The Dark Remains (31 page)

“I have watched them, yes.”

“And do they know about you?”

“I should think not.”

Again Travis frowned, studying their strange savior. She was a haughty one, that was certain. But if she was not a friend of the Seekers, then who was she allied with? Duratek?

No—he couldn’t say why, but he knew that wasn’t the case. She was perilous, yes. And she wasn’t telling them the whole truth. But she had said she was their only hope, and right now Travis believed it. He wished he could pull out his gunfighter’s spectacles and look at her. Sometimes with the spectacles on, if he squinted just right, he could see coronas of light around people: auras that reflected who and what they were.

There was no time. Vani had already started down the stairs. Keeping close, he and Grace descended.

They reached the parking lot; the night was still. Travis felt a frantic impulse to scream, swallowed it. He would almost have preferred it if the things just showed themselves. It was better to see death coming than to wait for it to leap out of the darkness, invisible and snarling.

Grace gasped, her eyes fluttering open. Travis had not seen her shut them.

“There are five of them,” she whispered. “They’re all
around us, moving fast. I can’t get a fix on them. And there’s … something else. I couldn’t quite see it, but I felt it. A presence. Watching.”

Vani nodded. “I feel the other as well. That is why they are not so easily frightened—their master is here. This will not be as simple as I thought.”

Travis groaned. “So what do you propose we do?”

Vani turned toward him, then her face went hard. “Run. Run for the vehicle as fast as you can and get inside. Now!”

With that last word she pushed Travis and Grace. They stumbled in the direction of the car—

—just as a black streak screamed out of the night.

Travis felt hot talons graze the back of his neck. Then Vani was there, moving so swiftly her arms and legs seemed to blur. Blows rained on the creature; black spheres of blood spun and glittered on the air. Shrieking, the thing reached out, but Vani was gone. Then the air behind it warped, buckled. Vani leaped off the asphalt as easily as if climbing a staircase and kicked out with both boots. The creature flew forward, limbs flailing, into a wall. Cinder blocks cracked. The thing crumpled to the ground, motionless.

“Travis!”

The scream pierced the dull membrane shrouding his brain. Grace pulled his arm. He gripped her hand, and they careened across the parking lot toward the car.

The darkness boiled around them, but Travis kept his eyes focused on the car. From the corner of his vision he saw a snarling maw lunge toward Grace, fangs gleaming, then it jerked back and fell behind, as if it had struck an obsidian wall.

Time slowed, the parking lot stretched, Erics’s car receded. Each footfall was like slow thunder. A paw shot from the side and clutched at Travis’s throat, squeezing. Then the night tore apart, and a pair of strong hands reached from
the gap, pulling the creature back into darkness. Snarls turned to inhuman screams, then ended with the sound of breaking bones.

Time dilated, snapped back. In one dizzying rush the car grew to fill Travis’s vision. They had made it. He started to reach for the door handle.

The air above the car wrinkled like cellophane, then grew smooth again. With a fluttering of jet cloth, a figure landed lightly on top of the car. Travis gazed up into a serene, gold face.

The figure crouched, wrapped all in black—trench coat, gloves, cowl. Set into the cowl was not a human face, but a mask: gleaming and burnished as the death mask of a pharaoh, smiling with strange peace as it gazed upon what no other could possibly see. The figure lifted a gloved hand and made a gentle, caressing motion.

A gold needle of agony plunged into Travis. His heart shuddered in his chest, faltered. He tried to speak, but only a soft gurgle escaped his lips along with a foam of saliva. The figure squeezed its fingers together. As it did, Travis’s heart slowed.…

Grace lashed out with her dagger. The figure moved its hand aside, easily avoiding the strike. However, the movement interrupted the spell. Travis was free. In one motion he reached for his own knife, jerked it from his belt, and thrust it forward.

His action was stiff, clumsy; the other should have dodged the blow without effort. Instead, it was as if flesh and blade were drawn to one another. There was a blinding flash of crimson, followed by a mind-flaying scream. Travis shut his eyes, blinded. When he opened them again, the masked figure was gone.

He jerked his head to look at Grace. Her eyes were wide.

“Where …?” she started to say, but then the air melted, resolidified, and Vani was there.

“Get inside. Now.”

They did not argue. Travis ripped open the door. He and Grace fell into the backseat; she groped for the door and slammed it shut behind them. Vani was already in the front seat. Engine roared, tires wailed against pavement, and the car leaped into swift motion.

There was a wet thump as the vehicle struck something. A shadow spun past the tinted windows. The car made a violent turn, throwing Travis against Grace. By the time they managed to untangle their limbs and sit upright, streetlights and glowing signs flashed by. They were driving west down Colfax, the motel already a dim spark of neon behind them. Vani piloted the car with precise movements that nonetheless seemed too conscious.

She’s a good driver, but she has to think about it. She can’t have been driving very long
.

“The one in the mask,” Grace said, clutching the back of the passenger seat. “Who was that man?”

The rearview mirror framed Vani’s unsettling gold eyes.

“Not man. Sorcerer. It was he whom you sensed earlier, Grace Beckett. He was the master of the
gorleths.
” She spoke this last word like a curse.

“
Gorleths?
” Travis said in a croak. His throat ached, and his heart fluttered in his chest.

Vani did not take her eyes from the street. “It means, the Mouths Which Hunger. His kind often create such slaves to do their bidding, although I have not seen the likes of these before. They are new, I think. And had I known he was present, and not just his minions, I might have thought again about what I was doing. However, the sorcerer did not like the sting of your knife, Travis Wilder. It is well you had it.”

On reflex, he glanced down at the stiletto. To his surprise, the gem in the hilt still flickered red. Motion caught his eye: a glint of gold. It scuttled across the back
of the passenger seat, toward Grace’s arm. A spider of gold. Fascinated, he watched as it wriggled closer.…

The car did not veer even slightly as Vani lashed out a hand and crushed the spider. She flicked the crumpled bit of gold out the open window.

Grace blinked, her expression startled. “What was that?”

“Death,” Vani said.

Travis glanced again at his stiletto; the gem in the hilt was dark, quiescent. The danger had passed. For the moment, at least.

Sirens cried out. Flashing lights approached, then whizzed past them. So the police were finally coming. However, Travis didn’t need Vani to tell him that no matter how hard the officers searched, they would find no sign of the
gorleths
or the one in the gold mask.

“Where are you taking us?” Grace said, her face frightened, yet resolute.

“Somewhere you will be safe.”

“And then?”

“We must free your companion, the knight. They cannot be allowed to hold him.”

Next to Travis, Grace went stiff. He felt his heart lurch again, but this time it was beating too swiftly.

“Beltan?” Grace whispered. “You know where Beltan is?”

“I do.”

Travis studied her reflection in the rearview mirror. In a way, her eyes were as gold and serene as the sorcerer’s mask. But there was a life to them the mask had not held. He drew a deep breath.

“You’re from Eldh, aren’t you, Vani?”

Travis did not take his eyes off Vani’s in the mirror. At last she nodded.

“Why have you been following me? And why did you help us tonight?”

For a moment it seemed sorrow crept into the reflection of her eyes. Then the glare of passing headlights blinded Travis, and by the time his vision cleared she had turned the mirror so that all he could see was darkness.

“Because,” Vani said softly, “it is my fate to return with you to Eldh.”

Lirith stood at the prow of the
Fate Runner
and watched a hundred domes of gold rise into the shimmering air, growing larger with each splash of spray against her cheeks.

The sea was a silver plate, beaten and dimpled by the relentless hammer of the sun. Chalky cliffs soared toward the lapis sky, their summits crowned with precisely spaced colonnades of slender
ithaya
trees that transmuted the brilliant light through yellow leaves. The wind was steady off the Summer Sea, and the sleek, two-masted ship that had borne them from the Free City of Gendarra streaked like a dolphin past towering twin obelisks hewn of the same white stones as the cliffs, into the encircling arms of an azure bay and toward the oldest city in all of Falengarth.

“There she is,” said a voice as rough as a gull’s behind her.

She turned from the railing, then smiled, the wind unfurling her hair behind her like sails. “Captain Magard.”

The captain of the
Fate Runner
was not an old man—certainly he was no more than ten years Lirith’s senior—but life on the sea had taken its toll. His powerful shoulders were hunched from years of gripping the tiller, and his coarse hands bore something less than the usual complement of fingers. However, Magard’s billowing red shirt and trousers were every bit as bold as the stories he had a habit of telling.

Lirith turned again to face the swiftly growing city. Birds drifted among the domes like flecks of white down.
She could see that Tarras rose up in a series of concentric circles, each walled in buff stone, to a cluster of fabulous spires at the summit.

Magard laughed, as it seemed he did at everything, and gestured to the massive obelisks even now slipping past them to either side. “No matter how many times I sail into Meron’s Gate, I never tire of this sight.”

Lirith agreed. She had never seen anything like them in her life. The obelisks stood upon the ends of two rocky prominences that reached from the shore, encircling the bay of Tarras. They were surely twice as high as the tallest towers in the Dominions, yet as slender as needles, their pale stone carved with words and symbols softened by vast centuries of salt and wind. There was space enough for a score of ships to sail through Meron’s Gate without any risk of collision, and the obelisks seemed to hold up the sky.

“Meron was the son of Taron, First Emperor of Tarras,” Magard said. “The stories say he raised the obelisks as a monument to his father’s victories. At least, that’s what the official stories say.”

Lirith arched an eyebrow. “And what of the
un
official stories, Captain?”

“They say Meron raised the obelisks not to his father’s conquests in battle, but rather to his own conquests in the bedroom. From what we know of Meron, this was a shape he rather fancied.”

“But Captain Magard, these obelisks are enormous.”

“Well, historians say Meron always did have a high opinion of himself.”

She clapped a hand to her mouth to keep from guffawing like a sailor.

“I’d better get below,” Magard said, stepping back from the rail. “We’ll be dropping sails and rowing into port soon.” The captain started away from the prow, then stopped and looked back. “So this is your first journey to Tarras?”

“It is.”

His black eyes shone. “Then heed my advice and take care, my girl. This is an old city—so old it has forgotten a thousand things other places will never learn. It is said the springs in Tarras flow not with water, but with wine strong enough to warm the coldest spirit, and bitter enough to poison the purest heart.”

Lirith thought about his words. Certainly Tarras was an ancient city, and one long into its decline. Once, the Tarrasian Empire had spanned most of Falengarth, the greatest power on Eldh. But over the centuries, under the rule of weak, cruel, and petty emperors, the Tarrasian Empire had retreated, its borders moving ever southward, leaving the northlands first to tribes of barbarians, then later to the seven Dominions. Now the empire—such as it was—consisted of little more than Tarras itself, along with a group of smaller cities clustered along the shores of the Summer Sea.

Yet even so far into its ebb, it was said Tarras was still the greatest city in all the world. And looking at the myriad domes, spires, and soaring bridges, Lirith could believe it.

The captain disappeared belowdecks, and Lirith turned toward the prow. The city was close now; she could smell the scent of spices on the warm, drowsy air. People moved on the docks, men and women dressed in flowing clothes of subtle, jewel-like hues. It was strange and marvelous how, in just the space of a fortnight, she could travel to an entirely new world.

They had departed Ar-tolor at dawn the day after Melia learned of Ondo’s death. And the day after they found Tharkis, mad fool and onetime king of Toloria, hanging by his neck from a rafter, his crossed eyes gouged out.