were not conducive to using the bow, but Caleb didn’t have any other weapons.

His eyes peered into the darkness behind them as they ran, hovering at the edge of the light from Nepja’s staff. Occasionally one of the prisoners would slip and fall, or lag behind, forcing Caleb put up his bow and carry them along until they were able to walk on their own.

Screams of both the frightened and the dying came from the head of the column at random intervals, accompanied with the sounds of rapid gunfire and Sigvid’s yells. Every time this happened, the troupe would halt and mill about in confusion, unsure of whether to run and hide or simply to stay where they were. Caleb longed to push through the group, but knew that he was needed where he was. He passed the bodies of the golgent and men that Sigvid and Lando had killed as they ran, either bearing the marks of Sigvid’s heavy handed axe work or ridden with bullets from Lando’s gun.

Caleb quickly lost track of both time and direction as they played the game of start and stop. Once, a flickering light had appeared behind them in the passage. Without stopping to think, Caleb had snapped off a shot, sending a gleaming trail of silver screaming through the darkness until it was lost from sight. The light had vanished within seconds of the shot and Caleb had breathed easier. Whatever it was, it was unlikely to be a friend in these dark passages under the city-fortress. Side passages reared up with increasing frequency as they ran, making Caleb nervous and edgy. He spent much longer looking over his shoulder and back the way they had come than at the path before him, which is why he didn’t notice until he had nearly run into her that the woman carrying the bundle had fallen behind.

“Come on,” Caleb said, glancing up to see the rest of the party several yards ahead of them. “We’ve got to keep up.”

The woman nodded and clutched the bundle even more tightly to her shoulder. Her face was plastered with dirt and her hair was thin and matted in places, though her clothes were less worn than some of the others he had seen. The bundle in her arms was wrapped in rags, as if torn from clothing and tied together.

“Your baby?” Caleb asked, feeling a knot of emotion well up in his throat as memories of Rachel and Benson flashed through his thoughts.

“Yes.” The woman’s voice was dry and raspy and cracked as she spoke, but there was a fierce motherly pride in her eyes. They fell further behind, the woman’s strength and stamina flagging quickly.

“Boy or girl?” Caleb asked, now almost pushing the woman onward, one arm around her shoulders while his other clutched Faeranir awkwardly.

“Boy,” she gasped, her breathing coming in heaving gulps as she struggled for air. Her arms never left their grip on the child in her arms, but she was stumbling so often that Caleb was worried she might fall. They were almost in total darkness now, only the last vestiges of light reaching them from the wizard’s staff.

“We’ve got to catch up,” Caleb said encouragingly. “We’ve got to keep him safe.”

The woman’s face contorted in concentration and she quickened her step, inching closer to the main party. Caleb grinned at her, but he knew it wouldn’t last. Her energy and strength were spent.

A sound echoed in the passage behind them and Caleb spun around, shoving the woman forward with his right hand. Golgent filled the passageway behind him, running forward in the darkness, their feline eyes glowing like bugs in the night.

“Run!” Caleb yelled, raising Faeranir up and firing an arrow into the mass of eyes.

The arrow caught the lead golgent in the shoulder, tearing completely through the flesh and bone to take out the creature behind it as well. The first golgent screamed in agony as icy whiteness stretched outwards on his body from the wound, freezing flesh and bone alike. He toppled just as Caleb managed to get another arrow onto the string of his bow. The body tripped up those scuttling in from behind, causing mass confusion. Caleb fired two more arrows in the mass of golgent flesh as he was plunged into darkness, Nepja’s light passing completely out of range. From the screams and shouts of pain, Caleb knew that both shots had hit home. Then the golgent were upon him.

Instantly the hunter screamed for control.

Caleb lashed out with Faeranir, swinging the bow like a club. There was a flash in the darkness as a blade came in contact with Faeranir.

Caleb shuddered as the hunter clawed into his mind, ramming at his defenses with primal rage. He struggled within himself in a battle as fierce as the one he was fighting without.

From somewhere up the passageway the woman screamed and Caleb felt something shatter inside his head as, within his mind, another scream echoed. Cold fury consumed him, quenching the red hot rage of the hunter and enveloping the warrior’s instincts—the will and power to survive was an icy blanket that was the perfect unison of the hunter and Caleb.