The Fifth Vertex (The Sigilord Chronicles) (14 page)

"Why is Noah trying to kill you?" Urus asked.

"That, young man, is a long story, and one I will share with you this evening after I take care of some business. The church maintains a small hostel not far from here. I will see to it that they provide you both with a fresh bath and something to eat. Perhaps then you can tell me about your gray-skinned friend with white eyebrows."

11

Cailix sat in the corner of the small room on the second floor of the inn, knees tucked into her chest, staring through the darkness at the bed and the creature sleeping within.
 

So careless
, she thought, a satisfied grin parting her otherwise grim face.

Deep in thought, she rubbed the bumps on her knees, scars left over from the burns inflicted by one of her former caretakers. She didn't know what to make of Anderis. At times he seemed like the strongest, most powerful person she had ever encountered, and yet he often made the most foolish of mistakes that even she, a mere child in his eyes, would never make. She was better than him, and she was going to show him just how much.

He clearly had the power and blood supply to have whisked them across the countryside with magic, but instead he opted for a tedious horseback journey, where he could drone on about the intricacies of blood magic and its uses. He thought himself a teacher, and her the rapt student.

Instead, she had been soaking up the knowledge, learning how to use blood magic not so that she could be his faithful apprentice, but so she could become even more powerful than the teacher, and end his life in the most humiliating and painful way possible.

She had never seen Anderis use his own blood for power, but she had been practicing it ever since that day she killed the rabbit in the shadow of Mount Kebel. She bit a small piece of her fingertip and, in the presence of just the one drop of blood, all it took was a fleeting thought and the iron shackles binding her wrists liquified, dripping to the floor.

Two soft steps across the woven carpet later and she was within striking distance of the beast. He had taken her protectors away, removed her from the safety and security of the most stable home she had ever known. But in the process, he had also unleashed her true power, given her the means to fend for herself. Now, no matter where she was or how alone she might be, she would always be strong and safe, and that was what mattered to her most.

Fueled by her rage, in her heightened state she could sense the nature and strength of every living, blood-pumping creature nearby. She could feel the slow pulse of those sleeping, the weak pulses of the aging, and even the incredibly strong pulse of the horse in the stable.

She looked down at the knife in her hand. She wasn't even sure how it got there, only that she wanted a knife and now she had one.
 

Leaning over the bed, holding the knife inches above the quiet, sleeping neck of a man she at once despised for his actions and admired for his power and knowledge, she knew it would take but a twitch to plunge the knife into his neck. She could set his still-pumping blood on fire and walk away as though nothing had happened.

She had all the power, all the advantage, and she couldn't bring herself to use it.

A quick death while he slept was too good for Anderis. After all, she had more practicing to do, more training to wield and focus her power. Then, when the time was right, she would challenge her master and defeat him, showing him how powerful she really was.

Cailix gently left the knife on the pillow beside Anderis's head and walked out of the room.

12

The voices would not relent. They were everywhere.

Everywhere Murin turned he heard people talking and shouting, haggling and bickering. It was insufferable. Worse than the voices, though, were their
thoughts
.
 

Well beyond earshot, Murin sensed the minds of everyone nearby. It took too much concentration to block out all their thoughts in the midst of such visual and aural chaos, so he suffered through the endless prattle.

In every direction people worried about money, thought about sex, plotted against their neighbors, dreamed of greatness, and pondered a million more utterly useless things.
 

He should have stayed where he was. Back in his lab, with his books and his research, alone without another active mind for a hundred miles. It was quiet, then. Lonely, but quiet. It was an exile he deserved and he was starting to miss it.

He made his way through the market, the exertion of keeping the thoughts of the herds of simple minds at bay making him sick. He ignored the stares and sideways glances from the locals. This was the price for doing as he was told, for keeping his distance and not interfering. The world was as it was because of him.

He stepped in front of one of the few locals who hadn't turned away at the sight of him. At least back in Kest, many of the minds were shielded by some awful-smelling local herb they chewed like it was candy.
 
Here, it was as if everyone's mind was shouting at him.

"I mean you no harm; I simply seek directions," he said. "I need to know where I can procure the most potent of your local opiates."

The confused man shrugged without saying a word.

Murin probed the man's mind, but there was no recognition there, no meaning associated with his words.

"Dens of iniquity," Murin offered, still unsure of what the people of Waldron might call such places.
 

The man shook his head. "Say what you need, friend, and I can point you toward it."

"Tell me where the most villainous scum of this city go to spend their money."

Shocked, the man took a step back. "You'll be wanting the warrens, then. Follow this street through the market. At each fork head downhill until you're going down the back slope of the mountain and into the first tunnel. You'll know you're there when you want to turn and run back."

"Thank you," Murin said, bowing slightly. He shrugged into his cloak despite the sweat and headed off in the direction the man pointed.

"Stranger, you may be a big grey slab of freak, but nobody in their right mind goes into the warrens without an army behind him," the man called after him.

"Thank you for the advice," Murin said without turning back, crossing the market in just a few of his long strides.

He wove his way through the city, at first trying to stay out of people's way, but it proved easier simply to charge through the middle of the streets and let the locals step aside to let him pass. These people had probably never ventured far outside the city and had never seen anyone who didn't look like their neighbors.

If only they knew he could hear their thoughts, the vile things they thought about his skin color, his size, or just the fact that he was a stranger. It was hard not to be bitter in the presence of such hypocrisy. What people claimed to be on the outside was never the same as what they truly were on the inside.

Except for the Kestian boys.

While Urus's mind yet remained closed off somehow, Goodwyn was a rare example of a young man with no pretense, no airs, no layers. He simply was what he appeared to be and Murin had to respect that, though the boy still held a few things back.

After a long walk on the slippery and damp stone walkways that refused to be coerced into a straight line, Murin finally stood atop a steep slope, gazing down at the entrance to a tunnel, not much more than a rotting archway below a run-down wooden shop.

Here there were no stone buildings, just darkly painted and stained wood homes that leaned inward over the street, lit torches hanging from sconces even by day to push back the fog that clung eternally to the back side of the mountain.

He didn't know how people tolerated it; the sun either piercingly bright or hidden behind clouds, the air so damp you could drink it yet so hot one might actually long for the winters of the north.

Thoughts of thievery, murder, and all manner of foul things washed over him like a rising tide of scum as he ducked into the tunnel. Amazingly, there were more minds crammed into the warrens alone than in all the rest of the city. For every mind bent on villainy, he sensed two minds filled with despair, clinging to hope for scraps of food and shelter for their children.

This was the other reason he had stopped traveling so many years ago. Each place he visited had a shiny veneer covering a festering, rotting core, just like so many of the people who lived there.

He had only gone a few feet when two armed men detached from the shadows and blocked his path.

"State your business or turn back, stranger."

"I seek the pipes. Opiates," Murin said. Such feeble minds, he thought, like little worker bees that mindlessly went from task to task without a thought or care in the world. "You will let me pass."

"Sure thing," the weak-minded men said, stepping aside. The only clue they would have about what had really happened would be a splitting headache when they woke up in the morning.

Murin had a chance to sift through their minds as he walked by, knowing what they knew, feeling what they felt. It nauseated him, but he had learned in his travels that digging through the garbage every once in a while could result in something useful.

He crept through the warrens, navigating the maze with ease, using the thug's knowledge as a guide. It took him longer than expected, as though the simpleton's perception of the size of the warrens was warped somehow.

He emerged on the other side of the tunnels on a vast cliff shelf, surrounded by sculpted stone walls. The plateau was filled with clusters of tents and ramshackle buildings spread out among a few well-built three-story homes that seemed like palaces in comparison.

Passing through a shanty town with open cooking pits, blazing fires, and barely standing wooden homes, Murin wrinkled his nose at the smell but finally found what he was looking for. It was a large tent with four thick stovepipes sticking up through slits in the canvas, the unmistakable sweet odor wafting out with the thick, white smoke.

He lifted a tent flap and stepped inside, nearly doubled over to avoid putting his head through the tent roof. A round, bearded man in brightly colored, loose-fitting clothing eyed Murin up and down.

Now this is a man with secrets
, Murin thought, taking stock of all that remained hidden behind the man's bright blue eyes.

"I don't care how big or small or what color you are so long as you can pay. If you can't, then you got troubles, bud."

Murin reached into a hidden pocket in the lining of his cloak and withdrew three gold coins, tossing them to the den master. "I need a private tent and the strongest concoction you have."

Astounded, the man stared at the gold and back at Murin. "Bud, for this much you can have all my tents. My friends—an elite group of which your deep pockets have made you a member—call me Noah. Follow me."

Murin followed him through another flap into an empty, adjoining tent. Plush, multicolored cushions lined the floor. In the center sat a giant glass bowl with several hoses dangling from it, giving off little puffs of smoke, looking something like a smoldering octopus.

The owner bent to drop a black brick into the glass bowl, then stoked the fire underneath, also adding some water to an adjacent glass bowl connected with more tubes.

The people of this world never ceased to amaze Murin; endless in their capacity to invent ways to kill each other and themselves, yet so stunted in their ability to use that same ingenuity to better their lives.

"That is the strongest you have?" Murin asked, his willpower almost at an end, the incessant nattering of the swarm of minds around him chipping away at his sanity.

"Fella, this stuff could put a pair of horses into a three-day slumber. This is my best stuff, imported all the way from Kanzibur."

"Leave me then," Murin said.

"I'll make sure you aren't disturbed. The tent is yours for the night. Enjoy," said Noah, ducking out through the tent flap.

Murin lay down across the pillows and took a long, deep pull from the pipe, awaiting the blissful quiet that he hoped might come.