Necromancer Falling: Book Two of The Mukhtaar Chronicles (57 page)

“Get ready,” Morrigan said. “There’s a landing up ahead, just before the tunnel opens. We’ll leave the boat there and head out under the pier.”

Aelron closed his eyes and imagined what might be beyond the tunnel.

“You’ve been here before,” he said. “What does the pier look like?”

“Narrow steps to the right, probably for sewer workers. Large crossbeam supports to the left.”

“Then we should go left and climb,” Aelron said. “Oh, and you’re not my wife anymore.”

“You bastard. You broke my heart.”

“If we’re seen, we’re fishermen. I went to check our nets and stumbled. You came down after me. We’re young and agile. We’d do something stupid like climb the pier with a twisted ankle instead of walking across the harbor to use a perfectly safe stairway.”

“You’re half right,” Morrigan said. “
I’m
young and agile. You just age well,
grandpa
.”

Morrigan guided the craft to a small ledge on the side of the tunnel. When they climbed out of the boat, she stretched.

“Your fishermen idea is shite, by the way,” Morrigan said. “We shouldn’t be talking to
anyone
for
any reason
.”

“We can’t stop them from talking to
us
.”

Morrigan held up her hand and silvery light glinted off the blade of her dagger.

“Yes we can,” she said. “We don’t have time for conversations. Anything that slows us down brings us closer to Zubuxo’s throne than I care to be.”

“Then what do you suggest?” Aelron asked.

“You’re right about climbing the pier. The beams will give us some concealment. But once we’re on the platform, we make our way to a boat as quickly as possible. No matter how many Barathosians we have to cut through to get there. Understood? No hesitation. We cast off and let the river do the hard work.”

“And what about the blockade?”

“The blockade isn’t what’s going to kill us on the platform. Focus on the present. We’ll worry about the blockade when we know what we’re up against. Having a strategy is well and good, but no strategy we could devise right now will survive contact with the Barathosians.”

“Are you
training
me?”

Morrigan smirked. “Follow my lead. When it’s time to attack you’ll know, because you’ll see me fighting.”

She ran to the end of the tunnel and leaned around the corner. After a moment, she glanced at Aelron, waved him on, and leapt across the narrow tunnel to the walkway on the opposite side.

Aelron made a similar leap and glanced toward the crossbeams supporting the pier.

The beach formed a small hill under the pier. The climb would be much shorter there.

Ten feet from the sand to the deck. Not too bad.

Morrigan must have had the same idea, because she placed her dagger in her mouth and ran toward the small hill. When she reached the safest spot to climb, she gestured for Aelron to move quietly.

She pointed to top of the pier and held up a single finger.

One guard up top.

When he looked back at Morrigan to nod his confirmation, he blinked. Gone was her yellow dress. Once again she wore the enigmatic black cloak, and her hair was pulled into a top-knot.

Aelron climbed up onto the beam next to her. When he steadied himself, Morrigan nudged him and crossed her eyes downward. It took him a moment to realize she was referring to the dagger between her teeth.

He retrieved the smaller of the two blades in his cloak and did the same. As Master Nigel used to tell him, “It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it.”

Sand and pebbles struck Aelron in the forehead as they climbed. Someone was walking on the platform above them.

Morrigan climbed over the last beam and up onto the platform without a sound. Aelron doubted he could have done it better.

For that matter, he doubted he could do it
as well
.

When Aelron pulled himself up to the topmost beam of the support structure, he scanned the platform.

The platform was a large u-shaped boardwalk that was open to the river. Three wide streets emptied onto the platform, each across from one of the harbor’s three piers, and a mixture of stone and wooden buildings lined the innermost side of the boardwalk. Mostly businesses, judging by the signs and shingles hanging from their entrances. There was everything from government offices to taverns and inns. Even a chocolatier had set up shop next to the harbormaster’s office, though it was boarded up.

Two riverboats, one upstream and one down, docked against the southernmost pier, and the downstream boat had a landing craft joined to its side by a system of ropes and pulleys.

If they were going to make their way through a blockade, that would be the boat to take.

Movement caught Aelron’s eye.

Three guards patrolled along the platform, two abreast and one following. But there were few people at the docks for a city of this size. Cleaning tools—brooms, buckets, rags, and brushes—lay abandoned next to ropes, hooks, and other implements used in managing river traffic.

Aside from the guards, the entire pier was deserted.

Morrigan was crouched behind the rearmost Barathosian guard, and her dagger was no longer in her mouth. She held it up beside her at the level of her head, point facing the Barathosian, and she prowled toward him.

Morrigan straightened, wrapped a hand around the rearmost guard’s mouth, and plunged the dagger through the back of his neck. As the guard fell in a pool of his own blood, Morrigan became a black blur on the periphery of Aelron’s vision. The other two guards turned, but Morrigan was too fast. The blur resolved into Morrigan long enough for her to slice her blade across the next guard’s throat. Once more she
blurred
to the next, thrusting her blade into the guard’s chest. The blur flashed over to Aelron, then resolved into Morrigan once more, no more than two paces away.

She panted and doubled over.

“I shouldn’t have…” she said.

As Aelron opened his mouth to speak, Morrigan’s eyes rolled back. Her face drained of color and she began to collapse.

Aelron lunged forward and caught her before she struck the wooden pier.

“Morrigan,” Aelron whispered. He tapped her cheeks lightly as she lay across his lap.

After a few seconds of unconsciousness, Morrigan groaned. The color returned to her cheeks.

Aelron’s tension drained away when he saw her coming around.

“You have to teach me how to do that,” Aelron said.

“How to almost kill yourself?” Morrigan said, her eyes half closed. “We’ll start tomorrow.”

“I need to get you off the pier before they spot us.”

Morrigan shook her head and tried to sit up. She failed and landed in Aelron’s lap once more.

“I just need a minute. Festering hells, I shouldn’t have. Now it will be
hours
before I can
shadow step
again. Maybe a day.”

She sat, this time managing to push herself up into a crouch.

When she stood, Aelron brushed some stray dirt off her cloak.

“Are you going to tell me what
shadow stepping
is?” Aelron asked.

Morrigan nodded at a group of people emerging onto the platform from a wide street between two buildings.

The people huddled together and kept looking over their shoulders.

“The short version,” Morrigan said. “Hunting escaped demons often requires stepping into the land of the dead.
Piercing the veil
. We call it
shadow stepping
. I enter in one place and emerge at another. And every time I do, it takes something from me. That’s how the
veil
repairs itself…with the life force of the hunter.”

“It
kills
you?”

“It can. But I’m not
that
reckless. I’ll recover in time. But until I do, I’ll be weaker than usual.”

Morrigan grabbed Aelron and pulled him behind one of the tool racks.

Aelron glanced toward the cause of her reaction.

The lady whom Malcolm had sent away for food and shelter was among the crowd of ten people huddled together.

Three Barathosians followed the group. They each wore the same wide-brimmed hats with black feathers, but one of them was shirtless and carrying a whip. Every time the group slowed, the Barathosian cracked the whip in the air behind them.

When the group reached the central pier, they seemed uncertain what to do. Aelron was frightened for them, worried the Barathosians would execute the innocent townsfolk by marching them off the platform.

The Barathosian with the whip walked around the group until his back was facing Aelron and Morrigan.

“Say goodbye to Egis,” the Barathosian said. “You’re all property of the Glorious One now. The empress will make you useful yet.”

Aelron hadn’t taken his eyes off them, but one moment they were huddled together, afraid for their lives, and the next…
gone.

We’ve got it wrong!

The Barathosians wore their black feathers, but the people of Egis had none. They disappeared right along with that Barathosian slaver and the two guards that had followed him onto the platform.

“There’s more to this than we know,” Aelron said. “I don’t think that feather has anything to do with what’s making them appear and disappear. Or, if it does, it’s not in the way we think.”

“What else can it be?” Morrigan asked. She glanced around the dock and put her dagger back in her cloak.

“I don’t know. But the sooner we get this information to my brother, the better off we’ll be.”

“Then let’s get to the landing boat,” Morrigan said.

“My thoughts precisely,” Aelron said.

They ran to the end of the pier, not stopping to look back or even check the side streets that emptied into the harbor.

Morrigan dove and Aelron followed.

It didn’t take long to unpin the landing boat once they’d climbed into it, but as the boat drifted away from the larger ship, the city alarm went up. At least two bells tolled, and Aelron could hear boots and shouts coming toward the harbor.

The current of the Orm River was swift, so Aelron and Morrigan didn’t need to row. There’d be no way for the soldiers in Egis to catch them now. It would take longer for the Barathosians to launch a boat than for he and Morrigan to be south of Egis.

But from the looks of the two ships in the river ahead, the soldiers wouldn’t have to catch up.

“It may be time to start worrying about the blockade,” Morrigan said.

Two riverboats anchored at angles to one another and spanned from one shore of the Orm to the other, leaving only a small gap between them. But judging by the smaller craft surrounding them, the big ships weren’t the problem.

Six boats, three times the size of the landing boat he and Morrigan shared, floated on this side of the riverboats. There was no way to navigate past the larger riverboats without coming within grappling range of the smaller ones.

That, however, wasn’t the most troubling thing. Aelron was prepared to fight.

What he wasn’t prepared for were the Barathosians doing
nothing
while he and Morrigan drifted past. And the expressions on their faces were ones of…
amusement
?

“Why are they just staring at us?” Morrigan asked.

Aelron’s mind worked double time as he tried to figure out what they were up to. Then it hit him.

“They’re not
watching
us,” Aelron said. “They’re
herding
us.”

It made sense. The angle of the riverboats, which created a small opening at the river’s center. The position of the smaller ships, which made sure he and Morrigan couldn’t deviate to one side or the other.

What was on the other side of those riverboats that made the Barathosians willing to let him and Morrigan sail straight for it?

As the landing craft passed between the riverboats, someone yelled “Make ready!”

When they cleared the other side, there was nothing waiting for them except open river.

Every yard they drifted, Aelron expected an attack. There was no way the Barathosians were letting them escape.

They made one-hundred yards. Then two-hundred.

At three-hundred yards, a distinct blast of smoke and fire erupted from the side of a riverboat. A moment later, a deafening boom had Aelron covering his ears as something tore through the bow of the landing craft. The force toppled the boat, and Aelron plunged into the swift water.

Something shot past him, followed by another boom, and boards from the sinking boat struck the water’s surface above him.

Whatever the Barathosians had done, it had destroyed the landing craft entirely.

Morrigan!

He searched the wreckage, trying to find some sign of her, but there was nothing except broken boards and an oar.

His lungs burned. He hadn’t been prepared for the dive, and he’d submerged before catching his breath.

A small group of wooden planks floated by. He swam up toward them hoping to hide in their midst so the Barathosians would think him dead.

As he broke the surface, he filled his burning lungs with air.

He stole a glance up river at the Barathosian ships. They weren’t pursuing.

He moved as little as possible—he couldn’t risk being detected yet—but Morrigan was nowhere in his field of view.

He dove.

She had to be here somewhere!

Aelron swam among bits of wreckage that had sunk, looking for any sign of her.

Nothing.

He swam back toward the drifting boards and broke the surface again, but this time he faced downriver.

A patch of brown material drifted close to the eastern bank.

There!

Aelron dove once more. He could swim faster under water than at the surface.

Sharp rocks along the eastern bank combined with the swift current, making it impossible to drift toward the shore.

“Morrigan!” he said.

She waved and pointed toward the drifting wreckage.

Good idea. Some of those boards are still seaworthy.