The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) (5 page)

A moment later, all of them were gone.

Tanis’s heart nearly stopped. He sprinted through the crowd, pushing past commoner and noble alike, coming to a skidding halt as he passed a narrow alley that appeared as a mere crevice between the buildings. He thought he saw movement in the dimness beyond, so he slipped in to follow.

The confined space smelled dank and foul, and Tanis swallowed his unease at the nearness of the slimy walls, which ended high above in only the barest strip of sky. He walked carefully on the muddied earth and cringed as his boots squished with every step—sure they would hear him following. Though it felt like an eternity, he soon saw the walls opening ahead where the two adjacent buildings angled away from one another. He slowed just in time, for near voices floated back to him.

Tanis inched his head around the corner until he saw the five men standing ten paces away. The stranger held up one hand, Tanis saw a flash of silver slice down through the air, and then they all stepped forward seemingly into the wall. 

Tanis rushed after them, but he found only empty brick covered with yellow-green ooze. He pushed one hand against the slimy rock, but the wall was impenetrable. He spun around in frustration looking for any other way in and spotted an opportunity further down: a basement window low to the ground, its glass long shattered.

The opening was boarded over from within, but a stout kick proved the wood rotten. A few well-placed thrusts then with his boot gained entry, and moments later he was pushing through the opening, which was just large enough to accommodate his slender frame.

He fell five paces and landed in an ungraceful heap upon the earthen floor, covered in cobwebs. Coughing, Tanis got to his feet and pulled the sticky cobwebs from his face. He wondered if he’d gone completely insane. Never mind that he didn’t know if he was even in the same building as the stranger and his men, but what did he think he would do when and if he found them? The trancelike state—or whatever it had been—was fully worn off now, and any novelty of a grand adventure had evaporated beneath the gritty reality of the moment.

Yet that feeling of duty remained.

Berating himself for his obscenely foolish choices, Tanis glowered around in the dimness wondering what to do next. His Lady would’ve told him to turn around and leave. Rhys would say he never should’ve left the café to begin with. Prince Ean would probably ask why he felt compelled to follow the man, and the zanthyr…

What
would
the zanthyr tell him?

The truth was, the zanthyr probably wouldn’t say a word, expecting Tanis to work it out on his own.

You’ll never accomplish anything one way or the other if you just keep standing here,
he told himself. Then he realized there was someone else who might advise him, and the idea cheered him. If Fynnlar had been there, he would no doubt have said,
‘Well, Tanis lad, you’ve already come this far. Might as well keep going and dig your grave deep enough to keep the damned coyotes away.’

Heartened then
that at least one of his companions would be on his side, and despite his many misgivings, Tanis mustered his courage and inspected the dim room, eventually spotting a rickety-looking staircase. It seemed so decrepit and fragile…hardly able to support a mouse. He gazed fretfully at it debating whether to risk it, but eventually he decided it was the only way out. To his relief, the steps held his weight, and he made it to the floor above.

No sooner had he gained the dark hallway than he heard voices from down the nearly pitch-black passage. Feeling along the wall, he followed the sounds until he grew close enough to realize that what he’d thought was mumbling was actually men speaking a different language. Eventually he saw flickering torchlight reflected on the passage walls ahead. Tanis instinctively held his breath as he edged his eyes around the corner of the doorway through which the torchlight spilled. Thus he made no sound when he saw the shocking scene.

He faced a cavernous warehouse, empty now of all storage save a few crates upended and used just then as chairs by a couple of the Fhorgs, who sat with their backs to him. The other two stood near the stranger, who held a torch low to the earth, the three of them peering down at the floor as if trying to read some inscription there. But the sight beyond them made Tanis’s flesh crawl.

She hung from chains attached to the high ceiling, her body swinging slightly. She wore only in her own blood and the deep gouges of their foul craft—long gashes across her arms and thighs…and other places, crueler places that Tanis’s eyes shied away from. Blood matted her long brown hair and stained her pale flesh. But when he saw her twitching and realized she was still alive…that’s when he knew the intimacy of real fear.

Tanis saw what had been done, though his innocent mind rebelled against the knowledge. They’d bled her carefully, strategically, and now they studied the pools with discerning gazes, her blood lit by the stranger’s torch held low. Tanis felt sick, both of stomach and of heart. Who was the poor woman that had endured such torment? And why had they put her to it?

The terrors he’d seen in the stranger’s eyes flashed back to mind, and Tanis understood them better.

Suddenly the stranger stiffened. He spun in a swirl of his cloak, and his hand flashed outward, fingers splayed.

Tanis abruptly sank to his knees in the earthen floor—
in
the floor!

Letting out a little shriek, the lad pulled frantically at his knees, but the unyielding earth had closed again around his legs. Clawing at his thighs, his heart pounding, Tanis felt a chill descend like the bitter wind that precedes winter’s first storm, and when he looked up, the stranger was standing over him.

“So…” he said, staring down at Tanis with those fiery eyes pinning him as surely as the earth around his legs.  

The others came to see what their master had caught, and in the torchlight, Tanis saw their faces more clearly. Tattoos covered them; blue inscriptions in long lines of daemonic symbols reaching from forehead to chin and beyond. 

Tanis shuddered. 

“Aw, ‘tis nawt bu’a laddie,” one of them noted in the common tongue, though so heavily accented that Tanis could barely make out what he’d said.

The stranger leveled Tanis a narrow look. “No…” he determined, “it’s the boy from the café.”  He also had a strange accent that Tanis couldn’t place. “You followed me? Why?”

Tanis knew he couldn’t have answered even if he’d thought of something to say.

The stranger grabbed his arm and pulled sharply. Tanis yowled, expecting his legs to be torn from his knees, but the man must’ve reversed his working in the same moment, for the lad found himself standing—if weakly—on the floor again. He craned his neck to look up at him, for he was really quite tall.

The stranger leaned to ask quietly in his ear, “What are you doing here, boy?”  His breath was ice on the lad’s neck, his hand was a vice around his arm, and the terrible intimacy of his whisper made Tanis shudder again. “Answer me truthfully, or you may yet see the same fate as the
Healer
we’ve just bled.”  His grip tightened painfully, and he shook Tanis hard, demanding again, “Tell me! Why have you followed me?
Who
sent you?”

Tanis tried to work some moisture into his mouth, but still he barely croaked out the words, “N-no one, milord. I just…I was just…” 
Gods and devils—
what
was
he doing? “I just…just follow people…sometimes.”

“
This is no idle game!” the stranger hissed, emphasizing his point with yet a third squeeze of Tanis’s arm, and this time his nails drew blood. Tanis felt wet warmth spreading, but it was a welcome contrast to the awful cold of the man’s touch.

“Pelas, ‘e’s just some urchin off the street,” one of the Fhorgs said, amazingly in Tanis’s defense.

The man named Pelas looked Tanis up and down fiercely, assessing him. The lad felt the power in his gaze, and not merely because of the threat he exuded. Rather, Tanis got the strange sensation that the man was much larger even than his tall frame, as if his body was merely the face of something massive and deadly that hunched in the darkness behind him. “This is no urchin,” Pelas disagreed, “not dressed like this.”  Abruptly he shoved Tanis into the arms of the nearest Fhorg. “Bind him. We’ll see if he remembers how to tell the truth with some carnal encouragement.”

They all headed into the warehouse with Tanis prodded between two Fhorgs. “Wha’about ‘er?” asked one of the others, indicating the woman.

“The blood is cold,” Pelas returned in annoyance. “We’ll need a fresh extraction.”

The Fhorg holding Tanis put a hand on his shoulder and forced him to his knees. Another grabbed his hands and began binding them behind his back. The gouges on his arm where Pelas’s nails had cut him stung, but he knew this pain was nothing compared to what the woman must be enduring. Tanis felt her blood soaking through his britches as he knelt on the sodden floor, and he braved another look up at her. It was evident that she’d been beautiful, once. Now she seemed a macabre sculpture, some sort of dark offering. It was vicious and terrible what they’d done. 

“Not that,” Pelas said to the Fhorg binding Tanis’s hands. “Use the
goracrosta
.”

“On ‘
im
?” the Fhorg protested. “But ‘e’s just a wee sprite!” 

Pelas walked over to a table of knives. “We don’t know
what
he is,” he said while looking over his daggers with hands clasped behind him, “or who he’s working for.”

Someone unwrapped the rough rope in several quick turns and rewound Tanis’s hands with a silken cord instead. At first the
goracrosta
felt cool around his wrists, but soon it began to sting. Tanis sucked in his breath and clenched his teeth.

“Tis a waste of magic rope on a lit’l thing as ‘im,” the same Fhorg complained. “Just kill him and be done with it, Pelas. Darshan said—”

Pelas was growing irritated. It was clear from the tone of his voice as he shot back, “
Look
at his eyes and tell me he’s just a boy from the street!”  

A
gruesome face appeared in front of Tanis then, close enough that he could have read the dark language tattooed across his skin had he known its alphabet. He noted with grim fascination that even the Fhorg’s eyelids held the blue inscriptions, thus creating an unbroken verse from hairline to chin. The eyes that gazed into his were as blue as the woad that stained the Fhorg’s skin, and for a moment, Tanis saw the face beneath the tattoo, a rather unremarkable face that wore an expression of irritation. Straightening out of view again, the Fhorg told Pelas, “Yer right. A ‘reader, this’un. But ‘e cannae lie t’ye, Pelas.”

Pelas selected a dagger from his collection and began eyeing down the blade. “Lying and telling the truth are not mutually exclusive. The absence of one does not ensure the presence of the other.”

Tanis had to admit that was true—indeed, who knew it better than a truthreader? There were a dozen ways to avoid telling the whole truth without inserting a lie into the equation. That’s why a truthreader learned to make his questions so exact. Ask a question the right way, and there could be no ambiguity to the answer.

“Who sent you, lad?” Pelas asked again without lifting his gaze from inspecting his blade.

The
goracrosta
around Tanis’s wrist was growing colder, but with Pelas’s question, pain flared up his arms and even beyond, stealing his breath. “No one!” Tanis gasped as tears sprang unbidden to his eyes. 

“Suit yourself.”  Pelas murmured. He replaced the blade in its place and resumed his search for the perfect instrument.

“It’s true!” Tanis wailed. The cord was so cold it burned, and painful pin-like stabs flared into his chest, like the
goracrosta
was somehow attacking his heart, making every breath painful to manage.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Pelas muttered as he plucked another dagger from his table and turned to him. 

If ever Tanis needed courage, it was then. He tried scolding himself to be brave, but that just made him feel more desperate. He tried reminding himself that he’d chosen this path, but that just made him want to cry.
If only Phaedor was here,
the boy thought with a tremulous inhale, blinking back tears of pain,
he would know what to do!

While one part of him tried not to think about the zanthyr for fear of imagining the tirade he’d endure over his incalculable stupidity, another part wondered what
would
the zanthyr tell him if he were there? Tanis could almost hear Phaedor’s resonant voice answering his need.

‘This is a thing of magic they bind you with,’
he would say.
‘Its pain is mental, not physical. It attacks your mind, for this—not steel, not magic, not flesh—is your greatest weapon. Push the pain aside and focus instead on finding out what you can about this man, so that when you escape—’

Escape? It seemed ridiculous to think escape was possible, but dying while strung up like a slaughtered steer seemed even more incredible—too incredible for so young a boy with such innocent views of the world. 

Pelas approached holding his weapon of choice. It was a black-bladed
Merdanti
dagger, a type Tanis well knew, for he had a similar blade strapped beneath the sleeve of his jacket—for all the good it was doing him! Yet Phaedor’s imagined words had given him hope. He thought perhaps the pain
was
diminishing just a bit. That, or the terrible chill Pelas emitted was numbing all feeling. Tanis drew in a shuddering breath and encouraged his lungs to expand against the pain that clenched his chest. “That’s an interesting dagger you hold,” the lad braved then as boldly as he dared. “What careless zanthyr trusted you with his life?”