Malison: Dragon Umbra Read online

  Charanis stopped before the door, squatted, and considered the burned lock.

  “These burns are recent,” she whispered. “Within the last few days. See how jagged it looks?”

  “I wonder where this door goes,” said Tyrcamber.

  “If I kept my bearings correctly, we are to the west of Cathedral Square,” said Charanis. “The wealthiest district of the city, I believe.”

  “Aye,” said Tyrcamber. “The Shield has his mansion there. So do many of the aldermen and the chief merchants, and the main guildhalls are nearby.” That made a grim sort of sense. The Dragon Cult was more concentrated in the cities and the towns than in the countryside, and among the wealthy merchants and the nobles instead of the commoners. People who spent all day working to survive generally did not have the time to turn to the doctrines of the Path of the Dragon.

  “Open the door,” said Charanis, setting an arrow to her bowstring. “I shall cover you. If there are foes, we shall be ready.”

  Tyrcamber nodded and grasped the iron handle of the door with his free hand. The metal had been warped by the heat of the Lance spells. He pulled on the door, easing it back, but the rusted hinges made a grating noise anyway. God only knew how far the sound would travel. He pulled the door open, and Charanis leveled her bow and Angaric pointed his free hand, no doubt holding a spell ready, but nothing moved.

  “It looks clear, Tyrcamber,” said Angaric.

  Tyrcamber stepped around the door, making sure to stay clear of Angaric’s and Charanis’s fields of fire. Beyond the door, he saw another high gallery of rough-hewn stone, more skeletons resting in niches along the wall. Muridachs tracks marked the dust of the floor, and here and there Tyrcamber also saw the prints of booted human feet.

  “There were humans with the muridachs,” said Charanis.

  “Let’s see where they went,” said Tyrcamber.

  He led the way into the gallery, sword ready. They walked in silence for a few moments, the walls lined with the dead in their niches on either side. Then Charanis came to an abrupt stop and raised her hand, and Tyrcamber and Angaric halted.

  “Listen,” whispered Charanis.

  Tyrcamber inclined his head. At first, he heard nothing but his own breathing and the beating of his heart, but a faint murmuring came to his ears. It was the sound of voices coming from a long way off.

  “Muridachs,” said Charanis. “They are speaking with humans.”

  “Should we go back and alert the Master?” said Angaric.

  Tyrcamber shook his head. “We don’t have enough yet. I’m not even sure where we are.”

  “Remain quiet,” said Charanis.

  They kept moving forward, and the distant voices grew louder, though still indistinct. The gallery ended in another stone wall with an archway. A flight of stairs ascended into the gloom, and a pale light came from the archway.

  “Extinguish the light,” breathed Charanis. “Anyone at the top of the stairs will see it.”

  Angaric gestured, and the red glow of his light spell vanished. For a moment Tyrcamber felt as if he stood in absolute darkness, but then his eyes adjusted, and he saw the light coming from the top of the stairs. There was an open doorway at the top of the steps.

  “Let’s go,” said Charanis. “We must remain absolutely silent at all costs. Stealth is preferable to speed.”

  Tyrcamber nodded and started up the stairs, moving step by careful step. Angaric and Charanis followed him. Tyrcamber felt the sweat trickling down his back beneath his chain mail and gambeson, heard the steady drum of his heartbeat. He also heard the faint rasp of his boots against the stone, along with Angaric’s movements. No matter how hard they tried, they could not match the ghostly stealth that Charanis displayed. Hopefully, the sound would not travel far enough to alert anyone of their presence.

  The voices grew louder as they approached, and Tyrcamber heard human voices mixed with the deeper tones of muridach warriors. The stairs ended in a doorway, and beyond it, Tyrcamber saw a large cellar. It spread away as far as he could see, its groin-vaulted ceiling supported by thick brick pillars, and the floor had been paved with flagstones.

  A strange crimson light shone in the distance, filling the pillared cellar with thick, tangled shadows.

  Charanis pointed at one of the pillars, and Tyrcamber nodded. They slipped away from the doorway and ducked behind the pillar. At Charanis’s silent direction, they moved from pillar to pillar, drawing closer to the source of the crimson light.

  They ducked behind still another pillar, and Tyrcamber saw the source of the crimson glow.

  It was a dragon’s skull.

  The skull was about as long as Tyrcamber was tall. In life, the dragon would have had no difficulty biting Tyrcamber in half, not with those dagger-like fangs. The dragon bone was a peculiar dull gold-white color, and the crimson light came from hundreds of glyphs and sigils carved into the bone. They shone with an eerie red light, and Tyrcamber could feel waves of power rolling off the skull. He worked the Sense spell in silence, focusing his will upon the skull, and the surge of dark magic he detected almost knocked him off his feet.

  What was worse, it resembled the fading aura he had detected beneath the hill in Tolbiac.

  This skull, whatever it was, was the thing that Gantier’s men had taken from that dark elven tomb.

  A dozen muridach warriors stood guard around the skull, swords and axes in hand. In the dim light from the skull’s glyphs, the muridach warriors looked grim, their black eyes reflecting the glow, the light painting their fur the color of blood. Fighting the muridach warriors in broad daylight was bad enough. Seeing them in the gloomy cellar made the hair on the back of Tyrcamber’s neck rise, bringing to mind all kinds of fears of being gnawed on by crawling things in dark places.

  A dozen human men in chain mail and leather stood with the muridachs. They seemed to be both guarding the skull and keeping a wary eye on the ratmen. Tyrcamber recognized several of the men from Tolbiac. They had been in Gantier’s party. Whatever was going on, whatever Gantier and the Dragon Cult intended, this was clearly the heart of their plan. Tyrcamber looked around, trying to figure out just where the devil they were. Beneath one of Falconberg’s great mansions, that was plain. But which damned mansion? The city had so many of them.

  He glanced back at Charanis, intending to gesture that they should retreat to the stairs to the catacombs. Once Tyrcamber reported to the Master, they could return with overwhelming force and deal with both Gantier’s men and the muridachs. Charanis was staring at the glowing dragon skull, and there was something on her face that Tyrcamber had not seen before.

  Fear. Perhaps even verging on terror.

  Footsteps rang against the floor, and the muridach warriors and the human soldiers both turned. A tall human man walked into the red light, clad in chain mail with a sword at his belt. His blond hair had been tied back in a tail, and a bushy mustache bristled over his lip. A satisfied expression marked Michael Gantier’s face. Next to him walked a hulking muridach warrior in plate armor, a massive double-bladed axe in his hand, and Tyrcamber recognized Tynrogaul of Kurphylon.

  The fear in Tyrcamber’s gut sharpened further. Tynrogaul had wielded powerful magic during the battle at the Dusty Merchant, and a double-bladed axe was not a weapon for novices. If the muridachs and Gantier’s rogues noticed Tyrcamber and the others, they were going to die. There was no way they could fight off so many enemies at once, and there was no way they could escape back to the catacombs.

  He glanced back at Charanis and Angaric, and they had both gone as motionless as statues. A muscle worked in Charanis’s jaw, and sweat beaded on Angaric’s forehead. God and the saints, would the muridachs be able to smell them? Maybe the odor of Gantier’s soldiers would cover them. Or perhaps the smell of an umbral elf would draw their notice.

  “It’s time?” said one of the human rogues.

  “Aye,” said Gantier. He pointed at the skull, and Tyrcamber saw that it was sitting on a wooden sled. �
��Get that thing moving. And when we get to the stairs, for God’s sake don’t drop it. Our employers will have our heads if we damage the damned thing.”

  “Fear not, Gantier,” said Tynrogaul in his rumbling voice. “It will take more than mere human strength to damage the great relic. That is why we can entrust its movement to humans.”

  Gantier smirked at the muridach leader. “And which is why our employers trusted mere humans to find the damned thing. You never managed it.”

  “My warriors did the fighting and the killing,” said Tynrogaul, glaring at Gantier. “Yours were mere errand boys.”

  Gantier scoffed. “We were the brains, you were the dumb muscle. You…”

  “Enough.”

  The voice was beautiful, melodious beyond that of a human, but it carried a dark menace. The Escheator’s voice had been beautiful with that undercurrent of malignancy, but the Escheator had been merely arrogant. This voice had the same arrogance, but something within it suggested iron power and control, the strength to back up that arrogance.

  And Tyrcamber had heard that voice before, three years ago in the catacombs beneath the city of Tamisa.

  The Theophract walked into the circle of light shining from the skull.

  The dark elven sorcerer wore armor of overlapping plates of blue steel beneath his heavy black cloak, the cowl drawn up to shadow his head. He wore a helmet with the faceplate wrought into a snarling dragon’s head, the masked helmet concealing his features. In his right hand was a staff of black metal so dark that it looked like a slash carved into the air. Maybe it really was a rip in the air. The dark elven sorcerer cast a shadow in the light from the dragon skull.

  The staff itself did not.

  “Lord Theophract,” said Tynrogaul in a much more respectful tone of voice, and Gantier bowed his head.

  The Theophract said nothing for a moment, the strange staff seeming to shiver and twist in his armored hand. Gantier and Tynrogaul stood motionless under his gaze, and Tyrcamber saw the sweat slither down Gantier’s face, saw Tynrogaul’s tail twitching with agitation. Despite their respectful miens, he could tell both men were terrified of the Theophract. Tyrcamber could not blame them. Even Rilmael had been uneasy about facing the Theophract in an open battle, and the Guardian had tried to ambush the dark elf below Tamisa.

  The Theophract had survived the ambush without much difficulty.

  “The time has come,” said the Theophract. “Bring the skull to the great hall.” A dry note entered the beautiful and terrible voice. “The humans and the muridachs may share in the honor of the labor.”

  “It shall be as you say, lord,” said Gantier.

  “Yes, it shall,” said the Theophract. “Do hasten. Your employers do not wish to be kept waiting. A great apotheosis is upon them.”

  With that, the Theophract turned and strode away, his dark staff still casting no shadow. Gantier and Tynrogaul gave orders to their men, who cooperated without complaint. Tyrcamber suspected that no sane man wished to draw the eye of a creature like the Theophract. Three muridachs and three humans lifted the dragon skull, almost like pallbearers carrying a coffin, and carried it away. The red light faded as the muridachs and the human rogues departed, and darkness settled over the cellar once more.

  A moment later the cellar plunged into utter blackness, and silence ruled the darkness.

  “Wait a moment,” whispered Charanis. Even a whisper seemed shockingly loud in the blackness. “Count to ninety before you summon a light, Sir Angaric. Then only summon a weak one.”

  “As you say,” said Angaric.

  Tyrcamber counted to ninety inside his head. His count must have been off, or Angaric had counted faster, because he was only to eighty-six when Angaric summoned a dim gleam of red light, just enough for Tyrcamber to make out the shapes of the others and the nearby pillar.

  “That skull,” said Charanis, her face tight. “I know what it is.”

  “What, then?” said Tyrcamber.

  “A weapon of dragon bone, as you suspected,” said Charanis, “but one of colossal power. Removing a bone from a dragon while it still lives is difficult. Removing a skull from a living dragon is a feat of near-impossible sorcery, and only the most potent wielders of dark magic and necromancy could attempt it. But if they succeeded…the skull is a weapon of tremendous power.”

  “What will it do?” said Tyrcamber. He was half-tempted to ask if the dragon skull would breathe fire, but he doubted something so simple would have unnerved Charanis.

  “It is a weapon of necromancy,” said Charanis. “It must be empowered with the blood of an innocent victim. But when it is activated, it will drain the life of everyone nearby.”

  “Nearby?” said Tyrcamber. “How near?”

  “Perhaps a mile, perhaps two,” said Charanis with a shrug. “A considerable distance.”

  “But there are thousands of people within a mile of where we’re standing,” said Angaric.

  “And we are close enough that the skull’s magic will likely kill both the First and the Chancellor,” said Charanis.

  “That is what the Dragon Cult wants,” said Tyrcamber. “God and the saints, the Theophract probably planned this all from the beginning.”

  “The Theophract?” said Charanis. “You mean the dark elf in the mask?”

  “Aye,” said Tyrcamber. “Best not tell anyone that you saw him. He doesn’t like anyone knowing that he exists. He wrote the Path of the Dragon and founded the Dragon Cult.”

  “And you have encountered this creature before?” said Angaric.

  “That Dragonmaeloch I killed in Tamisa?” said Tyrcamber. “The Theophract was the one who showed him how to transform into a Dragonmaeloch.”

  “We must warn the Master and the Shield of the weapon at once,” said Angaric. “If we hasten, we can return to the surface and make our way to Falcon Hall.”

  Tyrcamber and Charanis shared a look.

  “You disagree?” said Tyrcamber.

  “We don’t know where we are,” said Charanis. “Not exactly. Somewhere among the mansions and the guildhalls, aye. But not precisely where.”

  “Does that matter?” said Angaric.

  “It matters a great deal,” said Tyrcamber, rubbing his jaw with his free hand. “If the serjeants and the militiamen go from house to house, they might not find the skull in time. And if the cultists see soldiers coming, they might retreat, or activate the weapon immediately. We need to be able to tell the Master and the Shield where to strike.”

  Angaric sighed. “Which means we need to know whose cellar this is.”

  “I’m afraid so, yes,” said Tyrcamber.

  “We have no other choice,” said Charanis. “Once we determine where we are, then we can escape and sound the alarm. The chapterhouse of the Order of Embers is not that far from the great mansions and the guildhalls. You can have a force of serjeants and knights strike with haste.”

  “Aye,” said Tyrcamber. He wondered if he could get word to Rilmael. They would almost certainly need the Guardian’s help to defeat or at least drive off the Theophract. Tyrcamber knew that he and Angaric and Charanis would have no chance against the mighty dark elven wizard.

  The entire forces of the Imperial Orders available in Falconberg might not be enough to overcome the Theophract.

  “Then let’s not wait,” said Tyrcamber, and he started across the cellar.

  ***

  Chapter 9: Hidden Cults

  Tyrcamber led the way across the gloomy cellar, listening for any dangers.

  Angaric summoned just enough light to illuminate their path, and the thick brick pillars loomed out of the darkness. After a moment they reached the far wall, and Tyrcamber found the stairs the muridachs and the rogues had used. He led the way up the steps, took a right-hand turn, and the stairs ended in another door.

  It was unlocked, and he eased it open and found himself in yet another cellar. Unlike the vaulted cellar, this space looked like it was used frequently. Thick wooden pillars supported
the rafters of the ceiling, and casks of beer and sacks of grain were stacked against the brick walls. The cellar was gloomy, but light leaked through narrow windows at the top of the walls.

  “Look out those windows,” said Tyrcamber. "Maybe we can figure out where we are."

  That was a useless effort. The windows were made of thick, cloudy glass. They admitted light, but it was nearly impossible to see anything through them save for a blur.

  “Can we break one?” said Angaric.

  Charanis gave an irritated shake of her head. “No. We would not fit through them, and the noise would likely draw attention from above.” She glanced at the wooden rafters overhead. “The noise of breaking a window might be audible.”

  She was right. Tyrcamber heard booted feet moving against the floorboards above the rafters, along with the clicking of muridach claws.

  “We’ll have to keep moving,” said Tyrcamber. “We’ll look for a door and make our way to the street, and then sound the alarm.”

  “Very well,” said Charanis.

  They crossed the cellar, weaving around the wooden pillars. Another flight of stone stairs ascended to a closed door, and Tyrcamber took the steps, Angaric and Charanis following. He listened at the door for a moment, heard nothing, and eased it open.

  He found himself in a large kitchen, the sort that would service a castle or a substantial manor house. A trio of enormous stone hearths stood on one wall, along with a pair of brick ovens with iron doors. Fires danced in all three hearths, and the air inside the kitchen was hot and sweltering. Four long tables held tools and plates and meals in various states of preparation. There was a serving door on the right side of the kitchen, and a narrow door on the left side. The left door looked as if it opened outside, and the right door led deeper into the house.