The Essence Gate War: Book 01 - Adept (41 page)

The thief pondered a moment before breaking into an impish grin
. “I find myself wanting to be there when that shriveled mask he calls a face cracks with disappointment.”

“And I will come as well,” Thalya put in
, with a cold sidelong look at Bellimar.

“No,
you will not,” Amric said. Her head snapped toward him, green eyes flashing with outrage. Her lips twisted with the beginnings of an angry objection, but he cut through it in a tone that brooked no further argument. “I can say nothing as to the right or wrong of your vendetta with Bellimar, as I can only speak to how he has conducted himself in my presence. I can, however, choose not to allow your conflict to land in my lap at a time and place that could get us all killed. We are heading into a viper’s den where cool heads must prevail, and no good will come of inviting upon yourself the attention of a powerful and soulless man like Morland. You are not going.”

The two locked gazes for a long moment, but Amric did not waver
, his grey eyes dispassionate under her withering glare. At last she sat back with a dark scowl directed alternately at the warrior and the old man.

“Cool heads, eh?” Bellimar remarked with a sly grin
. “The heavens forbid we do anything in his presence to fan the flames of his wrath.”

Amric flushed, but his expression remained resolute
. “Much as I despise the man and his disdain for the lives of others, one power-hungry lordling is too far down the list to concern ourselves with at the moment. He certainly has the means to interfere with our more important goals, however, so we should make every effort to avoid incurring any more of his ire than is strictly necessary. If all goes well, we will conclude our business with the man tonight and be rid of his involvement for good. Valkarr is recovering rapidly, and it is my hope that after two nights of rest here in the city we will be ready to depart again on the following morn. Any who wish to accompany us, meet us here at dawn of that day. Any who do not, I wish you well in your travels.”

Halthak’s
brow furrowed. “Depart? To where?”

“To follow a suspicion,” Amric said
. He sat back and took in their puzzled expressions. Only Bellimar straightened in his chair, eyes glittering with prognostication. The swordsman took a breath and continued. “As you know, we lost the trail of our Sil’ath friends at Stronghold. If Grelthus is to be believed, they were fighting their way from the fortress, likely wounded and weakened but still alive when last seen. I have been trying to reason where they would have gone if they did manage to win free, and what might have befallen them from there.”

“What makes you think they did not
simply die there?” Thalya demanded.

Amric turned
flint-hard eyes upon her. “They are Sil’ath,” he said. “We do not die easily.” At his side, Valkarr lifted his chin and hissed a note of assent.

The huntress raised an eyebrow but said nothing
. He let out a breath, and the edge faded from his voice. “I know nothing for certain, but I have seen no evidence of their demise, and until I know their fate I must consider all avenues. These are some of the best warriors of a people born into battle, who have fought together since childhood. They may not have had the advantage of Halthak’s miraculous healing ability, but five such warriors can cross hostile terrain like so many ghosts. I will grant you that they might have fallen prey to the hideous perils of the forest, or were entombed in the fortress, but somehow it does not ring true. No, I believe they survived Stronghold, just as we did.”

“We survived by seeing the very heart of the place, along with its rabid inhabitants, crushed in a strange surge of power unlike any I have seen,” Bellimar reminded him
. “I am not so certain one can draw parallels to our own experience.”

Amric shook his head
. “I can offer no better explanation, and I have no proof one way or the other. All I have is my intuition, and I intend to follow it. I cannot ask anyone else to do the same.”

He fell silent, glancing around the table at expressions that were by turns skeptical and pensive
. He noted that Bellimar was studying each of them as well, his dark eyes making a slow circuit of the table beneath iron grey brows. A half smile brushed at the vampire’s lips, and broadened slightly when Halthak cleared his throat to speak.

“Tell us of your suspicion, Amric,” the Half-
Ork said. “Where are you going, two days hence?”

“I believe,” Amric said, “that there is more than one force in operation here, possibly working at different purposes
. We have seen creatures brought from the depths and barrows of the land, driven mad by the raging essence swelling in the region. Most are like rabid beasts, mindless in their fury, slaying indiscriminately and assaulting mortal life wherever they find it. This is what we faced in Lyden, the distant ripples of the same spreading wave that is engulfing Keldrin’s Landing. Here and in the forest, we are much closer to the source. This wave emanates from the east somewhere, from something so powerful that the Essence Fount at Stronghold was but a symptom, as Grelthus admitted. Whether it lies in the forest or beyond it, we have not found that source, that center, yet. We only know that the magical essence is being drawn that way, becoming more potent the further east we go, and that the corruption of the land and its creatures worsens as well. And while most of those creatures hunger for flesh or life force, there is one type that seems to have a different purpose: the man-like, cloth-wrapped black creatures.”

“They capture rather than kill,” Valkarr murmured.

Amric nodded. “We have faced most of these creatures back home as the attacks worsened,” he said. “These are something we have not seen, something new. And they have fled in the same direction each time, with their prey.”

Thalya and Halthak each shifted in their seats, exchanging an uneasy glance
. For both, it was all too easy to recall being borne helplessly along in the clutches of the implacable creatures, before these very warriors had saved them from an unknown fate.

“Yes,
you are correct,” Bellimar hissed, sitting forward as he grew more animated. “They are not corrupted spirits or elementals, not dwellers in the dark or enraged beasts. They bear the remnants of clothing or wrappings, as if they have been made by the hand of another, rather than formed of or mutated by magic. Yes! I should have seen it before now.”

“Our friends were wounded,” Amric continued
. “Regardless of whether they believed the Essence Fount to be the source of the corruption or understood the source to be further east, they would have been forced to retreat for a time to recuperate. On the way, they may have encountered the same strange man-like creatures and chosen to investigate, or some of them could have been captured in their weakened state and the rest set out to recover them. We have not found any of their bodies or equipment, which implies some or all of them were not taken, since the black creatures have shown no interest in anything but living captives.”

“Your analysis of these peculiar creatures is perceptive
, swordsman,” Bellimar said with a slow shake of his head. “The thread of logic concerning your friends, however, is tenuous at best.”

Amric sat back and folded his arms across his chest
. “A suspicion, as I said. And it is all I have, so I will pursue it. I intend to trace these black creatures back to their source.”

Syth stared,
disbelief and admiration warring in his expression as his brown hair swirled about his shoulders in subdued eddies. “Swordsman, have you ever passed a hornet’s nest without wanting to wear it as a hat?”

Amric barked a laugh
. “Well, there you have it,” he said. “We leave after two nights, if the fates allow it. I will not blame you if you want no part of this mad scheme. You owe me nothing.”

“I will be ready tomorrow,” Valkarr asserted, hammering a fist onto the thick oaken table
and causing the plates to jump and rattle. “Already I feel the strength returning to my limbs.”

“Then you will be even more ready the following morning,” Amric
said with a smile. “You have come a long way from death’s door, my friend, but I need you back at your best. You saw how hard those unnatural things were to kill. In any event, the extra day gives us time to gather supplies and rest the horses as well. After all, the next leg of the journey may well prove as strenuous as the last.”

He pushed back from the table and stood, drawing another suspicious glare from the
Traug towering in the far corner of the room. Showing what he felt was remarkable restraint, he elected not to bait the surly creature again.

“It is time to conclude our business with Morland,” he said
, with a final glance around the table. Bellimar and Syth rose with him and together they headed across the raucous common room of the inn and made for the doors.

“If you are meeting with a noble
man, perhaps you should take that bath first,” Thalya called after him.

“No
t a chance,” Amric said over his shoulder. “There is nothing noble about this man, and I fully intend to leave muddy footprints all over those priceless rugs of his. Besides, I would only need another after we met with him.”

Syth chortled to himself as
he and Bellimar followed Amric from the inn and into the night.

Morland sat in the high-backed chair, drumming his jeweled fingers on the table. His cold eyes shifted, sliding over each of them in turn with deliberate indolence.

Without looking away from the merchant’s cadaverous visage,
Amric studied the glowering guards flanking the man. The one on the left was too bulky to possess much speed, and the one on the right was a touch soft. Even unarmed as he was, the warrior felt reasonably certain he could down them both before Morland was more than a few steps from his chair. He sensed the presence of the guards several paces behind him as well, heard the periodic creak of leather as they shifted with nervous tension. The merchant had seated his guests farther away from him this time, as well as increasing the number of guards in the room, and he seemed to think himself safe.

Amric let a slow smile play across his lips and a brash invitation creep into his gaze
.
Break your word, merchant
, he thought,
and we will discover together if that confidence is misplaced.
If Morland took any note of the goading, however, he was betrayed only by an almost imperceptible tightening at the corner of his eye.

“Let me see if I have the right of this tale,” Morland rasped
at last, tapping his index finger twice more on the table before his fingers became still. He looked at Amric. “You, who were to return with word of my business contact, instead slew him.” He turned then to Syth. “And you, who were to return with my misappropriated belongings, instead left them all behind.”

“You left out the part where we collapsed the place, in all likelihood burying or destroying your belongings in the process,” Syth put in helpfully
. “I am quite certain we mentioned that part.”

Morland’s face twisted in sudden fury, but Bellimar interrupted before he could
respond.

“The
Wyrgens tapped into primal forces they could not hope to control,” the old man said. “The consequences drove Grelthus and his people to bestial madness, even as it weakened the very structure of Stronghold itself. We were fortunate indeed to escape that place of death, so that we could return to you with this news, as was our agreement.”

His
tone was level and eminently rational, and he placed a subtle emphasis on the last words. Morland’s angry gaze flicked over to him, and it was evident that the reminder had registered.

“Despite the embellishment of our friend Syth here,
” Bellimar continued, “only a central portion of the fortress actually collapsed. While it is indeed impassable, much of the structure was unaffected. Once travel to the east becomes less hazardous, a man of your considerable resources could no doubt mount an expedition to Stronghold. It may yet be possible for you to retrieve the artifacts you seek.”

“Perhaps,” Morland said, letting the word escape through clenched teeth.

As Bellimar resumed speaking, the soothing quality of his voice deepened to embrace an almost mesmerizing quality. Amric, not even the target of it, nonetheless felt the liquid timbre slide beneath his skin with a numbing and almost hypnotic effect.

“We regret,
my lord, that we bring unfortunate tidings. We can only hope that the regrettable fate of your ally will not prove too disastrous to your business endeavors. But even as I utter the words, I know them for a foolish worry! A man of your shrewd nature will have readied a way to achieve the necessary ends despite this minor setback. You are no doubt already cultivating alternate plans.”

“Of course I am,” Morland snapped
. “Your incompetence on this matter pains me, but I have designs of greater significance in motion as well, so no matter.” He blinked as if surprised at his own words, and his lips tightened into a bloodless line as he glared at Bellimar with sudden suspicion.