Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) (11 page)

“What happened?” she asked, struggling to
get her voice above the chaos.

“Leg’s broke,” he said. He gripped the wide
wooden plank as he rested his head against the wood and spent a few
moments catching his breath.

Not knowing what else to do, Lia simply held
on. The rain pelted her. The winds brought down wave upon wave that
buried her in cold again and again, chilling her skin and filling
her ears. She tried pulling the back of her tunic up over her head,
but every time she let go of the door the waves threatened to knock
her off.

The red sunset was gone. They were alone now
in the relentless darkness that abated only when the clouds lit up
with lightning.

“Just hang on,” came Khile’s feeble voice
through the darkness. “Talk. It will help keep us awake.”

“Talk about w–what?”

“I don’t know. Just… talk.”

“Um. Well, it’s really hard to chop
someone’s head off,” she said. “Even if you cut between the pieces
of the spine it–it takes a lot of p–power.”

Her words were met with silence at first.
Then he said, “How the bloody hells do you even know something like
that?”

“I know lots of w–weird stuff. Basically if
my mother ever told me not to read it, I’d read it. She always
w–wanted me to be more like D–Dana, act like a good princess. But
that’s not for me.” She paused to take a few breaths. “Your turn.
You talk. You’re a fighter aren’t you?”

“W–what makes you s–say that?”

“I can tell by the way you move. And your
hands, they’re calloused like a soldier’s. Did you fight in any of
the wars against the Black King?”

“Some.”

“P–papa always said it d–didn’t matter how
many times you l–lost, just that you kept fighting for what was
right.”

She waited for Khile to speak, but he never
did.

Lia looked in his direction, searching for
some sign of him in the darkness. When the next bolt of lightning
cracked through the sky she saw his hand slipping under the
surface.

She reached out and grabbed his limp
fingers. She pulled and pulled until finally his hand came alive.
He jolted to the surface once again, coughing.

“Don’t do that!” she said. “Don’t give
up.”

Khile was fading out of consciousness.

“Wake up!” she yelled, slapping him across
the jaw.

He stirred and looked at her with half-open
eyes. “I can’t,” he wheezed.

“Yes, you can.”

Lia grabbed onto Khile’s shoulders with both
hands and pulled as hard as she could.

“What… what are you doing?” he asked.

“Get up here!” she said, trying to make her
small girlish voice sound strong.

“It’s not big enough to hold us both.”

And he was right. By the time she had his
torso onto the wood it sunk below the surface and they both toppled
off. The waves roughed them up some more, but Lia managed to keep a
hand on her life raft.

“Leave me,” Khile said. “Ride out the storm.
Keep your eyes open f–for land. You can make it.”

“To all the hells with that,” Lia said.

She swam around behind him. She pushed and
shoved with all her might until most of his body was on the board.
Lia floated in the water next to his head. She could practically
feel her lips turning blue from the cold water that now embraced
her.

“What are you doing?” he said.

She leaned into his ear. “I’m not leaving
y–you. So don’t–don’t you leave me, t-too.”

In the darkness, she couldn’t tell whether
Khile was looking at her or not, but a moment later she felt his
hand stroking the back of her sopping wet head.

He conceded. “I’m here, kid.” His voice was
feeble and pained.

“I’m not a k–kid.”

“Right. Forgot. Sorry.”

Lia sucked up her courage, willing her
muscles to move despite the cold.

“I’ll get us to shore,” she said. “You just
don’t leave me. All right?”

“Deal.”

The boy entered the wizard’s loft in almost
total silence, carrying a tray containing an evening meal of
two fish, grapes, and a piece of white bread all neatly arranged on
a pale plate next to a goblet of wine.

In the doorway, he paused and cast a curious
glance down the way he had come. He remained there for a moment,
still as a tree on a calm night, his ear inclined toward the
stairs. After a moment he shrugged his shoulders and nudged the
door closed with his heel.

The door didn’t latch, however. With a
gloved hand, Merek Viator reached out and stopped it. He pushed the
door open an inch or so and peered inside. He glimpsed the boy
disappearing with the tray of food into an adjoining room.

Merek slipped inside. He wore an assassin’s
killing outfit—a tunic and slacks of mottled dark gray cotton,
thin, and cut for easy movement. Under his dark cloak was a leather
harness with a score of throwing weapons.

He crouched low in the shadows and let the
door latch behind him.

The room was little more than an antechamber
of sorts containing only a table full of candles and a massive
painting of a nude woman who resembled the widely disliked
governess of Malium. Most thought the painting had been destroyed
years ago to protect the woman’s dignity.

Merek smirked, knowing Romola would be
furious if she knew this was here.

Looking through a doorway on his right Merek
saw the makings of a library illuminated by cold white light
drifting through dingy windows. To his left sat a small office that
held a writing desk, a few books, papers, and other small practical
items. Not that he cared. He was far more interested in the tray of
food the boy was carrying, particularly the goblet of wine.

Merek stepped through the office in total
silence until he could peek through a second doorway leading into
the middle room of the tower. Flickering orange torchlight
illuminated the circular chamber, staving off the chill presented
by the gray stone of the suffocating walls. There he saw the
wizard, Versch Leiern, in his long green and gold robe, pacing
along creaky old floorboards. His gaze was affixed to the
mirror-like surface of a black table upon which sat the six shards
of the regenstern.

The wizard patted the sweat from his
forehead, looking pale and nervous. He’d been up all night, locked
in his tower, muttering various incantations and cursing when they
didn’t work. Merek had spent the night in the woods north of his
tower, hearing the echoes of his trial and error. Nothing the
wizard had tried so far could repair the shattered gem. He was
getting desperate and angry.

“Over there!” Versch said to the boy with a
voice of contempt. He waved a sinewy hand toward a small brown
table against the wall. “And fetch my chair.”

Merek slipped back into the anteroom as the
boy retraced his steps to the office and grabbed the wooden chair
in front of the desk. He placed it next to the tray of food in the
central chamber.

Versch hurled a book across the room that
slammed into the wall then fell to the floor with a heavy thud.

“Si dorum morientom!” Versch said. He threw
himself down in his chair with a heavy breath and wiped the sweat
from his shiny dome.

“Master, are you—”

Versch slapped the boy with such quickness
that not even Merek saw it coming.

“How many times have I told you not to speak
when I am thinking?” Versch said.

“Apologies, sir,” the boy said, coloring
up.

Versch ripped off a piece of the bread and
popped it in his mouth. He glared at the pieces of the regenstern.
“At one point this stone was made. Surely it can be remade.” The
room fell silent as Versch chewed, lost in thought. “Damn the Black
King and all his demands.”

He pivoted in his seat and took the cup of
wine.

Merek tensed as the wizard brought it toward
his lips.

“Go to the library and find a book called
Atenbrous Lapdiem
,” Versch said to the boy. “
Darkness and
Stones
. It will be small.”

The boy scurried out of the room.

Versch lifted the goblet and drank. Merek
watched, his muscles rigid, as he waited for the poison in the wine
to take its toll. It started slowly, with Versch attempting to
clear his throat as though a piece of bread had lodged in his
windpipe. He coughed, trying to get a gulp of air, and Merek saw
panic creeping over his face. The wizard stood up, eyes going wide
with fear, while his hands clutched at his neck.

“Damn… you, boy,” Versch wheezed.

His panic boiled over into rage. He started
toward the library to visit vengeance upon his young attendant when
the second phase of the poison kicked in. Versch’s hands went limp,
followed by his arms. He managed to take one more step before his
legs gave way and he toppled to the floor, paralyzed.

Merek sighed in furtive relief and entered
the room.

Versch’s pallor was reddening from lack of
oxygen as he lay prone on the floor. When he saw Merek, his eyes
widened in rage and with the understanding that it had not been his
young apprentice who had poisoned him.

Merek strode up to the black table and
pocketed the six pieces of the regenstern.

A bloody splotch appeared through the fabric
around the wizard’s stomach. The third and final stage of the
poison had begun. Versch trembled and his eyes watered as his mouth
opened for a final gasp of air that never came. His face grew
redder from the asphyxiation while his belly emptied out onto the
floor through a hole that had burned through his flesh. A moment
later, Versch Leiern was dead.

Merek started to leave when the slave boy
returned holding a dusty old book. His frightened eyes went from
Merek to the dead body of his master. He gasped, tears of sorrow
forming in his eyes. This confused Merek. In the days he had spent
spying on Versch he had seen him give nothing but abuse to the
young lad. If anything, he thought the boy would be delighted to be
out from under the wizard’s cruelty. Instead, he looked genuinely
horrified.

The boy dodged back into the library and
circled around to the antechamber. Merek hurried through the
office, hoping to cut him off, but the boy had already reached his
prize: a gold tassel looped over a hook that went down through a
hole in the floor to an alarm bell far below. Merek couldn’t hear
the sound from this high up in the tower, but he knew who would be
meeting him on the stairs if he didn’t hurry.

Ignoring the boy tugging away on the cord,
Merek ripped open the door and took the descending steps three at
time. Unless he wished to find himself cornered in the tower he had
to reach the lowest window and slip out onto the roof of the
adjoining building.

Ustus Rapere had sent half a dozen black
vipers to monitor and protect the wizard as he did his work in
Efferous. Merek had spent the last six months traveling from Edhen,
watching them, avoiding them, and learning how they worked. He knew
the soldiers by name.

In all that time, however, he had not been
able to figure out why he had been hired to steal from and kill a
wizard under the protection of the Black King. The soldiers had
been sent by Ustus to protect Versch. Merek had been sent to kill
him by the same man. The puzzle had stumped him from day one. There
was a conspiracy brewing, and he was landing ass first in the
middle of it.

Merek saw the light in the circular stairway
growing brighter. The window was near. The sounds of raised voices
and the clattering of steel drew closer. Merek quickened his pace,
knowing his best defense at this moment was the element of
surprise.

The first viper he saw sprinted up the
steps, lightly armored and with no helmet. The man’s name was
Aengus Faolan. He was thirty-five and had a son with a whore on
Edhen. Merek flung his body at Aengus, knocking him back into his
companions. The soldiers growled and cursed as they tumbled in a
disjointed mess of limbs and metal.

Merek hopped up on the stone windowsill,
wetted by the afternoon rain, and ducked outside. He would have
landed gracefully on the wood shingle roof ten feet below, but one
of the soldiers snagged his cloak. Like a pendulum Merek swung back
into the side of the tower before the soldier lost his grip. He
fell to the rain-slicked roof, landed with a crash on his side, and
slid toward the edge of the two-story barn house. Merek pulled out
a dagger and drove it as hard as he could into the shingles. It
didn’t stop his slide, but it did give him something to hold onto
when his body tipped over the eave.

A door on the ground level of the tower flew
open. A tall viper with broad shoulders rushed out. Gall Shea. Late
twenties. He grumbled about working for the Black King so much that
Merek almost liked him.

“I’ve got him!” Gall said. He ran into the
house and stomped up the stairs to the second floor.

Merek managed to get his feet on the sill
below him. He kicked out the right side windowpane in a shower of
glass, grabbed onto the mullion and pulled himself into a small
bedroom.

He dashed for the corridor just as the
towering Gall hunched through the doorway, sword drawn.

“I’m gunna carve your face,” Gall said with
a malicious grin.

He took a few vicious swipes, but in the
tight confines of the bedroom his armor and height proved to be no
match for the assassin’s lightweight quickness.

Merek found a coil of rope sitting on the
floor. He ducked the soldier’s swipe, grabbed the rope, and then
lashed it at Gall’s unprotected face. The desperate swipe served to
push the soldier just far enough out of the way for Merek to slip
by and out into the hallway.

He sprinted down the empty corridor while
fashioning one end of the rope into a crude lasso. He stepped
through the last doorway on the right and into another bedroom. The
chamber contained a chair and an old bed frame. He tossed the lasso
over the bedpost and dove through the window as Gall charged into
the room. He made a grasp for Merek, but missed. In a growl of
frustration the black viper turned to sprint out of the room. The
rope went taut. Merek’s weight yanked the bed frame toward the
window. Gall crumpled under the rush of wood that plowed him back
into the wall, knocking him out, and slowing Merek’s descent.