The Destroyer Book 3 (51 page)

"Do you know that there is other magic besides the Elements?" The woman smiled and her teeth were actually whiter than her skin.

"I wouldn't be surprised." The point of her sword was a few inches from Kaiyer's thin chest now.

"Our people were given them by our Gods to help us survive; you know my sister's already. Would you like me to tell you what mine is?" Her sword tip touched Kaiyer's chest. Their eyes were locked but my lover didn't seem nervous.

"Lack of foresight?" Kaiyer grinned.

"No. If someone makes eye contact with me, I can prevent them from moving for a few seconds. It is why I have never been defeated in combat." The woman smiled while she slowly pulled back her sword arm and then lashed out with it.

I screamed.

Beltor pulled me away.

Her sword continued its arch through the air.

Kaiyer's body fell and his head rolled to our feet. His jaw was still clenched in anger.

I screamed.

The darkness was too much.

The horrible woman was yelling something at us but I couldn't hear her. There was blood coming out of her nose. She took a step toward us and the world grew darker.

Then darker.

Kaiyer was dead.

Sometimes a sleep is so deep that the dreams are only of darkness, time doesn't pass, and when it is interrupted the shock can be as stressful as actually being killed.

Or so I guessed.

After we were changed into O'Baarni, our senses became so powerful, so precise, and so encompassing; it drove many of the first humans experimented on to insanity. It didn't help that the Elvens kept us in tight cages, hunched over like animals, until they decided that we had either survived the change with our sanity intact and were ready for training, or had become monsters.

I sat up in the bed and stifled a gasp. I thought the scream came from my memory, but it had originated outside of the window. Laughter followed it quickly and the sound of a group of drunken voices escalated into tones of mockery. I crept silently to the glass and peered at the cobblestone street forty feet below my window. Half a dozen men and women walked through the streets. It was hard for people infused with magic to get drunk. Our bodies healed from most poisons too quickly, so I assumed the revelers were human and on their way home from a late night of tavern escapades.

I sighed and crept back to the bed. On the nightstand sat a small oil lamp and a large wooden bowl of water. I splashed some of the water on my face and got dressed. There was no sense in returning to sleep now that the night had awoken me.

My clothes were newly purchased and they scratched uncomfortably against my skin when I moved across the wood floor to the door of my room. With a turn of the key and a silent descent down three flights of stairs, I made my way out of the inn and into the streets of the dark city.

This was the second inn I had patronized in the last month. The third identity I had taken, and the fourth time I had made a small step toward freeing Iolarathe from the bowels of the prison built to hold Elven captives. The preparations were almost in place, and if I could execute them perfectly, she would be free in two nights.

Then we would be together.

Shlara's Rest was the largest city within a thousand miles. From the stories told to me by the locals, Malek, along with Shlara's commanders, had carried her burnt body here after I killed her. They had laid her into the ground on a site overlooking the nearby river. Ironically, the spot where her bronze and stone memorial stood was almost exactly the same place where we had once sat together, discussing our future before sparring with each other.

That had been fourteen years ago. I had almost killed her then.

Even though my army had been victorious in eliminating the Elven threat, there was still work to be done. There were Elven settlements throughout the world that must be sought and eliminated. It would take an organized effort to comb the continent and eradicate the remainder of them.

There was also the issue of leadership. The O'Baarni's leader had deserted them and killed one of his generals. The people in the army were promised freedom from the oppressors, and that had now come true. What came next? Who would lead them in this new life of freedom?

From what I had gleaned from listening to the locals in the taverns, a small group comprised of my generals and their commanders had gone to the river to wash after Shlara was laid to rest. They planned their next steps and tried to come to terms with the loss. While they sat on the banks of the river, one of them noticed gold flakes amongst the silt. Gold had never been valuable to us during the war, but the Elvens used it for currency. The idea of mining the metal sprang into their minds and a center of trade and industry sprung up around the new mine. Thus, the city of Shlara’s Rest was born.

I guessed that my lover was searching for an Ovule. It was a round globe, about the size of a skull and filled with a soft yellow light that matched the spider web-like lines of the inside of a Radicle. The Elven elder had told me that Iolarathe traveled with a girl to his Radicle, and that the girl had used the last of the Ovule's power and somehow left this world. The ancient Elven had not been able to tell me much more. He called the world by a number, said Iolarathe was looking for another Ovule, and told me that the girl was my daughter.

I guessed he was lying.

But I couldn't beat the truth out of him. A trio of Alexia's hunters, led by one of my former bodyguards, Lemarti, had been chasing me for years and finally caught up to me in the Radicle. Lemarti possessed martial skill beyond even my best soldiers and I had been lucky to defeat them. Unfortunately, the old Elven died before giving me the information that I needed about Iolarathe, the child he said looked like me, and how the Radicle worked.

Iolarathe's trail had been surprisingly easy to follow after I almost found her at the strange shrine. There were four large human settlements between the Radicle and Shlara's Rest. The Elven woman had visited each one, skirted the edges of the towns for a few days, and then moved on to the next. I didn't understand how she planned on even finding an Ovule, let alone getting inside one of the cities to steal one of the globes. Maybe she had gotten desperate and decided to risk capture.

Whatever her reasoning was, Iolarathe's luck had run out in the city appropriately named after the woman who almost killed her.

I stopped at an intersection a mile from the inn. The street was paved in river rocks and clay, pounded flat by a decade of horses, wagon wheels and footsteps. In this poorer part of the city, the roofs were crafted of steep, graying thatch that would burn easily. I expanded my hearing to take in the sounds of hundreds of sleeping people resting comfortably in their homes. I heard a soft footstep a few streets over, but it was moving away. Once I was satisfied that no one was following me, I turned toward the largest structure in the city: the barracks.

When I first came to Shlara's Rest, I dyed my hair gray with limestone mineral extracts I had gathered a few thousand miles away. It was scentless and made me look older, even if my face was still frozen in youth. To further accentuate the disguise, I walked the last stretch of my journey to the town with a sharpened rock in my boot to get myself used to treading off camber on one leg and then carried the hobble with me.

Once in the city, I found the local tavern the wardens visited when they were not patrolling. Some of the faces I recognized, but none of the warriors who lived in Shlara's Rest suspected that the gray-haired man limping from table to table to collect their soiled tableware was Kaiyer.

The wardens talked, and I could listen to the entire room with my heightened sense, even while in the back washing the dishes. Within a few days I knew that they had captured Iolarathe, but they had not guessed her identity. I also got a rough idea of their shifts and patrol routes. I continued my work at the tavern until one of the soldiers mentioned that the stables in the city's barracks needed another worker.

Within an hour the gray was washed out of my hair, the limp was gone, and I was mucking out the massive forty horse stable in the same barracks that held Iolarathe's prison. The two other stable boys were thankful for the help. They didn't ask more than the usual questions about where I was born, what my parents did, what role they played in the war, and if I knew any girls that they could fuck. The horse master of the barracks had been one of Gorbanni's lower lieutenants and didn't recognize me nor question my sudden appearance.

Now I had a more detailed view of the workings in the barracks. I could see exactly when everyone was coming and going and what their duties were. While I didn't have access to the underground dungeon where they kept Iolarathe, I knew where it was and could observe the shift changes of the guards. I began to piece together a plan for freeing her. But there were still too many variables I had not mastered.

Once I had memorized the pattern of the stable work and the barrack traffic I decided to make my move. Between lunch and supper, the support staff busied themselves with cleaning and the trained soldiers left the barracks to go on patrol. The stable boys normally napped as the addition of my hands had considerably lightened their workload.

This gave me the perfect window. I made a habit of taking some dessert and wine from the kitchen, walking to the dungeon, and delivering the offering to whichever guard was working that day. The sentries were O’Baarni, but I made sure they saw me as nothing but an overeager stable boy looking for a promotion.

After a week of hobnobbing with the guards I managed to get a tour of the dungeon. It was specifically built to hold Elven prisoners or O'Baarni who had violated the non-violence laws in Shlara's Rest. The bars of each cell were made of three-inch-thick solid steel driven five feet into the floor and ceiling. There were twenty Elvens in the cells and four O'Baarni. I didn't see Iolarathe, but at the end of the tour the proud guardsman showed me their solitary confinement cell. It was set down two levels of stairs at the end of a long hallway. The door was crafted of the gray metal we used to forge our armor and weapons. I asked the sentry who was inside and he confirmed that it was an Elven woman with hair the color of blood. I could have killed the guard there, taken his keys, and released Iolarathe then, but I hadn't finished planning our escape from the city.

A creaking sound from a nearby roof tore me from my recollection of the plan. I stopped my walk and focused my attention on the origin of the noise a few dozen yards away. A tabby cat hung from the gutter of a bakery and eyed me suspiciously. I took a slow breath to steady my nerves and continued my stroll down the road toward the barracks.

It was a large three tower structure wrapped with a jigsaw wall of timber and massive stone blocks that seemed to push against the nearby houses like an angry child. The fortress was capable of housing a few hundred soldiers, training them within the inner courtyard, and defending against attacks. It was much larger than anything I had ever seen an Elven tribe build, but they often trained their warriors in the open fields surrounding their estates and the warriors dwelled with their own small families. Elvens had little use for jails; if someone was discovered violating their laws, they dealt swift justice with an axe blade.

After a few more minutes of walking the empty streets I came within a hundred yards of the plaid walls. It was the middle of fall, but Shlara's Rest sat close enough to the river and ocean to make the temperatures mild. Still, some of the wardens that stood watch on the eighty-foot-high walls were not O'Baarni, and they needed braziers of fire to keep warm. I was thankful for their light because it revealed spots in the defense where I might sneak in and out should my plan not work as expected.

I continued meandering around the perimeter of the wall, going slower than was natural to remain inconspicuous. Most of the homes and stores butted up within touching distance of the barrier, but I still took my time to walk slow and silent, listening to the sounds of the sleeping inhabitants, the wind and the idle chatter of the watchmen on the walls. I had always been cautious in my battle plans, and now, with so much at stake, was no time to be careless and lax in my preparation. This had to work. In two nights, the small sailing vessel,
Sea Dog
, would leave the harbor heading downriver three miles, and then into the deep sea to begin a month long voyage to the Juniper Isles. It was the fastest ship I knew of and the captain had already accepted my payment; the small crew didn’t ask any questions.