The Essence Gate War: Book 01 - Adept (44 page)

Syth’s face fell
. “Not a war stallion, eh? So that fat fool of a tradesman took advantage of me.” Then he shrugged, and the grin reappeared in a flash as he raised his eyebrows at the huntress. “I thought perhaps it was a kindred warrior spirit that caused the animal to be so unquestionably drawn to me, but now that I know it is female its attraction is, of course, less of a mystery.”

Thalya wiped away mirthful tears
. “Better keep your charms in reserve for now, thief, at least until you can tell the difference between stallion and mare. One never knows where the next such mistake will lead you. And I will ignore, for now, your unwise implication that a woman cannot possess the spirit of a warrior.”

The pair
quieted as they drew rein before Amric, Syth looking somewhat abashed and Thalya’s face becoming a frozen mask as her emerald gaze fell upon Bellimar. Amric noted that the huntress had never allowed Halthak to heal her, but the bruising and abrasions had subsided enough now that her features were more evident. She was a stunningly beautiful woman, even with her features settled into lines of anger and suspicion, as they were at the moment.

“I must admit, I am surprised to see you all,” Amric said
. “Unless you are here to see us off?”

The others exchanged glances, but Bellimar spoke first, the intensity of the old man’s gaze like a physical thing pressing against him
. “There are questions yet to be answered, swordsman,” he said. “I will be there when the mysteries are solved.”

“I go where the fiend goes,” Thalya said
immediately through clenched teeth.

Amric turned to
Syth. The man drew himself up in his saddle, and his words simmered as he spoke. “I spent months in a cell, waiting for an inglorious death at the hands of a madman. I had nothing of freedom, excitement or change in scenery, and no chance to strike out at a deserving foe.” This time when his grin returned, it was a slow, wolfish thing. “At least this madman offers those things.”

Amric looked finally to Halthak, who flushed and gave a sheepish shrug
. “Someone has to keep all you mad fools alive,” he said.

The warrior considered making another attempt to dissuade them, but as he looked around at each of their faces he read defiance and quiet determination, and he bit down upon the words before they could form
. Who was he to impugn their courage, anyway? They had each made their decisions with full knowledge of what they faced. For their own reasons, each had chosen to accompany him to aid his missing friends and, with luck, all of the lands. He and Valkarr were well accustomed to the battlefield, and Bellimar had certainly seen his share of death, but the others were not so inured. All in all, he decided, he could think of no more valorous act.

He nodded his thanks to them and wheeled his bay gelding toward the city’s southern gate
. The riders fell into line behind him, and they rode from the city under the gathering sky.

Twin pairs of eyes, pale and sharp as the hard frost before the first driving winter snowfall, watched from high atop the southern wall of Keldrin’s Landing. As Amric and company disappeared over the first distant rise where the winding thread of road split the rolling green sward, the Elvar assassin Nyar turned to his brother Nylien.

“
They depart the city,” he remarked.

“Our lord predicted as much,” Nylien said.

“Our lord is wise, as ever.”

“The Nar’ath will no doubt ensure they do not return,” Ny
lien said in a sorrowful tone.

“But our lord prefers to take few chances,”
Nyar pointed out.

The other brightened
. “Just so, brother, just so.”

“There will be many Nar’ath on the move.”

“But we are shadows,” Nylien said with confidence.

“So we are, brother
. We are indeed shadows.”

“I believe our lord will wish us to follow, and ensure they cannot affect his plans.”

“We should prepare for travel,” Nyar said with an eager nod.

“Ho there!”
bellowed a voice from further down the wall-walk. A heavyset guard strode toward them, slightly favoring a bandaged left leg, and a crossbow dangled from one hand at his side. “What are you two doing there? Citizens are not allowed upon the wall-walk.”

The
Elvaren blinked at each other and broke into slow smirks.

“It addresses us, brother
. It demands to know our purpose.”

“So it does
. It would be rude not to respond, despite our hurry.”

“I had the same thought, my brother.”

Pushing themselves lazily from the wall, they spread out and began to stroll toward the guard on either side of the walkway.

The guard slowed and faltered, his brow clouding as his gaze darted between them
. “Wait, what are you doing?” he stammered. “You cannot be up here.”

The assassins continued to advance
at a leisurely pace, vulpine smiles splitting their features. Their pale faces and shocks of white hair seemed to float disconnected above their dark, leather-clad forms. The guard raised his crossbow, bracing it with his other hand and leveling it at first one and then the other. The Elvaren took no apparent notice of the weapon. The man searched their expressions and blanched. He began to take shuffling steps backward.

“You cannot be up here,” he repeated in an overloud voice
. “Do not come any closer, or I’ll raise the alarm!”

Nyar slowed to a halt and put a slender finger to his lips, tapping them in thought
. “It raises a worthy point, brother.”

“How do you mean?” asked Nylien, stopping as well and turning to face him.

“It occurs that if our conversation proceeds with this one, the aftermath may serve to draw additional unwanted attention to the southern wall and gate, today and tonight. And our lord would certainly not wish this.”

“Ah,”
sighed Nylien. “As ever, brother, your adherence to duty does you credit. Of course you are correct.”

“Regrettably, the pleasures of conversing with this one will have to wait until we return
,” Nyar agreed with a sigh of his own.

“If it still remains within the city,” Nylien said, raising one delicate eyebrow.

“It is the price of pursuing larger game, and doing our lord’s will. We will not be so constrained, when he rises to power.”

“But until then…”

“Yes, until then.”

The assassins turned to the guard once more
. The man stood facing them, bewildered, the point of the loaded crossbow bolt wavering between the two figures. His finger tightened upon the trigger as the pair regarded him with all the detached interest one might show an intrusive, uncommon insect. Then, in unison, they spun on their heels and began to walk the other way with identical sauntering gaits. The guard let out a long breath and watched them go, tracking their progress until they disappeared into the stairwell leaving the wall-walk. They did not once look back.

Amric kicked free of the saddle and slid to the ground. He knelt there, brushing his fingertips over the parched earth and then digging in to withdraw a fistful of sand. It poured from his hand and was caught by the breeze, swirling away like a gossamer veil. He squinted back the way they had come. A mere twenty yards away the soil was dark, rich and moist, giving rise to the lush green sward that undulated away behind them.

“What do you make of this?” he asked.

“Something is leeching the life from the very land here,” Bellimar responded at once, nudging his steed closer. “There has long been a desolate region at the southern foot of the Hoarfang mountain range, but it was isolated, ringed in by crags and fertile plains.”

“It is the same, the spreading wasteland my father heard about,” Thalya said with quiet conviction
. “It must be.”

Bellimar’s expression was grave
. “If this extends all the way to the mountains, then its expansion has been rapid indeed,” he said. “Too rapid.”

Amric nodded
and stood, brushing the sand from his palms. He turned and sighted along the ragged line where the vegetation gave grudging way to the advancing desert. Along that line, the grasses browned and grew thin, and the scattered copses of trees withered into weak, skeletal things. The transition was far too abrupt to be natural.

That the land was dying was plain to see
. The questions that had to be answered now were how, and why.

“Coul
d this be another way the disruption of Essence in the region manifests itself?” Halthak asked.

“I do not know, but I doubt it,” Amric said with a slow shake of his head
. “These symptoms do not match those of the forest, where life is maddened and twisted but not drained like this.”

“I must concur,” Bellimar said
. “The magic in the region is rising out of control, strengthening magical effects and causing chaos through the agitation of all things that are linked to Essence. This would seem to represent the opposite. It does not match the pattern.”

Valkarr grunted, frowning down from the saddle at the barren ground
beneath his mount’s hooves. “The earth dies,” he said. “Just as it did beneath the flesh of the black things we fought in the forest.”

Amric felt a chill, recalling how the flora had
wilted and died wherever even a severed piece of the creatures came to rest for any length of time. It strained coincidence to believe that there was no connection between nearing the source of the foul creatures and encountering this widespread effect.

Syth was scanning the bleak horizon with a look of dismay upon his face
. “Even if the flesh of these creatures is toxic, could they have done all this merely by walking around?” he asked in a dubious tone.

Bellimar shook his head
. “I do not see how, unless there are unimaginably vast multitudes of them. To cause devastation at this level by tread alone would take more than seems possible, more than could be concealed. But we still do not know their source yet, and I think that might yield the answer.”

Thalya sat her restive mare with a drawn expression, her
green eyes roving from Bellimar to the seemingly boundless wasteland ahead. Amric tried to guess at her thoughts, but her stony expression yielded no hints. He swung into the saddle of his bay gelding and wheeled it about to face the group.

“Either way, we must be getting close
. We continue south.”

They rode on into the wasteland with the somber afternoon sky turning slowly above them
. The terrain grew even more bleak, the remaining signs of plant and animal life becoming rarer with each passing hour. Stark outcroppings of sun-bleached rock knuckled their way through the sweeping dunes, and the ground around them seemed to peel back in aversion. The southern road became an ephemeral thing, a tentative strand of hard-packed earth winding through the parched land; it would come and go in glimpses, swept under by the wind-blown sands as often as not. Amric had begun to believe they would see no other creature in this desolate sea when they crested a ridge and caught the first distant signs of motion. At first he thought the shimmering waves of heat clinging to the ground were playing tricks upon his vision, but the more he stared, the more he realized what he was seeing. He brought the column of riders to a halt and pointed.

A group of a dozen or so dark figures was running over a
faraway swell of sand, moving together with tireless purpose. As they watched, a second group of tiny, indistinct figures appeared over another hill, and then a third. The creatures were all headed north, toward them. Amric turned and led the way back behind the ridgeline. They left the remains of the highway and rode west for a time. As they threaded along the hills, the terrain offered occasional views of the progress of those they sought to avoid. The creatures did not appear to have noticed them over the yawning distance, as they continued on their respective paths to the north as if on a shared mission. Amric turned the group and headed south once again, deeper into the wasteland.

Over the next several hours, they were forced to change course
many more times. Each time they reached a summit, they were greeted by the sight of more and larger packs of the black creatures skittering across the hills. It became an increasing challenge to avoid them, requiring the riders to weave back and forth in an ever more erratic pattern. On several occasions, the creatures passed close enough to the riders that Amric, lying flat upon the hill separating them, could pick out details of their ebon flesh and the tattered cloth wrappings dangling from their limbs. As with the ones they had faced before, these seemed to be modeled after various races, like animate statues cast of some lightless material in the mold of the peoples from far-flung lands. He saw the forms of humans and slender Elvaren, stout Duergen and heavyset beast-men, the bird-beaked men from some deep southern clime whose nation he could not recall, and even an occasional Traug. He saw countless others too far away to discern, but their shapes and sizes proclaimed their diversity. At one point he was convinced he saw the tail and lean, broad-shouldered build of a Sil’ath, but it was too far away to be certain and the figure was quickly lost to sight behind the hills.