Promise of Wrath (The Hellequin Chronicles Book 6) (25 page)

“I think I’d end up completing something while the world burned if I did that,” I said with a laugh.

“Sometimes you can’t stop the world from burning. It’s like barbecue food: sometimes a little charcoal is a good thing. Gives it extra flavor.”

I stared at him. “Really?”

“No. I’m just hungry and I couldn’t figure out where my analogy was going.”

I left Mordred alone and walked off toward the arranged meeting point.

“He’s not the man you think he is,” Morgan called to me as I got far enough away from Mordred to hear.

I found her sitting on a small rock formation at the side of a building.

“You were watching us.” It wasn’t a question.

“Of course. I can’t trust you not to hurt him. He’s different.”

I looked back at Mordred. “I know he’s different. I’ve accepted that. You see enough weird and awful shit happen, and then you see someone you’ve hated for so long turn back into something close to the friend you knew. You don’t dwell; you’re just happy for him. But he’s not the problem; it’s
you
I don’t trust. You worked with him. You helped him when he was murdering people. That just makes you a bigger monster, doesn’t it?”

“I wasn’t helping him
kill
. I was trying to stop him.”

“Bang-up job you did. Well done.”

“Shove it up your ass, Nate,” Morgan snapped. “I did a damn sight more for him than you did. Do you think we just let him run around, doing whatever he liked? We imprisoned him, for centuries at a time. And then he would escape and kill, and we’d have to hunt him down again. We weren’t his cohorts; we were his jailers.”

I wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. It was something I’d never even considered before. “
We?
”

“I’m not going to tell you who helped. We moved Mordred from realm to realm, always keeping him locked up, until he escaped and we’d have to do the whole thing again. Except last time, you killed him before we could get to him.” The anger in her voice was barely contained, and I’d noticed her ball her hands into fists.

“Going to take a swing?” I asked.

She stared at her fists, and unfolded them. “No. I just want you to understand there was more to Mordred than just a bunch of people helping him kill to his heart’s desire.”

“Not everyone will forgive him. Not everyone will be able to look past the exterior. He did a lot of awful things, and he’s going to have to deal with that.”

“He knows that. Everything he did was to get to those who had hurt him, to get to those who were part of Avalon. He cared little about damaging others. He’s trying to make amends for that—for all of his mistakes.”

“When Mordred joined Mars Warfare, when he started working for Ares, why didn’t Mordred kill him, or those who worked for him?”

“He joined them to kill Hera. She was one of those who had tortured him when he was prisoner here.”

“He said as much. Why would Hera allow Mordred to get close to her?”

“She wouldn’t. She wants him dead as much as you did. So, either Ares didn’t know and employed Mordred anyway, or did know and wanted to see what would happen.”

“That sounds like Ares.”

“No one ever accused him of being smart. But then you turned up, and it all went to shit, because Mordred was so focused on killing you, he ignored everything else. He worked there for ten years, knowing you were still alive, and never once tried to get close to Hera. He told me all of this the day he woke up from his coma. You were the name at the top of the list of people his enemies wanted dead, and he could do nothing but try to complete that list. He’s been their slave for over a thousand years, and I’m pretty certain that they don’t even know. Or care.”

I chose my words carefully. “Mordred is as much a victim as anyone else.”

I looked over toward Mordred again, who was joined by several dwarven children and their parents. The children played in the stream while Mordred spoke to the parents. One of the men hugged him and shook his hand.

“He was my brother in all but blood. I would have sacrificed my life for him.”

“He wants revenge on the blood elves. And I’m terrified he’ll die for it.”

“No one here is going to die if I have anything to say about it.” I found myself meaning those words. Mordred had changed—really changed—and I wasn’t about to let him just throw his life away.

“He wants to prove to you that he’s not a monster. He won’t accept it himself: not without your approval.”

“Jinayca told everyone there was no evil in Mordred. And he’s had the chance to kill me a dozen times over. I accepted it already, and I’ve told him as much.”

“It had to be said. You mean a lot to Mordred. He wants to make up for all of the things he did to wrong you—to wrong everyone.”

“You know, there’s just one thing, Morgan. Despite all of Mordred’s craziness, you still helped him try and kill Arthur. You were there. You helped. So you can stand there and say that you weren’t helping him kill people, but you helped him almost destroy Avalon. Arthur has been in a coma for centuries because of you and your friends. So maybe it’s not Mordred I shouldn’t trust. Maybe it’s
you
I shouldn’t trust with
him
.”

“Arthur had to die,” Morgan snapped as I went to walk away. “You have no idea what he is. What he means. He had to be removed from the picture.”

“Explain it to me.”

“We discovered that Arthur was pushed into Mordred’s place as the king of Avalon by people who wanted to use him, to create a ruler for them. Merlin wouldn’t listen—no one would—but we knew it to be true. Hera, Siris, Kay, and anyone else who was involved in the plot to put Arthur as king, to rule from the shadows, they had to be stopped. Removing Arthur was the only way. And it worked. It destroyed their plans, and for centuries they’ve tried to re-establish a base of power, with little success.”

“Even if that’s true, there would have been a better way. Arthur would have listened.”

“We went to him, and he told us to leave and never bother him with such stories again. And then our friends began to die. We had to move, because his puppet masters were moving on us. And now they’re coming back again. And this time they don’t have anyone to use, to corrupt.”

“No. This time, they’re going to destroy everyone who opposes them. They’ll take Avalon over the corpses of those who I consider my friends. They learned the lesson you taught them, and they’ve been building up for a long time to implement their new plan. That’s why we were sent here. That’s why all of us were removed from the earth realm, because we could have helped stop them.”

“You think they’re going after Avalon?”

“After Brutus, yes. I think their long-term goal has always been the destruction of Avalon and anyone who opposes them. I think we’re almost at the first stage of centuries of planning. And then we’ll be at war, and a lot more people are going to die.”

CHAPTER
27

S
everal dwarves directed me toward the building that had been earmarked as our accommodation for the duration of our visit. I went around to each room in the three-story building, asking them to come down to the open first floor as I had things I needed to share.

Back downstairs, I found a seat and waited for everyone to gather. I wasn’t going to start until they were all here. I didn’t want to have to repeat myself three or four times.

“Okay, everyone is here,” Diane said, her arms crossed as she leaned against the wall closest to me. “What is it?”

“Nabu,” I said, “you and Irkalla were both talking to Brutus about some artifacts you’d given to the British Museum, yes?”

Nabu nodded. “They were from my personal collection.”

“I remember reading a news article about it,” I told him, “just before we got zapped here. Any chance that someone could sneak something into your items?”

“Like what?” Irkalla asked.

“A tablet,” I said. “Specifically one that could bring people from one realm to here.”

“You think that while we’re here, an insurrection is taking place in London?”

I shrugged. “I’m just thinking of possibilities. You remember Acre, yes?”

Nabu was silent as he stared at me.

“You told me there was a realm gate in the catacombs; well I never saw one. I did see a small stone tablet on the floor of the room Siris tried to keep me from looking in. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but only a few minutes later those snakes burst forth. How did Siris open a realm gate without an actual gate?”

Everyone turned to Nabu, who remained cool and calm under whatever pressure my question might have placed on him.

“I remember,” he told me. “And you now know how she opened that realm?”

“She used a tablet, but when I saw you the next day, you hid it from me. Probably about the size and shape of the one that sent us here?”

Nabu nodded.

“So, you took the tablet for examining, yes?”

Nabu nodded again.

“So, it’s possible that a tablet could work its way into your personal stash at the museum. Someone goes there, activates it, and brings forth an army?”

“It’s completely possible, yes.”

Irkalla punched Nabu in the jaw, and was immediately separated by half of the group while Nabu picked himself off the floor. “You contemptible asshole!” Irkalla snapped. “All this time you knew! I opened that package and got us sent here, and the whole time, you pretended like you had no fucking clue about what it was.”

“I’ve spent a thousand years, longer, hunting down those tablets. I didn’t think for one second that anyone could figure out how they’re created
and
use them against us. I didn’t say anything because I wanted to figure out
how
Kay and his allies had managed to recreate these items.”

“I’m going to guess Siris or Nergal,” Irkalla snapped, still angry. “I assume they knew about them?”

“They’re old magic,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “I worked on their creation with the dwarves and Avalon. But they were too difficult to create, and it was decided we should shelve the project. They required blood to work. And there were other issues, such as the tablet vanishing the second you stepped through the portal, and the fact that it couldn’t be created by anyone with any sort of natural power.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“Humans have to make the tablets. We discovered that the only nonhumans that can create the tablets are witches, and we assumed this was because their magic isn’t an innate power, but something learned. They have to willingly decide to use that power through external means. In this case, runes. Those witches also need to understand the language that was created for it, a mixture of Norse, elvish, and Babylonian. Without it, they’d have no way of realizing exactly when people would be sent.”

“So, if humans are being sent here,” Diane began, “does that mean they’re being used to create these tablets? Wouldn’t that allow the blood elves to swarm over everything?”

Nabu shook his head. “There are fail-safes in them. Without knowing the precise words to describe the exact destination they want to go, they may as well be carving doodles into the stone—it will have an identical effect. At no point in my life did I ever think these tablets would be used again. Humans can’t just copy everything down; they need to know the words themselves. That takes
a lot
of time: time most humans simply don’t want to have.”

“How about if someone rune-scribed a human to be able to understand those languages? Would they be able to make a tablet then?” Kasey asked.

Nabu nodded. “That would work.”

“I have a question,” Remy said. “If we need the exact location to be able to create our own tablet, and therefore escape without having to go anywhere near that citadel, I’m all for it. But I’m also going to guess that the descriptions are in the dwarven library, yes?”

“They were destroyed,” Nabu explained, deflating everyone in the room. “A large swathe of these ‘addresses’ were burned to nothing before the war, along with explanations on how to read the language.”

“Well, someone knows them; otherwise how did we end up here?” Remy asked.

“Except, dwarves really hate destroying words,” Irkalla said, sounding no less calm than she had when she’d punched Nabu. “So they kept it all there—in their library. And a big chunk of it is still there.”

“That’s what the blood elves are after,” Diane said. “The spirit scrolls might be important in the long term, too, but if the blood elves could make those tablets, they could leave this realm. And I’m pretty sure we all think that would be bad.”

“I always thought that dwarves didn’t write much down,” I said, “that they only wrote down what they considered to be important, because dwarvish runes used in writing put too much power into the words.”

“Who told you that nonsense?” Zamek asked.

“Merlin,” I said, almost sounding apologetic.

“It’s true that we only write down what’s important, but we consider
everything
to be important. And our written language has no more power than yours. Only the original twenty-one runes, and magic- or alchemy-imbued runes. And we don’t put those in books about agriculture. It’s why finding the powerful scrolls is so much harder than expected.”

I didn’t really know what to say to that, so I kept quiet. It was another in a long list of lies I’d been fed over my lifetime. But then something dawned on me. “That’s why people like Hera and Kay are working with the blood elves, and probably have been since they began turning into those creatures. They want access to the information the dwarves have.”

I received a few blank expressions, so I filled everyone in on what Mordred had told me about Hera and Kay and their involvement with his torture and imprisonment.

“So there’s a good chance that we’re actually here because we could stop Hera from taking over London?” Diane said. “Because her in charge would be bad—really, really bad. As in people-would-go-missing-if-they-disagreed-with-her bad.”

“Ah, Hera: where else can you find all the crazy in one head?” Remy said. “We should probably stop that from happening.”

“We don’t
know
that’s what’s happening,” Kasey said. “Right now it’s just a hypothesis.”

Everyone else joined in the conversation, discussing the possibility of Hera or one of her allies taking control from Brutus.

“Why did Brutus allow Ares to put his Mars Warfare company in Canary Wharf?” Kasey asked.

“Brutus and Ares made a deal,” Diane explained. “Brutus was advised by Licinius to take the deal—keeping your enemies closer and all that. Brutus hoped to figure out exactly what Hera’s plans were by allowing Ares to be stationed there. Didn’t really work, though, primarily because you partially destroyed the building, most of its research, and killed a large chunk of employees.”

I shrugged. “They were murderous psychopaths.”

“Well, your foray into restructuring their business led them to leave London altogether. Apparently Hera wasn’t thrilled that you weren’t punished for your actions there, but didn’t want to take it further because that would have been admitting their crimes against magic, and she would have been arrested.”

“If Hera is behind this, it certainly fits with her need to get revenge,” Diane said. “And she can hold a grudge like no one I’ve ever met.”

“Why would Hera want London, though?” Nabu asked. “That part doesn’t make sense.”

Before the conversation went around again, I stood up and stretched, catching the eye of Jinayca, who still stood by the door.

“We’re going to need weapons,” I told her.

Jinayca nodded. “We’ve got some just outside for you to choose from.”

Remy left the building first, almost barging past everyone else in his hurry to get his pick of the weapons.

“They probably don’t have anything that explodes!” I shouted after him, but he ignored me and was soon outside, while the rest of us followed in his considerably bushy wake.

A wooden cart, littered with weapons ranging from swords to spears and daggers to maces, seemed to hold something to suit every style of killing. All of them were made from dwarven steel, and marked with runes.

“So, what’s so good about these, then?” Kasey whispered to me.

“Dwarven steel is said to be unbreakable,” I told her. “It doesn’t dull; it doesn’t break, And the only armor that can withstand it is dwarven, and even then not for long.”

“That’s not quite true,” Jinayca said. “Elven weapons and armor are just as well-made, just as dangerous. They use magic to temper their steel; we use alchemy. Some of ours also contain runes that allow sorcerers and elementals to wield their power through the blade.”

“I don’t really need any,” Kasey said. “Werewolf.”

Diane grabbed a pair of dwarven knives and passed them to her. “Don’t argue. Claws work wonders, until they don’t.” Diane picked up a bow and a quiver of arrows, holding them gently, as if she might break them.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I was given a set like this, a long time ago,” she told me, “from a dwarven king. I’ve missed it since being here.”

Once everyone had selected their weapons they all wandered back into the building, leaving me alone with Remy, who was currently giggling about the fact that he had picked up a small sword and twin daggers that sat on a belt around his waist.

“You done?” I asked him.

“I have wanted dwarven steel since as far back as I can remember it existing. It’s my holy grail of swords. I would quite literally live here—you know, apart from the never-being-able-to-leave-and-constant-fear-of-death thing.”

“Yeah, apart from that.”

“Oh, and the lack of sunlight, or moonlight, or anything but rock. When we leave here, I’m going to be really happy if I never have to go underground again.”

I looked in the cart and saw a few daggers, and a nice-looking spear, but I didn’t want anything too bulky. I picked up one of the daggers and tried it for weight. It felt good: a solid, but well-balanced weapon.

“I have something else for you,” Jinayca told me. She pulled out a black-cloth-wrapped object from under the cart. She passed it to me, and I removed the cloth, revealing two swords of equal design and length. I admired the intricate work that had been completed on the scabbards and hilts. The reds and blacks were not something you usually saw in dwarven weaponry.

“What are these?” I asked, removing one of the swords from its scabbard and testing the blade. It was stunning, and the dark-gray color of it shimmered slightly as I moved it around. It was a one-handed, double-edged, sword about the length of a gladius, but more like a claymore in appearance: essentially a one-handed smaller version of the human sword. I’d never really seen anything quite like it.

“They were made for Zamek,” she said. “These are the swords of a prince.”

I replaced the blade in the scabbard and passed it back to Jinayca. “I can’t accept this. It’s Zamek’s.”

“He wants you to have them, although he doesn’t want to give them to you himself. Something to do with people seeing a prince carrying those swords about. I think he’s worried it would give the wrong impression.” She handed it back to me.

“I don’t know what to say. They’re stunning weapons.”

“If you don’t want them, I’ll take them,” Remy said from beside me.

Jinayca passed me a back scabbard to carry the swords, which I quickly put on, placing the two swords in the slots designed for them. It was surprisingly comfortable, and I hadn’t really expected that.

“The back scabbard was made especially for you,” Jinayca told me, apparently sensing my surprise. “Zamek requested it be made once you returned from your time in the machine. And our people work fast when needed.”

“I still don’t understand why,” I explained.

“That’s for Zamek to tell you. I know no more than I’ve said.”

I looked down at Remy. “So, you ready to go pick a fight on our terms?”

Remy’s smile bared all of his teeth, making him look more ferocious than he probably anticipated. “I’ve been waiting since the moment we landed in the godforsaken realm.” He turned to Jinayca. “No offense.”

Jinayca laughed, and waved away Remy’s badly timed outburst. “When you are ready, Zamek and his people will meet you at the city gates. I wish you luck—all of you. But be careful. I do not wish to have to mourn the loss of even more people.”

Diane left the building and stood beside me. “Yeah, I’m pretty certain the blood elves aren’t going to know what hit them.”