Through Stone and Sea Page 12

  A lone merchant in a foreign settlement.

  Chane sped along the cliff-side path behind the buildings. When he reached the next alley back to the main street, he crept out near its end to watch. Searching the street’s far side, he could not find the man—not until he looked along the frontage of the cliff-side structures.

  There was his quarry, strolling along, but Chane held back, remaining still in the shadows. Beyond the merchant, a pair of dwarves in matched attire trudged the street’s far side. Both appeared armored in hauberks of hardened leather scales. Each carried a long oak staff, used like a walking stick, not that they needed such. They glanced about with no serious interest, yet they were clearly some kind of night watch.

  Chane ran his tongue over his teeth and backed deeper into the alley until the two dwarves moved on, out of sight. Then he flattened, still and quiet at the sound of approaching footfalls.

  The merchant strolled right past the alley’s mouth.

  Chane stepped out and dropped his coin pouch.

  It landed on the street with a clinking thud. An old but simple trick, used many times before—because it always worked.

  “Sir,” he called in Numanese. “You dropped your purse.”

  The merchant started at the sound of Chane’s maimed voice and spun too quickly, stumbling for an instant. When he spotted Chane in his long brown cloak and well-made boots, he calmed, and then quickly checked the small bulging pouch tucked into his belt. He was more stout and solid than Chane had first noticed, with a large brown mustache hiding his upper lip.

  “Thank you,” he said, “but I have mine.”

  “Are you certain?” Chane asked. “I thought I saw it fall in your passing.”

  The man clearly had his purse, but he walked back toward Chane with an expectant expression. Either he too wondered who had lost it, or he thought it was just a lucky find that he might share in. He never had the chance to express either notion.

  Chane lashed out.

  His right hand closed over the man’s mouth and jaw, and he spun back into the alley. The merchant flailed in surprise, his feet twisting under him. Before he could set his heels, Chane jerked him further into the darkness and slammed him hard against one building’s stone wall.

  On impact, the merchant shuddered and slumped.

  Chane held his unconscious prey pinned as his senses widened.

  He smelled warm flesh, heard a quickened heartbeat. His jaws ached under shifting teeth as his canines elongated. Somewhere within him, that beast clawed the floor of a dark cell, trying to break its chains and reach for the promise of blood. Its snarls mixed with screeches of hunger that shook its whole body.

  Chane began to shake as he stared at the merchant’s throat.

  A thunder crack jarred him into sharp awareness, and he whipped his head around.

  Far beyond the alley’s end, across the wide main street, the two dwarves had turned back on their patrol. Their wooden staves rose and fell with every other step, cracking out the rhythm that had seemed so near in Chane’s heightened hearing.

  Chane rushed down the alley, dragging his prey along the wall. When he reached the end, he pinned the man against the short wall above the cliff, and clamped his other hand around the merchant’s throat. He glanced back for an instant.

  The night watch passed up the main street beyond sight.

  Chane wrenched the merchant’s head back. His jaws widened at the sight of a distended throat. The beast within him went still, panting in anticipation—until Chane paused, frozen as well.

  Reason crept in—he had to think.

  This moment promised ecstasy . . . and consequences. Among Numans, the humans of these lands, and perhaps dwarves as well, undead were nearly unknown. If Wynn heard of a corpse with its throat torn, who else would she think of but him?

  Could he cut the man’s throat, not even kill him, and make it look like a common assault? He could still drink, and the blood as a conduit would carry a bit of life into him—just enough to sustain him for a while.

  The beast snarled, howling denial.

  Chane wanted . . . needed this moment . . . this kill. He could do this and simply heave the body over the precipice. Days, or even a moon, would pass before it was found, if at all. No other hope of bliss was his in this existence. . . .

  Except a small place in Wynn’s world.

  A howl vibrated deep inside Chane.

  He released the merchant’s throat, still gripping the man’s jaw, and reached for his sword. It would take a deep but careful slice, enough to be life-threatening but not fatal.

  The merchant awoke, and his hands latched onto Chane’s wrist.

  Even muffled beneath Chane’s palm, the man’s shriek rang in his ears.

  Panic—or a rush of delight—smothered all reason.

  Chane jerked the merchant’s head aside and clamped his jaws onto the man’s throat. Fatted flesh tore in his teeth and he swallowed blood as starvation took over. Life filled him, coppery and salt- laden and vibrant with a prey’s horror. It had been so long since he had given in. Even in feeding in Calm Seatt, he kept himself distanced from the pleasure.

  There was no beast. There was no Chane. There was only painful hunger to smother and drown. He remained fastened to his prey’s throat until the man’s thrashing weakened beneath him. He heard—felt—the final heartbeat.

  Chane raised his head, swallowing blood that welled back up his throat into his mouth. He languished, wavering slightly in regained strength and release from hunger. When he finally opened his eyes, he gazed up at one string of stars barely shining through a cloud-coated sky.

  To him, those points of light were as brilliant as full moons. The stars, like a writhing path in the blackness, reminded him of . . .

  Something he thought he had glimpsed once in dark dormancy . . . and a question.

  Do Noble Dead dream?

  Memory of Wynn’s voice made every muscle tighten, and Chane heard a muffled crackle.

  Bone shifted beneath the flesh clenched in his left hand. His gaze dropped instantly from the night sky.

  The merchant’s jaw had shifted sideways in his grip, broken and disfigured. Even then, the beast settled in glutted contentment, and Chane dared not close his eyes or he might see Wynn staring at him.

  Do Noble Dead dream when they sleep . . . I mean, go dormant?

  Chane shuddered, suddenly cold inside.

  Perhaps they did—or he did—but not always. When had that first started? At times, as his limbs and eyelids grew heavy and he slipped into that vacant darkness, he had been thinking of her.

  He would remember her in the library of the old converted barracks in Bela. Or he imagined her in a castle far away, searching through a great library of books, tomes, and scrolls that stretched beyond sight’s reach. In this last day’s dormancy, he had been remembering her small room back in the guild at Calm Seatt—a place he had seen only once.

  Wherever he imagined, always at night while he lay dormant for the day, she was there with him. But there was someone . . . something . . . else?

  Now and then, something had moved in a dark corner or under a table beyond the reach of a dreamtime Wynn’s cold lamp. Something like stars—or glints upon a black reflective surface—that coiled and rolled. But whenever he looked, nothing was there.

  Always just before he rose at dusk, or when he roused too early for the tram back to Bay-Side. Wynn had been pulling at him and . . .

  The beast’s eager rumble made Chane convulse and then turn rigid.

  Had he lunged at her? Pinned her beneath himself? No, that could never happen.

  Chane jerked his hand from the corpse’s dislocated jaw and let it drop. None of this mattered. It was just the power of his desire, like that of the hunt. He needed her so much that it breached the vacant time of his dormancy. That was all.

  He remembered the sight of her standing in his doorway, an urn of goat’s blood in her arms. What she must have endured to get it for hi
m. He would never let her suffer that again. Now he was strong, his thoughts clear and sharp, and she need never know how.

  Chane crouched to seize the body, pausing long enough to wipe his face off on the man’s cloak. He heaved the corpse up and out. It cleared the wall and fell down the mountainside.

  One prey among many meant nothing.

  But vampires each developed different and differing degrees of abilities. In the past year, he had started to feel the difference between truth and deceit. Not often, and only when he was not expecting it. The beast inside of him snarled in warning, as if sensing a threat.

  If Wynn found him gone, later asking where he had been . . .

  Would Chane hear—feel—his own lie to her?

  Sau’ilahk waited in a Sea-Side side tunnel just beyond a common dwarven tavern called Maksûin Bití—the Baited Bear. He had risen from dormancy feeling strong and alert, vital with the life of three victims. On this second night beneath the mountain, he was beginning to appreciate its many shadowy places.

  Wynn had gone back to the temple at Bay-Side, but this did not matter for now. Within moments of awakening, he had conjured two servitors of Air and sent them in search of a word: “thänæ.” Any such mention would trigger his elemental constructs to record all utterances until conversation ended. And one had proven useful, returning to echoing dwarven voices chattering in excitement.

  “. . . thänæ will come tonight!”

  “Where did you hear this? No one’s seen him in nearly a season.”

  “Well’s Bottom and Gatherer were at the People’s Place last—”

  “Oh, mirth of the Eternals! Do not believe what you hear in that place!”

  “He is back—Hammer-Stag has returned! And tonight he comes to the Baited Bear!”

  “Why? That is no greeting house, and even so—”

  Sau’ilahk banished his servitors, not needing to hear more. It took time to find this basic house of ale and an opportune place to lie in wait. He knew a dwarven “telling” could last late into the night. It was not necessary to see the thänæ’s arrival, only his departure.

  The thänæ in question, like all such, had already achieved a place among the dwarves’ honored dead. Ultimately, all such hoped one day to become Bäynæ, one of the Eternals, the spiritual immortals and ancestral patrons of their people. To do so, one had to accomplish great feats that exalted their virtues or served the people—and in the “telling” to be judged worthy by all. Only when the people began to demand the marking of a new thänæ would a tribe’s leaders sit in conclave. A unanimous vote was required before shirvêsh of the appropriate temple were called to bless a new thôrhk for the recipient. Only the Thänæ had their names engraved upon the temple’s walls, but even then, decades or centuries would pass before even one of them, one day, might be ranked among the Eternals . . . if any ever did.

  Sau’ilahk knew these general details, and that the process was more complex in subtle ways—and that dwarves were fools.

  To spend one’s life, even one as long as a dwarf’s, in such a pursuit was insipid. He had no interest in their superstitions or false divinities—compared to his Beloved. Only the final detail of the process mattered, the one thing that would make the Stonewalkers come.

  A thänæ had to die.

  And after all, was not this what they all wanted . . . if they wished to become false saints?

  Sau’ilahk waited within sight of the alehouse, a place usually not sought for a “telling.” As night dragged on, he memorized other passages along the tunnel, as well as the far end of his own leading back to this level’s mainway. He had to be able to blink to the mouth of any one of them at will without line of sight. But not until dormancy threatened, warning that dawn was near, did he hear voices growing in the mainway.

  People poured from the alehouse, their noise quickly overriding the indistinct murmur from inside.

  “What a night!”

  “I will be dead on my feet for the day, but it was worth it!”

  “And I will relive that last tale unto my death!”

  Exclamations and adoring claims mounted one upon another, as patrons headed off both ways along the mainway of closed shops. Finally, Sau’ilahk heard one voice that overrode all others . . . deep, sure, and arrogant.

  “No, no, brothers and sisters, you’ve paid me enough drink for the next two tellings! Time for all to sleep. But I promise to share your hospitality again before I venture afar once more.”

  Sau’ilahk remained as still as a shadow, listening to Hammer-Stag. This one preferred wallowing with riffraff, those too ignorant to see through him. All to procure a name he hoped might last into eternity. How pitiful.

  There was only one true divinity who could grant eternal life. Such as Sau’ilahk had prayed and begged for—and been given by his Beloved. But he had no time to mourn the bane hidden within that boon.

  The thänæ turned the other direction down the mainway, and Sau’ilahk was forced to blink ahead of the bulky loudmouth by three intersecting passages. There, he focused on the life presence of his quarry, feeling Hammer-Stag’s spirit like a breeze or running stream one touched but could not hold on to. He no longer needed to listen to the braggart’s bluster.

  Twice more he blinked down the mainway, staying well ahead, then again down a side passage the thänæ turned into. He watched Hammer-Stag’s every turn, until the last of the well-wishers and sycophants went their own way.

  Hammer-Stag was alone in the deep sleeping back ways under Sea-Side. He was still far down a passage as Sau’ilahk retreated from its other end.

  Sau’ilahk hurried along the wider intersecting tunnel, and then stopped, quickly preparing. He would not take a dwarf directly. It had been a long time, but he remembered how difficult they could be. He had to put this one down before noise attracted attention. Sound carried far in these underground ways.

  Sau’ilahk manifested one hand, making it solid long enough to snuff the closest lantern. He quickly began the first conjury, calling up its shapes not in the air but upon the tunnel’s wall. He needed a powerful banishing.

  Within his mind’s eye, a glowing crimson circle appeared upon the rough stone, large enough to encompass him if stepped up to it. Another of pulsing amber rose within that one, followed by an inverted triangle. Sau’ilahk raised one incorporeal finger wrapped in frayed black cloth. He traced signs, symbols, and sigils between the shapes, his fingertip racing over the stone. Though no else could have seen, every mark burned phosphorescent.

  Soon, all light reaching from down the tunnel toward him began to dim—not everywhere, but only within the great seal that only he could see. Lantern light from up or down the way faded within an expanding space bulging outward from the wall.

  Sau’ilahk drifted in against the stone, poised at the center of his banishing circle.

  To conjure the Elements, or construct the lowest of elemental servitors, took years of dangerous practice. Banishing was often no more than releasing them, if one did not make them last longer than willful attention. Dealing with the natural world was another matter. Banishing anything natural to the world was nearly impossible, always temporary, and not for dabblers.

  Though the next and previous lanterns still burned in the tunnel, clear to see, their light touched nothing within the outward bounds of his pattern. Sau’ilahk stood unseen within a pocket of pure darkness that ate all light.

  It was costing him, weakening him. Yet he had one more conjury to accomplish, as he heard the thänæ’s heavy footfalls closing on the passage’s exit.

  As a spirit, Sau’ilahk did not posses a true “voice.” Even in the brief moments he willed himself corporeal, as an undead he did not draw breath. When and if he spoke, it was by conjury, faintly manipulating any noise made by the air’s natural movement. He now needed a true voice—one urgently familiar to Hammer-Stag.

  Sau’ilahk put the heels of his palms together, one hand below and the other above, with fingers outstretched. As he s
ank halfway into the tunnel wall amid his pool of darkness, he forced his hands solid. Envisioned glowing glyphs swirled in a tiny whirlwind. He arched his hands, fingertips still touching, and those bright symbols rushed into the space between, as if inhaled by a mouth.

  Sau’ilahk felt air shudder between his hands, until it became a dull, vibrating thrum.

  Hammer-Stag stepped out of the passage into the tunnel, turning the other way without pause.

  Sau’ilahk curled his fingers inward like claws. He opened his hands like a clamshell, fingers tearing at thrumming air as if prying open a mouth.

  A woman’s agonized shriek echoed along the passage.

  Hammer-Stag halted and spun about.

  He looked down the passage, eyes wide, and then the other way. When he turned back, apparently seeing nothing, he reached over his right shoulder. His wide callused hand gripped the battle-ax handle behind his head, but he did not pull it out.

  Sau’ilahk rotated his grip, twisting the air between his hands.

  A whimper rolled out of his pool of darkness, followed by a familiar terror-choked voice.

  “Please . . . help . . . me!”

  Hammer-Stag pulled the ax and gripped the haft with both hands. He lunged two steps and then paused with his brows furrowed.

  “Who is there?” he growled.

  Sau’ilahk’s satisfaction grew. This was so predictable. He twisted his hands again, feigning the familiar voice.

  “Fiáh’our . . . Hammer-Stag? It’s me, Wynn . . . Wynn Hygeorht!”

  The thänæ craned his neck, trying to see where she was.

  “Little mighty one?” he breathed, then shouted, “Where are you?”

  “Please help me! It’s coming!”

  “No!” he snarled. “I am! Call to me . . . I will find you!”

  Hammer-Stag charged down the passage, straight toward Sau’ilahk. As he passed the place where no light reached, Sau’ilahk opened his hands. The patch of darkness died under the light as Sau’ilahk slipped out behind the thänæ.