The Legend of Asahiel: Book 02 - The Obsidian Key (21 page)

“To the boats!” he heard someone shout.

Kell lunged for the mooring lines, fore, then aft. Each was a simple slipknot, which he yanked free. His frozen hands grappled with a pair of oars, struggling to fit them in their locks, while the gangplank hit the dock with a thud and a cadre of mercenaries came scampering out.

At last his uncooperative oars fell into place. Even then he flailed uselessly for a moment, too anxious to be away. The paddles slapped and spun, resisting his unsteady control. He forced himself to take a deep, shivering breath in order to gain his balance, then thrust deep, and pulled.

A shredded cry sounded from aboard the ship, reverberating along the jagged walls of the cavern. Flambard, Kell thought, grimacing.

“Fools!” Madrach roared. “I want them taken alive!”

That was of small consolation to Kell as a half-dozen men leapt into a trio of longboats, snarling with a huntsman’s glee. Even if they’d heard and decided to obey their leader’s command, Kell knew this was his one best chance to get off the isle. He didn’t know what sort of game the wizard and his underlings were playing, letting them escape their cage only to round them up again. But he wanted no part of it.

He’d gone maybe a dozen strokes, and already his back and shoulders burned. With no idea as to how long he might have to keep this up, and with the first of his pursuers shoving off with not one man but two at the oars, his prospects seemed grim.

The shadow of the cavern slipped away like a blanket as he reached the mouth of the underground harbor. Misty starlight fell upon him, funneled down between giant pinnacles of limestone that flanked the opening like tusks. A wave swelled beneath as if to carry him back through the cleft, but he dug deep and slid over its backside, into the retreating trough.

Gritting his teeth to still their chattering, he tucked his chin and rowed on.

T
ORIN DROPPED TO A SUDDEN CROUCH,
shoved back against the wall of the tunnel by a sweating Raven.

“What is it?” he asked.

The pirate silenced him, then looked to his compass. The needle was dancing, as if closing upon its goal and excited by the prospect. The unlikely companions had come a long way from their dungeon, traveling what seemed to Torin more than a mile of rough and winding corridors—an entire warren of chambers and passageways that cored through Grimhold’s rock foundation. Clinging to the shadows and to each other, the pair had run a labyrinthine course through these hidden levels, and, as best as Torin could tell, were hopelessly lost. He wondered if Raven had any better sense of their location, but was afraid to ask.

“Just ahead now,” the pirate whispered, confirming Torin’s hopes and suspicions.

Even now, Torin wasn’t sure what to make of this man. Throughout their trek, he had continued to wonder what reason the pirate would have to return his weapons and set him free when this was over—to say nothing of their bargain to deliver him to Yawacor. The only scenario in which he could imagine that happening was one in which he somehow gained the upper hand, able to turn the tables on the other. But could he do so? Could he perhaps threaten Autumn’s life as Raven had his and thus force the pirate to do his bidding? He didn’t think so. He didn’t think he could turn cutthroat, even with the greater good at stake.

Nor would he get the chance, he berated himself silently, if they started scheming already against each other. Their only hope of surviving this was if they trusted each other, as the pirate suggested, focusing their full faith and efforts against their common enemy. He had little choice but to assume Raven believed the same.

Shrugging aside his lingering doubts, he peered with the pirate around the corners of this newest intersection. Their tunnel had run headlong into another, which forked off to the left and right at rounded angles. To the right, low-burning torches flickered in their sconces, illuminating an open portal in the far side of the curving hall a few paces down. To the left was blackness.

Raven pointed, indicating the empty doorway. They had encountered a dubious lack of guardsmen in their travels; those whom they had spied had been easy to avoid. The same was true here, which caused Torin’s skin to prickle. By the look on Raven’s face, the man shared his discomfort.
This is it,
the eyes seemed to say. A warning, a plea, a question. Torin took a deep breath, and nodded.

They turned the corner as they had most others, back to back, to guard against ambush. Raven scooted ahead, Torin watching the rear. Even so, he knew when they had reached the doorway, for his companion stopped and coiled, as if braced for attack.

Torin spun quickly to get his own look of the room. It was a windowless chamber, round and spacious, lit by a scattered array of braziers. Like most of what they had seen, its construction appeared both natural and man-made. While the floor was paved, the walls and ceiling were of raw stone. A swirling pattern dominated the center, four or five paces in diameter, gouged into the earth. Around it was gathered a brood of crumbled statuary, overgrown with lichen.

He couldn’t be sure how much of this Raven saw, for the pirate’s attention was drawn at once to one of the statues to their left, an altar in the shape of a spitting gargoyle. A woman, blindfolded and gagged, was pilloried to this sculpture, locked at the wrists, her hands jutting from the creature’s empty eye sockets. Despite being unable to see, she turned her head in their direction.

Autumn.

Raven spared a quick glance to either side before rushing to her. Torin was more thorough in his search, bending his knees and casting about as if the
roof were threatening to collapse. He half expected Soric to materialize before his eyes, but the wizard was nowhere in sight.

“The Sword,” Raven said as he reached the strange altar. Autumn remained inexplicably calm, making no effort to speak through her gag or to squirm against her stocks. Then Torin saw what he had missed before. Before him was a pedestal, at the edge of the circular floor pattern, almost directly across from Autumn’s position. The pedestal faced out over the circle like a lectern. Midway up, on a ledge of the plinth at the base of the pedestal, on the side opposite the would-be speaker, lay the box containing the Sword.

A caterpillar of warning inched across Torin’s neck, and he renewed his desperate scan for hidden occupants. It was clear enough what was happening. He was a wild animal sniffing at the bait of a hunter’s trap. The smart thing would be to turn tail and scamper as quickly as he could from this place.

Or was it? They were in the wizard’s house, and would have to play this by his rules. Torin had known that much coming in. And all of their feeble posturing had done nothing to change it.

“What are you waiting for?” Raven snapped, fumbling with the statue, searching for a trigger or latch that would spring the clap-piece holding Autumn in place.

Torin shook his head. Ignoring for lack of options his own better judgment, he stepped toward the pedestal, eyes darting. Raven, meanwhile, had given up on figuring out the statue, and reached instead for the gag roped around Autumn’s mouth. Whatever the knot, it melted beneath the rogue’s skilled fingers.

“Close your eyes,” the woman said at once.

“What?” The pirate blinked in bewilderment. “Autumn, how do we get you out of this?”

He slipped off her blindfold. Doing so sparked an explosive pop, as a scintillating flameburst erupted from the flat head of the statue. Autumn’s exposed lids were already clenched, but Raven scarcely had time to cry out. Torin, who had been watching the pair as he crept toward Sword and pedestal, threw an arm up to shield himself from the blast. An intense glare flashed across the chamber, consuming gloom and shadow, then flickered and was gone.

Torin let his arm down slowly. Raven was staggering about, arms flailing as if warding off a swarm of locusts. Then the pirate’s legs failed him completely, and he crumpled to a seat on the stone floor.

A flutter of movement from the opposite edge of the room stole Torin’s attention, and he whirled in its direction. From the depths of a hidden alcove stepped Soric, yellow eyes agleam.

Torin’s own eyes snapped back to the Sword box, and before he could rethink his decision, he lunged. A crack echoed as the wizard’s staff butted the earth, causing the ground around the box to glitter. Torin saw it, but by then was a slave to his own momentum. As his foot came in contact with the suddenly glowing sands that lay sprinkled about, once-solid rock became as mud, swallowing his leg halfway to the knee.

It hardened as quickly, clamping down and causing him to pitch forward
with an agonizing wrench of muscle and bone. He was able to recover, thrusting out with his hands and shoving himself mostly upright, but he found himself trapped within the outer rings of the circle, stuck at a sprinter’s angle, with the box mere inches from his extended reach. He yanked and twisted, but the sands’ glow had faded, and the stone held fast.

The wizard laughed. “Gnaw through it, if you wish, dear brother. The mount will sooner crumble than release its hold.”

Torin spat and wheezed, desperation overcoming him in waves. He strained again for the Sword, tugging at his anchor, but the weapon remained out of reach. His eyes flew then to the exit, a reflexive response, to find it blocked by the familiar form of an assassin’s shadow.

“So let it end between us,” Soric hissed, “once and for all.”

K
ELL’S MUSCLES BURNED.
Though strong winds and a misty rain numbed his already sodden skin, they couldn’t reach the flames that consumed him from within.

Still he rowed, driven by his fear. The pain of weary muscles would heal, but not if he failed to make his escape. The trio of longboats that had flushed him from the secret harbor maintained their pursuit. Unable to close distance with their oars, they had taken to firing upon him with their crossbows. Kell ducked and twisted to avoid the attacks, but had refused to slow, trusting to the shield of his boat’s stern and the protection of whatever gods he hadn’t alienated long ago.

The wind and weather aided him in this regard. His foes were shooting while standing in a boat, with both bowmen and target being tossed by the swells. In addition, when one man decided to fire, that left the other to take up his oar, so even when Kell was forced to drop his, the enemy gained no ground. Best of all, his hunters seemed to be treating it all mostly as sport, pausing to laugh and jeer whenever they came close.

Nevertheless, it was but a matter of time before his luck ran dry and a quarrel found its mark. This much Kell understood clearly, and it spurred him on with desperate strokes.

But even desperation had its limits. He’d been edging north along the eastern shore of the isle for better than ten minutes, he guessed, and still no sign of the
Squall
. Worse, his pursuers appeared at last to be showing signs of competence, coordinating their chase so that while one or two boats kept him pinned with fire, the others concentrated on moving in. And the closer they came, the more tenuous his predicament grew.

At last he realized that he could go no farther under these circumstances. He cast about frantically, wondering what he might do to alter his fortunes. The sea was of no help. Were he to lunge overboard, as tired as he was, it would swallow him with scarcely a gulp. Yet if he were to stop and throw his hands in the air, he might only be filled with crossbow quarrels before ending up the same.

A crash of waves against rock triggered a desperate hope. Looking over his right shoulder, he spied a smattering of clifflike formations jutting from the water, broken apart from the main isle. They reminded him of tombstones
in a poorly tended graveyard. The ocean slapped and churned around their base, spewing foam with an angry roar. To approach would be to risk being splintered against their jagged sides. And yet, if he could slide his craft among them, he just might be able to lose himself in their mammoth shadows.

When a crossbow bolt slammed into the haft of his oar just above his hand, Kell decided it was worth the risk. Dragging the right, he pulled hard with the left, digging a tight turn toward the isle’s surf. Once again, he managed to catch a wave just right, its surging crest helping to speed him away from his would-be captors. Another bolt whistled wide. Kell glanced back to check his markers, biting down on a muttered oath.

More than once, his arms threatened to give out on him, like flaming driftwood on the verge of crumbling into embers. He bent at the waist, redistributing the weight of each pull as best he could among back, shoulders, and limbs. Though he yearned to succumb, he denied his muscles’ dire need, fearing that to take even a moment’s rest would make it his last.

His breath was sawing in and out by the time he reached the shadow of the first rock. Its craggy skin glistened with spray, obsidian in the moonlit darkness. For a moment, as its sharp mass loomed menacingly above him, he was convinced he’d made a mistake.

Then he glanced up and saw that the others had eased off, betraying their hesitation. Kell savored a reckless sneer, even as he fought against waves that threatened now to dash him against the fortified shoreline. He had just about cleared the corner. Already, two of the pursuing longboats were blocked from view by the giant rock’s rugged outline.

Before the same could be said of the third, the vessel’s crossbowman loosed a final shot, catching Kell square in the shoulder. His cry was lost to the wind as his left arm went limp as wet sea grass. His oar dropped, an eddy seized him, and he spun wildly out of control.

He tried to recover, but his wounded arm would not respond, lifeless save for the stabbing waves of pain. Nor was there any use, he soon realized, in trying to steer his vessel with one oar. He was at the mercy of the ocean or that of his tormenters—whichever claimed him first.

Up and down the tide took him, twisting him this way and that. Sneaker waves crashed in over the gunwale, sweeping him from his seat and into the bottom of the boat. Freezing water sloshed and roiled around him. When he tried to breathe, he coughed and sputtered on a mouthful of brackish foam. Roving seabirds screamed overhead. Among this garden of cliffs, this close to the jagged shore, he was as good as dead.

He managed to right himself, clinging to a bench and using it for leverage. Peering over his prow, he saw those of the other boats, headed straight for him. They had lit their lanterns, which bobbed and flickered, but glowed brightly enough in the coastal brume. Kell’s eyes, however, had begun to lose focus. He couldn’t tell how far off they might be.

Then the lanterns began to flash—a series of signals that Kell recognized. He squinted, shivering uncontrollably, as the signal was taken up farther away and relayed once again. A moment later he stiffened, as the silhouette of a
large vessel cleared the edge of another of the tombstone rock formations. At first he thought it to be the nose of Madrach’s carrack, set sail from its underground lair. But then a shaft of starlight spilled through the cloud cover to illuminate the figurehead of a bloody raven, its wings outspread in flight.

Kell smiled against thickening waves of pain. Not even another sneaker wave could wipe it from his face. When he came up this time, his boat had been turned around once more, to face the direction from which he’d come, where the first of his pursuers were only now coming around the rock. He twisted the other way. The
Squall
and her lookouts remained, the most blessed sight he’d ever seen, emerging from their place of hiding and bearing toward him on a swift wind. Without thinking, he reached up with his one good arm and gave his mates an emphatic wave.

Then the ocean surged up beneath him, catching his hapless vessel at an odd angle, flipping him over and into the sea.

T
ORIN’S GAZE SWEPT LIKE AN ANIMAL’S
around the chamber. From her altar, Autumn studied him in silence, while behind the mysterious woman, Raven blinked and rubbed his eyes in obvious dismay. Talyzar’s dark form hovered in the doorway, blocking any hope of escape—even if Torin were to break free from where his leg was rooted to the floor. And then there was Soric, who stepped forward to loom over him like a hooded executioner.

He struggled until the wizard’s shadow covered him, then forced himself to return the other’s gaze boldly. A tight smirk strained the corners of Soric’s mouth, seeming to mock his struggles, while the gimlet eyes shone with anything but mirth.

His brother surprised him by stepping past without a word toward the disoriented Raven. The pirate had come to his hands and knees, but was groping about like a blind man. As if sensing the wizard’s approach, he froze suddenly.

“Our games are ended, Captain,” Soric said. “Time now to make your choice.”

Raven spat in the direction of the voice, striking the ground at the wizard’s feet.

“Your fire is admirable, but misguided. We need not be adversaries.”

“Then free her,” Raven growled. “And let you and I be rid of each other.”

“Too late for that, I’m afraid.” Soric turned to Autumn, who, to Torin’s continuing wonderment, did not shy as he cupped her chin in his hand. “Like you, she has sparked my interest. I will make use of her as I will of you, one way or another.”

Raven made a lunge from his knees, reaching out as if to wrap the wizard by the legs and tackle him to the ground. But while his aim was true, Soric calmly stepped aside, leaving the pirate to bash himself against the stone of Autumn’s gargoyle statue, where he crumpled at its base.

“You
will
serve me,” the wizard declared. “Willingly or otherwise. The only difference will be your reward. Be it unbridled wealth and freedom,” he said, gesturing toward the assassin in the doorway, “or pain.”

With that, he reached down to snag the pirate by the chin, using thumb and forefinger like a barbed hook. Raven fought with clenched teeth, but was drawn steadily to his feet. When he reached forth to grapple against the hold, Soric merely twitched, sending an invisible jolt through the captain’s body that snapped his arms out wide.

Rigid with pain and defiance, Raven was nevertheless helpless as Soric led him to a sculpture much like Autumn’s. There the wizard raised the hand holding his staff. As if attached by strings, the crest of the statue’s head lifted straight up with a dull scrape, exposing the deep prongs on either end that rooted it like a tooth into position. With another jolt, Soric forced Raven’s wrists out straight and into the cups of the empty eye sockets, then dropped the lid of the pillory shut once more.

With the pirate secured, the wizard drew a gleaming knife from his belt. “As proof, you will first help me to dispose of this, the last thorn of betrayal in the circle of my crown.”

“Let them go, Soric,” Torin snarled, addressing his brother by name for the first time. “They’ve nothing to do with us.”

“My preference as well,” the wizard replied, scowling at the blind Raven, who flapped at his stocks. “I had hoped to use their shipmates for this purpose, or soldiers of my own. But a horse must be broken before it can be ridden.”

With deft swiftness, he slid his blade across the bottom of Raven’s wrists, forced downward before him. The pirate thrashed and wailed, more in fury than in pain. Blood pulsed from the wounds, catching in a trough of the gargoyle’s snout. A moment later, it emptied in a trickle through the creature’s mouth, a tiny rivulet beginning to flow.

“Yes,” Soric hissed in Raven’s ear. “Fight it. The more you struggle, the greater my strength and control.”

Raven turned purple with strain, veins bulging from neck and face as he twisted and clenched as if to tear the wizard to pieces. As he did so, Torin watched the flow of blood drip from the altar and into the grooves of the swirled pattern carved upon the floor. His eyes widened as the entire design began to emit a faint glow.

“Your stubborn refusal condemns not only yourself,” the wizard reminded the flailing pirate, “but your flower as well.” He stepped toward Autumn, presenting the knife and the trace of blood along its edge.

Torin felt his own fury rising, and jerked again at the mountain rock that held him trapped. He leaned out for the box containing the Sword, but was no closer to reaching it than before. Forced to admit defeat on a physical front, he looked back to Autumn, whose calm gaze seemed to sap a measure of the wizard’s thunder.

Then the dagger found its mark.

“No!” Torin shouted, as the blood slipped from her wrists. The woman herself uttered not so much as a whimper. “Damn you, Soric! What do you want of me?”

The wizard was held captive a moment longer by Autumn’s glittering, amethyst gaze, then turned toward Torin, wiping the blood from his knife.

“Want?” he echoed. “Desire is for the weak, a craving by those who have not. Look around you, brother, at this keep that has become my home. Rough it may appear, but within its vaults lie treasures beyond compare—not only the metals and gems used to purchase men’s allegiance, but ancient knowledge, a limitless store of tomes and scrolls and artifacts of unspeakable power. I alone was chosen to unravel their secrets, to inherit command of natural energies one like you can scarcely begin to fathom. There is nothing for which I want. Nothing I cannot have.”

Torin looked to where Autumn’s blood now met Raven’s upon the floor. The glow of the strange pattern deepened.

“But there is a stark difference,” the wizard continued, striding over to leer down at him, “a chasm between desire and demand. Destiny grants us opportunities, nothing more. The rest is up to us, to claim or leave behind for one of stronger will. I have sacrificed half my life in pursuit of a legacy to which I was born. And I shall be damned indeed before I watch the fruits of my labors be enjoyed by one to whom everything has been so freely given.”

“And what is it you think I’ve been given?”

“Everything!” Soric gnashed. “Everything that by natural order should have been mine.”

“Love,” said Autumn suddenly, and both men turned. “Nurturing. I pity you, wizard, the envy you bear.”

Soric’s eyes narrowed. “Envy?”

“Had you received the attention and support your brother did, everything he has achieved—the joy and recognition—might instead be yours. Worse, he does not enjoy what fame and glory are his, while you crave it. Is that not what this is about?”

The wizard sneered. “He is the younger son, is he not? What right has he to the blessings of the first?” When Autumn did not respond, he scoffed. “Either way, you may keep your pity. Were it not for my actions against our father, this whelp would never have been born. Everything he has is due to me.”

Though his mind remained addled with hopeless thoughts of escape, Torin could not help but acknowledge the truth of his brother’s words. Queen Ellebe had told him as much, that he’d been conceived only after Soric’s banishment, to secure a monarchy bereft of an heir. Whatever else the wizard chose to believe, Torin did, in essence, owe the man for his very existence.

He looked up, feeling the heat of his brother’s glare.

“In return, he would take that which remains to me, that which I have earned by right of birth and toil. Speak all you will of envy and desire. I speak only of demand. Demand for the fealty owed me. Demand that a thief be punished.
That,
my dear flower, is what this is about.”

Torin waited for Autumn to raise another argument, as he was out of his own. But the woman only stared at him, her head tilted to one side, her expression unreadable.