Those Who Fear the Darkness (BloodRunes: Book 2) (4 page)

“Oh Nattie. No!” his mother cried in false
horror. The sickeningly sweet voice was so unlike his mother that
Nat knew better than to stop.

He burst through the now flaming door, and
coughed as the smoke filled his lungs. He took a step back to
inhale some cleaner air and hold his breath, before forging into
the fire. A young girl's cries alerted him to her presence and he
found her, weeping uncontrollably underneath the bed.

As she turned her tear-streaked face to him
he felt a momentary pang as he realized it was the girl who had
been making fun of him. He quickly covered his embarrassment and
reached in a hand to pull her out, slightly rougher than he had
been planning to moments ago. A sharp intake of breath told him
that he had caused the pain he had desired. He felt a small rush
which gave him the strength to throw her over his shoulder and make
his way carefully back out towards the door.

He was almost to the threshold when a large
flaming rafter dislodged itself from the ceiling and came tumbling
towards them, landing with a thunderous bang and blocking their
exit.

He scrambled out of the way and looked around
the room to assess the situation. There was a small window towards
the back of the house that the fire had not yet reached and he ran
for it, dodging the flaming debris that clattered to the floor all
around them. He wasn't quite fast enough to dodge one.

A sharp intake of breath and a low groan were
all he allowed to escape as a falling beam scraped against his arm,
tearing out a large gouge of flesh. He tossed the girl aside and
flung the window open. He grabbed her arm and urged her through
before squeezing out himself.

They landed in a pile of flailing limbs on
the outside, and he gasped in the clean air while panting with
exertion. The girl gave him a wide-eyed stare and then ran to her
mother who could be heard still screaming from around the front of
the house.

Nat pulled himself up and looked at his arm,
which throbbed with every heartbeat. It was oozing blood and was
torn open enough that he could see muscle. He ripped away the rest
of the sleeve that had been ruined anyway and tied it tightly
around the wound, holding it with his other hand for pressure.

He made his way around to the front of the
house where the woman had finally stopped screaming and was now
sobbing uncontrollably. She was showering the little girl with
kisses and hugging her so tightly that the girl was wincing. The
girl seemed eager to get her mother's attention off of her, and she
pointed to Nat as he emerged saying, “That's the boy,” Nat groaned
inwardly.
Now what am I going to get in trouble for?
“That's
the boy who saved me.”

Nat froze, he wasn't sure what the correct
reaction would be and he glanced at his mother. She gave no
indication of recognizing his pleading glance, and simply stood
watching with an amused smile playing on her lips.

The woman carefully let go of the girl and
ran to him, Nat reflexively put up his hands to defend himself, but
was overwhelmed by the woman who swallowed him up in a smothering
hug.

“Thank you, dear boy,” she exclaimed giving
him a squeeze, “I don't know how I can ever thank you for saving my
Gwyneth.”

Nathair shook his head to clear it of the
memory. He stood abruptly from the armchair in which he had been
resting, causing the legs to scrape against the floor as he did so.
He strode out of the room and onto the terrace to gaze out over the
landscape.
She's out there somewhere
. He extended magical
probes in all directions and searched with all his formidable
talent, but she remained hidden from him. He threw his hands in the
air in a gesture of futility.
Why am I torturing myself like
this?
He asked himself, annoyed, but he already knew the
answer. He began to pace.

When he had first lost her it had seemed a
simple inconvenience, a temporary set-back. Now, however, he knew
that he needed her, nay in fact must possess her in order to be
whole. None of the others could even come close to satisfying him,
even his little pet project. And just as he realized her
importance, she had seemingly disappeared off of the face of the
world.

He slammed his fist into the railing in
vexation.

Forcing himself to take several calming
breaths, he returned to the room and picked up the latest report
which he had been reading before losing himself in memories.

The report was the same as all the others.
The border between him and Treymayne remained in full force. His
personal guard had been somewhat more informative, but without
complete answers their reports were almost as frustrating as no
answers at all. His mages indicated that there was a change within
the structure of the border magics, and that they appeared to be
commanding more energy than they had in the past, but because they
were unfamiliar with the process that had made the wall they could
give him no clue as to why or what was happening. Nathair had no
doubt that the Treymayne people, despite their paranoid isolation,
had become aware of his plans to invade - so perhaps this was their
reaction to it.
But was it a simple strengthening of their
defensive spells, or in preparation for a counter attack?
The
answer would make all the difference.

His operatives inside Treymayne had fallen
silent at the outset of the border activity and Nathair had no way
of finding out if they had been unmasked, or simply were now unable
to communicate as a result of the fortified defense.

His head was starting to pound.

Once again he rose from the chair, this time
making his way out into the hall. As soon as he emerged from his
private rooms, a servant fell into step behind him. Nathair gave it
a cautionary glance to make sure it was one whose face he'd
memorized as valid. Once satisfied that it was indeed one meant to
be here, he addressed it. “Cancel my dinner meeting tonight,” he
barked, “and make sure that I am not disturbed. I'll be in my
quarters for the rest of the evening.”

He didn't bother glancing at the servant this
time to make sure he was understood, but rather swished his cloak
around him as he turned the corner to climb the steep spiral
stairway up into his personal suite. The two guards at the door
nodded to him and moved their spears aside for him to enter. They
were part of his hand-picked elite guard and would die before
betraying him. He had made sure of it. If even a traitorous thought
entered their heads, the spell interwoven into their heartbeat
would suddenly cause them to have a fatal heart-attack.

He idly wondered if they realized this as he
strode past.

He didn't stop moving inside the room, but
mentally waited for the click of the door shutting before he
reached up to unclasp his cloak. He let it fall to the floor,
relieving his shoulders of its massive weight of gold trim and
embroidery. He stopped at the opposite wall, and placed a hand on
it while using the other to rub his tired eyes.

After a moment in this position, he sighed
and traced a pattern on the wall with his finger. A rune appeared
for a moment, shining briefly, before it faded out as the wall
began to move.

He had been delighted to find this hidden
room so similar to the one that his great lord had in his own grand
fortress all those years ago. Apparently one of the kings before
Nathair had a liking for young boys, a practice that was frowned
upon in cultured society. So he had built this secret lair to keep
them. Nathair had refortified its meek defenses and made sure that
everyone who had known about it was either permanently silenced or
in a position where their knowledge would make no difference.
Nathair was not about to take chances with his destiny. His great
lord had left him with a legacy to fulfill and it was his duty to
do all in his power to make sure that he did so. He had shaped the
hidden lair to his own purposes, ridding it of its sordid past and
sterilizing it for his experiment.

Nathair stepped through the opening in the
wall and lights burst into being one by one as he descended the
steep steps, the light from the room growing smaller as the door
shut behind him. At the bottom Nathair smiled.

The room was diffused with energy, a glow of
warmth that engulfed him and melted away his fatigue. The table in
the center of the room held his masterpiece. It was a work in
progress and the material was not of the quality that he would have
preferred starting with...
But it is no matter, it is a learning
process and the practice will make the final one that much
better
.

He gathered power into his hands and molded
it with his being, drawing just enough so that it was a challenge
to control and delighted for a moment at the burning sensation
before utilizing the power in picking up where he had left off.

As he worked, he was able to think through
some of the issues that had been agitating him. He had been
contemplating a suitable punishment for Jezebel's father, but now
that she was - indisposed - he halted his action. Karl may be of
some use to him. He had recognized his voice as the speaker in one
of the Order ceremonies, and Nathair hoped that he could use
information from Jezebel to use Karl. Unfortunately, Jezebel had
been lacking in patience and had already ordered Devon to start
plotting against the man, so he was currently too preoccupied in
his own misfortunes to be of any use at the moment.

Since Jezebel's accident the rest of the
council was getting rather annoying. Jezebel had gone and announced
his appointment of her as his First Advisor, and then been unable
to cement her leadership before losing control of her hounds and
being torn apart. It had the unhappy aftermath of having made the
rest of the council members rush around to try and solidify the
council's power over his kingship.
Most annoying, indeed.
Even when they weren't concentrating on undermining his rule, they
were bickering amongst themselves and slowing down progress.
Nothing would ever get done at this rate. He would have to come up
with some way to get rid of them all, without making it connect to
him in any way.

There was always the back-alley
killer
, he smiled to himself,
but no
. Even with this
persona, the deaths of all the council members would still look
like assassinations and he may still be implicated in having
orchestrated them.
Perhaps there is some way that I could use
Karl to this end. If I could just distract him from his own ordeals
for long enough
.

He was a ball of sweat when he finished, but
he beamed with pride at the progress that he had made tonight. He
carefully gathered up the last of the energy bouncing around the
room, and stored it away in his focus stones for future use. The
power was nowhere near as potent when it was stored then when it
was first extracted. But depending on the quality of the stone used
to store it, it was worth not wasting any energy gained from his
exertions.

He climbed the stairs to his suite happily,
and in his elated state was slow to recognize the alert that his
hyper senses gave him until it was too late. He felt a cold, sharp
blade bite into his neck, and his arm was forced behind him most
uncomfortably.

Nathair was about to blow the would-be
assassin into oblivion when the man spoke, forestalling the ball of
power Nathair had been about to unleash upon him.

“Where is she?” the man demanded.

Nathair relaxed and smiled slowly in
recognition. “How nice of you to stop by,” he answered, pointedly
ignoring the question, and was rewarded by a blunt pain in the back
of his head before blackness swam before him and he fell to his
knees, still smiling.

*

Gryffon stood along the glowing wall before
them, and looked up at its vast expanse. He turned his head to
follow its path as far as the eye could see in either
direction.

“What do we do now?” Layna asked, breaking
the silence that had fallen over their little group after Gryffon
had made several more attempts to send his message to no avail.

Gryffon rubbed his chin where thin stubble
had begun to grow where he had shaved it once they no longer needed
their disguise. “It's never been this difficult to send a probe
through before, something must have changed.”

“Might your people have decided that they
should make it so that nothing at all could get through because of
all the rumors of invasion?”

Gryffon looked uncomfortable and he shifted
his weight before answering, “We don't really know how to do
anything with the border spell anymore, the mages who set it up
didn't leave instructions or anything and after it went up a lot of
the stronger talents moved away saying that it was too disruptive
to their own magics.”

Layna raised an eyebrow but didn't comment on
this interesting new piece of information. “So how would it have
changed?” Gryffon simply shrugged. “Alright, back to my original
question then: What do we do now?”

“We could always be askin’ for help,” Charles
chimed in softly.

As Layna looked back at him, she followed his
gaze and let out a gasp as part of the forest detached itself to
shimmer into the shape of a woman.

“Hello, child,” the old woman said crinkling
her wrinkled face into a smile.

“Mila?” Layna asked incredulously. She looked
closer at the woman, but as the woman's features sharpened, they
turned into someone Layna didn't know, despite the initial
resemblance.

“Mila?” the woman repeated slowly. She looked
off into space a moment, and Layna could have sworn that the
withered lips formed a small smile. “No, no not Mila. My name is
Aileen. Come.”

She turned back towards the woods and started
down a path Layna had not noticed earlier. She stopped a few paces
in and looked back at them expectantly. “Come,” she repeated
nodding and she held out her hand to beckon them.