Lament (Scars of the Sundering Book 2) (39 page)

Chapter 21

Gisella stood in the doorway of
Pancras’s room as he sorted through his pack. “I didn’t expect Edric to accept
his fate so calmly.”

“Nor did I. It makes sense, I
suppose.” Pancras pulled a black leather belt out of his pack, then shook his
head and shoved it in again.

“How so?” Gisella cocked her
head. She hadn’t become well acquainted with the dwarf during their journey
from Muncifer. Edric spent most of his time over the past few months harassing
or being harassed by Qaliah. She assumed he was close friends with the
minotaur. She was, apparently, mistaken.

“He joined up with the draks and
me after being banished from Ironkrag. He didn’t say for what, exactly.”
Pancras closed his pack and set it in one of the chairs. “I assumed it was for
shaming his house with excessive gambling debt or some such. He didn’t offer,
and I didn’t ask. Frankly, I’m surprised he stayed with us this long.

“Qaliah will take it hard. She
developed quite a rapport with the dwarf. Edric entertained her during the long
journey because he tolerated and participated in her manic fun.” Gisella
doubted the minotaur would do the same.
Perhaps this will be a good
opportunity to train her as a sparring partner.

“She may choose to remain
behind.”

Gisella considered it. She
scratched her head. “I think I would prefer her to come along.”

“Oh?” Pancras rubbed his chin.
“Well, she’s welcome, of course.”

“I don’t know what we’re going to
find in Vlorey. She might come in very handy up there. I hear fiendlings aren’t
uncommon in the city.” Gisella suspected Qaliah would be more than happy to act
as a spy on their behalf, should such services be required.

“Have you been there before?”
Pancras locked the door behind him as the two of them made their way to the
common area for the evening meal.

“Vlorey? No. I’ve heard stories,
of course. It’s the biggest city on Andelosia. I expect any elements you
disliked in Muncifer or Almeria will be at least twice as bad there.” Gisella
offered a smile of reassurance to the wide-eyed minotaur.

“Fantastic. I miss Drak-Anor more
and more every day.”

“What’s it like?” Gisella hadn’t
even heard of Drak-Anor until two or three years earlier.

“Underground, pretty comfortable
most of the time. Now that we’ve run out the goblins and the oroqs, it’s quite
a nice place to live. We trade with Ironkrag and Celtangate now. It’s far
better than when I first arrived. We fought off invaders almost every day.”

“People who thought it was a den
of monsters to be killed for treasure?” Gisella encountered the type.
Self-righteous wanderers with little to do but stick their noses in other
people’s business. They called themselves adventurers and thought of themselves
as heroes. Most of the people left cleaning up their messes had less charitable
names for them: murderers, vagrants, and gallivanting swaggies.

“Mostly. To be fair, it did seem
to attract a certain demonic element. The Twilight Throne was an artifact of
immense power that drew in the worst type. Sarvesh destroyed it, though. Things
have been better since.” Pancras claimed a table near the hearth and ordered
mead, but then stopped the barmaid and changed his order to wine.

“I’ll risk the mead.” Gisella
nodded to the barmaid. “Hopefully, they’ve tapped a good keg this time.”

* * *

Kale waited until the nebbish
blue drak and his workers left and then explained his arrangement with Boss
Steelhand to Delilah.

As he finished, her chest
tightened, and it seemed tiny hammers rang repeatedly on anvils at the base of
her skull. Holding her head, Delilah groaned and leaned against the counter.
“Just once, I wish something would be easy. I should be going.”

Kale touched his sister’s
shoulder as he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know any of this was going
down. We needed some way of earning money.”

“What are we going to do?” Kali
chewed her lip. “We can’t just leave the library and cavern unguarded while
this strange drak has the run of the shop.”

“The door is locked as best as I
can.” Kale paced, clasping his hands behind his back. “I can build a few more
traps on it, maybe one or two at the base of the stairs, too.”

Delilah perked up. Kale triggered
an idea; her assignment could wait. “I could rig up some magical traps, too.
The kind we used to put in the lightning canons in Drak-Anor. That won’t take
long at all.” Her mind raced as she mentally listed the parts she needed. A
cursory glance around the empty shop revealed she could scrounge almost
everything from there.

“Crystals. I need some
high-quality crystals.”

Kali snapped her fingers. “Kale,
do we have any gems left in that money Pancras left us?”

Kale shook his head. “Yes, but
those aren’t the kinds she needs. Big quartz crystals will work if they’re
clear enough.”

Delilah smiled. Her brother knew
exactly what she needed, just like old times.

“I think I saw a place selling
things like that. Some mystic’s shop a few levels up across the gorge.”

Kale ran to their living quarters
and returned clutching a small money pouch. He shook it to jingle the coins
within. “Kali and I will go get what you need. Can you watch the place, Deli?
Or… do you want to come with me and Kali can watch the place?”

Before Kali retorted, Delilah
nodded and shooed them out of the shop. “I’ll watch things. I’ll make sure that
other drak knows not to mess with our stuff.”

“So much for a quick visit.”
Delilah pulled over a chair from near the hearth so she could see the front
door while she studied. She pulled her grimoire from her pack, opening it to
the last page she remembered reading. The grimoire seemed to show her what it
wanted her to see, so Delilah doubted whether or not it actually mattered to
what page she opened the book.

Gil-Li’s grimoire pulled Delilah
in faster than it had in the past. Within moments, she viewed a scene of Gil-Li
standing on a promontory overlooking a city under siege. Clouds pregnant with
unfallen rain hung low over the battlefield, and below them drifted thick clouds
of smoke from burning buildings. An army pounded the gates and attempted to
scale the city’s walls while a fleet of ships launched balls of flaming pitch
into the docks and buildings surrounding the harbor.

The drak archmage held her arms
high and swayed. Her movements flowed in a complex rhythm, not dissimilar from
that of dance. A flash of lightning split the sky, and Delilah felt the thunder
rumble deep within her chest. Gil-Li’s tattoos blazed like sapphires shining in
sunlight, searing the movements of the elder sorceress into Delilah’s mind.

Clouds swirled above, faster and
faster, until vortices formed, and tornadoes descended from the heavens into
the midst of armies attacking the city. Clouds of clay and dust swirled up into
the cyclones, obscuring the battlefield beneath a storm of soil and debris.
Gil-Li directed the tornadoes through the troops and flung men, beasts, and
siege weapons high into the air. When half their number was devastated by the
unrelenting fury of nature, the rest fled.

Gil-Li changed her movements,
spinning to face the sea. The tornadoes skipped over the city. When they
reached the harbor, they drank in the bay and blasted through ships, turning
stout sides of oak and teak into splinters. Blasting powder exploded on the deck
of one of the ships, and the fireball flowed upward in a spiral, becoming one
with the waterspout.

When the fury of the storm was
spent, the winds calmed, and the tornadoes released all the debris, water, and
bodies they carried into the ocean. The harbor was filled with the smoldering
wreckage of the attacking ships, yet the city itself was untouched by Gil-Li’s
power. The drak’s shoulders slumped and she turned yet again.

She stared at Delilah.

Gil-Li’s eyes connected with
those of the drak sorceress. They flared with a golden light. Delilah sat
rigid, unable to close her eyes against the blinding radiance. Tears welled in
her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Gil-Li reached out and took Delilah’s
head in her hands, pulling her close until their foreheads rested against one
another.

“You have seen my battles. You
have seen my victories and my failures. You have learned much from me. Use what
you have learned wisely, and beware the lure of blood. There is much yet to
learn.”

Delilah wanted to reply, but she was
unable to either speak or move. Gil-Li reached out, touching her mind through
the vast gulf of years that separated them.

“I bequeath you my legacy, Child
of Destiny, child of the Windsinger clan. Show our people they are not the
least of the races of Calliome.”

A golden light enveloped Delilah.
Its warmth saturated her body. It drowned out all other sensation and grew in
intensity until she felt as though she would explode from it.

With a cry that was equal parts
pain and ecstasy, Delilah dropped the grimoire and fell from her chair onto her
side, pinning her tail underneath her and slamming her head against the wall.

The pain in her tail and head
returned her to the real world. Delilah opened her eyes to meet the blue drak’s
stare, his mouth agape. He extended a shaking hand to her and helped her to her
feet.

“Oh! That was amazing! I’ve never
seen anything like it!”

Delilah pushed her knuckles into
her eyes as she staggered across the room. She shook her head to clear it and
saw faint wisps of golden mist rising from every surface. When she blinked
again, they were gone.

“Oh, are you all right? You
seemed to be in a trance. I didn’t want to bother you; I don’t know much about
magic, but then you cried out.” Ori held her arm, steadying her as she
stretched her legs.

“I’m fine. It’s a magic thing.
You wouldn’t understand.” Delilah decided to use Ori’s self-professed ignorance
of all matters arcane to her advantage.

“Oh. Wow. Okay. You’re all right,
though?” Ori stepped back as Delilah shook off his grip. He wrung his hands as
he watched her. “I wouldn’t want the other draks to be mad at me because
something happened to you while you were here alone with me.”

“I can handle my brother. He
knows I can become very involved in my books.” She pointed at him. “Speaking of
which, they have to go away with me for a few days. You can’t stay here.”

Ori held up his hands. “Oh! I
would never go into their personal quarters! I just need a place to do my
work.”

“You can start after we return.
Would you trust someone you barely knew to watch all your worldly possessions
while you were away?”

The blue drak clicked his teeth
together as he looked around the crate-filled room. “Oh, who would want my
stuff? Most draks I know can’t read Elven and Etrunian.”

“What is it you do, anyway?”

“I’m— I’m—” Ori panted, closed
his eyes, and swallowed. “I’m a limner.”

Delilah pushed out her bottom
lip. “What’s that?”

“Oh! I illuminate manuscripts.”
He pulled out a book from one of the myriad crates stacked by the counter. He
opened it to a page full of text with half-inked drawings covering the margins.

“So… you put light on these
pages?” Delilah’s confusion revealed itself on her face. Her ignorance further
relaxed Ori, and he grinned and shook his head.

“Oh, no, I embellish the pages to
make them beautiful. It’s art! I can gild the edges of the pages, too.” He
flipped to a completed page. A complex pattern of green, blue, and gold leaf
knotwork covered the margins and surrounded the text in an ornamental frame.
“Normally, these things are planned from the outset, but you’d be amazed what
people will pay to have it done after the fact.”

He returned the book to its crate
and gestured to the rest of the stack. “I have three books I’m working to
embellish, plus two more commissions to do from scratch. They take a long time,
so I do other smaller work on commission to pay the bills.”

Delilah understood better now.
“So you need a workspace and an indoor storefront.”

“Oh, yes. This space is perfect.
People don’t pay for illumination on a whim nor for the other gilding and
painting I do, so I don’t need to be in a high-traffic area. Jairo is going to
help send customers my way.

“I see.” Delilah picked up her
grimoire. She felt his eyes on her and turned to meet his gaze.

“Oh! I’m sorry. I tend to stare…
it’s just… I’ve never seen such brilliant crimson scales before.” He shook his
head. “And the rich, ebony stripes…”

Delilah felt warmth blossom in
her heart and heat rush to her face. No one had ever identified her scales as
crimson before. They always assumed she was red and black. The difference was
subtle, and until now, Delilah thought she was the only person gifted enough to
know the difference.

“That’s right…” Delilah’s voice
was a whisper. “Crimson and ebony. You see it.”