Light the Reign (The Forgotten: Book 3) (15 page)

“It will take a great deal of power and
effort over a large area. Might you be able to enlist the aid of
the tribes you have visited so far? Would they be willing to
help?”

Katya thought about it. “I think the Myaamia
would, although they are a little disorganized at the moment since
the betrayal of Kali was made public, the Dena’ina seem helpful,
though we haven’t gotten the stone from them yet. I’m not sure
about the Kanza, they didn’t particularly give us a warm welcome,
though they did follow through with their bargain of giving us the
stone when we produced the plant they were looking for…” she
trailed off.

“It might be enough. I can describe the spell
to you, and it will be up to you I’m afraid to make it work. Not
only are Layna and I here, but we also don’t currently have any
talent to speak of while taking the chokeroot.”

The comment reminded Katya what she was doing
this for. Yes, in the end it would be her and Hunter, the two most
important people in her world, that would be affected, but it would
also be a lot of others. Specifically, right at this very moment,
her two friends and their baby were threatened with this horrible
curse. She set her jaw in a hard line.

“We can do it,” she said, and paid close
attention while he gave her the details from his memories that
would allow them to hopefully set up a barrier spell feeding off
the tamed chaos around them.

When they cut contact, Katya glanced around
her, at nothing physical in particular, but at all the magic
swirling around in seemingly random currents. Would they really be
able to tame that?

CHAPTER 9

Layna pulled the hood of the cloak tightly
around her, angling her head away from the guards and she and
Gryffon swept past. She could feel eyes on her back, watching them
with suspicion as they hurried through the courtyard and out
through the side gates.

Gryffon tugged on her hand and pulled her
into an alleyway, blending into the shadows with their black
cloaks. He held a finger to his lips and she nodded, staying silent
and still. Moments later one of the guards strolled out of the
archway after them, looking up and down the street, obviously
searching for something. He stood there a minute, glaring into the
shadows of the shops and alleyways.

Just as Layna’s foot started to go numb from
the pressure she was putting on it to stay in her awkward position
plastered against the wall, the man grumbled something
unintelligible and turned back to the palace. As his footsteps
echoed into the distance, Layna poked her head out from their
hiding spot and scanned the streets.

They were empty. Odd for this time of night.
She glanced over her shoulder and waved Gryffon forward and the two
of them stepped out into the moonlight. It wasn’t a bright night,
though the moon was in its full cycle, the sky was covered by
clouds. They could see well enough with the dim light that did
shine down on them combined with the oil street lamps that the
watch lit every night.

Keeping to the edges of the streets, they
trotted along towards the less-desirable end of the city, eyes
darting this way and that. Many of the people had fled the confines
of the city itself, hiding in the forests and smaller hamlets
around it. Though none could leave the protective bubble, they felt
safer away from the congestion of people in the city itself. Layna
could hardly blame them, when your friends and neighbors could
suddenly turn into blood-thirsty creatures. She had been feeling
rather claustrophobic in the palace herself.

They rounded a bend and Layna bit back the
gasp that threatened to escape as a dark shape loomed before them.
It shuffled through the streets uncertainly, as though it had
forgotten where it was going. A rat scurried along the curb of the
cobblestones, letting out a short squeak of alarm as it noticed the
person.

The noise alerted the shape to its presence.
It tensed, and Layna watched in horror as it moved way more quickly
than she would have guessed from its previous motion, its hands
darting out to grab at the rat. It missed it, but just barely, and
it fell to its knees, clawing at the hole the vermin had squeezed
itself into to escape.

The sounds coming from the throat were
utterly inhuman. It spit and growled in guttural tones, punctuated
by frustrated squeals. The sickly sweet scent of death and the
acrid stench of unwashed flesh filled her nostrils, even from
across the street. Layna shifted her weight slightly and froze as
her foot kicked a pebble which rolled down the street with a quiet
clink, clink, clink.

The thing stopped its clawing immediately,
swinging its head around to look in the direction of the sound.
Directly at her and Gryffon. She sucked in her breath as the bright
red eyes met hers. Even in the dim light she could see that they
had completely filled with blood. This person was already dead.

The mages they had studying the disease had
determined that it spread from person to person by magic if both
people showed talent because their power auras would automatically
mix from close proximity. Those without talent needed closer
contact with it: physical touch, mixing bodily fluids, or breathing
in the cough of one of the infected. Though Layna was still holding
out hope for a cure, they had discovered that once it got to the
point where the person’s eyes filled with blood, there would be no
going back. Even if the body was healed completely, the mind was
already gone.

She drew her sword, Leoht, and heard the
metallic whine of Gryffon’s being pulled from its scabbard as well.
The creature wasted no time, lunging at them with single-minded
purpose. It angled towards her, whether because she had been where
the noise had originated or because she looked like an easier
target she didn’t know. But it was hardly relevant. She held her
blade out in front of her and stood her ground.

The creature was growling again and Layna
desperately tried to ignore the sound, and block out the image in
her head of what the person might have looked like before turning
into this grotesque monster before her. As it neared, she swiftly
moved the sword while stepping sideways, slashing at its
middle.

It let out a howl as the blade slid through
its oozing flesh, covering her sword with a mixture of blood and
yellowish-green pus. She fought the urge to vomit as warm liquid
dripped onto her hand. It swung around and came at her again. She
held firm, waiting for it to come at her, but it was cut short,
impaled on a blade from behind.

It fell to its knees in a gurgling groan,
revealing Gryffon behind it, pulling his sword from the creature’s
abdomen. He took out a smaller knife and quickly drew it across the
exposed throat, quickening its death and putting a stop to its
agonized writhing. When it had quieted and stilled, Gryffon wiped
both blades on the thing’s tattered clothing and re-sheathed
them.

“What should we do with the body?” he asked,
looking around. Despite the commotion, not one window had cracked
open and no one had come to investigate. By now, everyone was too
scared to go outside at night and had barricaded themselves in
their homes.

“We’ll have to leave it for the watch in the
morning,” she answered regretfully, “but let’s cover it with
something; it was a person…I don’t want its wife or children to
find it like this.”

Gryffon nodded and they looked around for a
good spot to stash the corpse until the morning watch could gather
it up. They had been collecting the bodies of those who had been
too far infected and had either died of the disease or been killed
by those they attacked. There were an alarming number of healthy
bodies turning up as well, and it was hard to distinguish which of
these were results of the monsters and which were murders that were
being covered up by the unfortunate situation.

Either way, it disgusted Layna. It also
cemented her reasoning of why she and Gryffon needed to be out
here. The chokeroot prevented them from using magic to find out
what was going on in the city, and they weren’t entirely sure of
the accuracy of the watch’s information. It would be far too easy
to bribe one of them to overlook a body that was uninfected and
obviously not attacked by one of the creatures. Those who had been
murdered should be easy to recognize – they would still be intact –
while the bloodthirsty nature of the Bricrui left little to
identify when they killed.

They dragged it into an alleyway and covered
him lightly with hay, not enough that it would be missed by the
searchers, but enough that it wouldn’t draw attention and
traumatize its loved ones. Some of the saddest cases had been when
families had sheltered their infected family member, only to have
become locked inside with it when it reached the point when it lost
all its humanity.

Once it was safely tucked away, they
continued down the main street to where they had been getting some
strange reports. The watchers in this area said that the number of
the Bricrui was much higher here; while there had only been a
handful of deaths a day in each of the other districts, this one
seemed to have an outpouring of them. Furthermore, the bodies had
all been torn apart, not stopped by the swords of the healthy or
unmarred by anything but the blight having finally taken its
toll.

She and Gryffon had wondered if perhaps they
didn’t have some kind of sadistic murderer in the district, taking
out his sick pleasures on the Bricrui whose bodies would be taken
without question by the watch. But the type of person capable of
the carnage upon those bodies was ruthless, and when he or she
decided that just the Bricrui wasn’t enough and started to turn
their attentions towards regular humans…

They searched the back alleys of the district
for some time, but came up empty-handed. Not even a Bricrui on the
street. As daylight started streaming through the cracks in the
buildings, they made their way back to the palace. They sneaked
around to the stables, carefully looking around to make sure they
were unobserved before pulling open a trapdoor in the end stall and
jumping in. The entrance that Sir Ruawn had shown them outside the
palace gates near the gardens had not been the only one, and they
had taken full advantage of this new spot.

They landed with two soft thuds and stood
from the crouching position they had held while searching the dark
room for signs of life. Though they were careful never to be seen
entering the secret entrance, it was no guarantee that someone else
wouldn’t find it, and they did not want to be caught up in an
ambush. Layna felt naked without her power and was keenly aware of
how much more vulnerable they were in this state.

They padded down the long stone corridors
until they came to the section which branched off towards the
palace. The underground tunnels ran to several parts of the city,
though who they had originally been made by remained a mystery.

Gryffon reached up and poked in a rough patch
of stone. It grinded against the stones around it as it slid
backwards. A large section of the wall in front of them glided
sideways on unseen rails and they entered the new passageway, the
door sliding shut behind them.

Here the walls were lined with torches and
they soon came to a large room where several restraining hands were
laid on them.

“Halt,” commanded a voice.

She and Gryffon obediently complied, both
reaching back to take off their hoods, revealing their faces. “It’s
us, Sir Ruawn,” Layna said and the hands restraining them
immediately withdrew.

Sir Ruawn bowed. “Your Majesties.” He was
tight-lipped. He had not approved of their escapade into the city
even when they had agreed to have him accompany them, and was
practically foaming at the mouth that he was now being left behind.
Once he had shown them the secret tunnels, however, there had been
little he could do to stop them from sneaking out on their own.
Regardless of its futility, he had spent many hours of wasted
breath trying to convince them to continue to bring bodyguards.
Both she and Gryffon were adamant that it was their responsibility
to find out what was going on in the city and an entourage of
bodyguards only increased their chances of getting noticed.

“We’ve been told that there’s an unusual
concentration of the Bricrui being left at the North End district,”
she reported to him, “but while we were there we did not see even
one. Can you please have the watch keep an eye on that area? If
there are bodies left this morning it would mean that whatever is
going on seems to be happening in the early hours.”

“Of course, My Liege,” he answered, a line of
worry creasing his brow.

*

Katya joined hands with Hunter and the
Dena’ina on either side of her. They had spent hours in debate on
how best to modify the spell to make it work for their situation.
They were not starting with already established rivers of power
that they were diverting, but rather they had to create the
riverbeds, as it were, for the chaotic magic to gravitate to. They
didn’t want to just pull power for the original spell and then have
it revert back to its natural chaos; they wanted it to be easiest
for the magic to flow where they wanted it to.

According to Gryffon’s memories, they would
be performing similar magic to what the dragon gods had done to
cleanse the world for their arrival. It required first that they
burn out the current routes, which in this sort of environment
would hopefully only cause superficial damage, since the magic
simply swirled and flowed on its own whims. It did not follow any
set course which would have cut a path through the fabric of power.
Therefore, they only had to smooth out the surface which was rutted
and soiled, and then create their own channels for it to flow
through.