Baleful Signs (Dagger of the World Book 3) Read online

  Baleful Signs

  Dagger of the World, Book 3

  K. L. Reinhart

  Jada Fisher

  Copyright © 2021 K. L. Reinhart

  All Rights Reserved

  Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. All people, places, names, and events are products of the author’s imagination and / or used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Radovan Zivkovic

  Contents

  Before the Gate

  1. Night Visitors

  2. Old Enemies

  3. A Rose of Pain

  4. The Baleful Signs

  5. The Attack Dogs of the Ungol

  6. Return to Everdell

  7. The Warband of Dol-Markel

  8. At the Gate

  9. A Familiar Feeling

  10. Mother Istarion

  11. The Circle

  12. The Aesther

  13. A Line Against the Darkness

  14. The Crystal Forest

  15. The Ferryman

  16. The Kelpoi

  17. Take What You Came For

  18. Incursion

  Thank You

  Before the Gate

  The man trudged over the frozen ground, and the heavy stomp of his feet was the only movement that disturbed that Tartaruk hillside.

  “Almost . . . Almost there . . .” The figure’s voice was gruff and cracked and sounded more like the wind than a human voice.

  He wore heavy black robes which had gathered a dusting of snow on his long journey. Frost clung to the man’s wiry beard and clutched at his heavy eyebrows. Except for the sighing murmur of his voice and the slow movement of the man’s steps, he seemed like one of the winter-laden boulders, come to sudden, lurching life.

  But in the depths of his frosted hood, two bright eyes glittered, and his wheezing breath plumed in the northern air.

  “Almost there, little friend . . .” the man breathed once again, although who or what he was talking to was unknown. Maybe he just talked to himself, or the wind, or the cold ground underfoot.

  At his back, the heights of the Tartaruk mountains pierced into the skies, their tops already gathering the heavy, gray clouds of the coming storm. The man knew that he would be lucky to make it to his destination before the storm broke—but he didn’t mind. He was long past caring about the bite of hailstones that could draw blood or the blasts of icy wind that could freeze you in place if you let them.

  In truth, the man couldn’t feel much of anything anymore since he had started to cross the northern mountains. His body was no longer a thing that he inhabited—it was just another tool in his quest, a dreary automaton of nearly-dead flesh.

  All it had to do was get him to the Gate.

  The hillside that he trudged across was white with snow and speckled with the blacks and grays of boulders. Some of these rocks appeared rudely crafted with right angles and flat surfaces, the suggestions of carvings . . .

  Not that the man cared about that, either. He had spent a long time getting here, walking league by league up through the wild and dangerous northlands, after all. His feet had passed by many such strange things.

  He had stumbled and walked across roadways and along winding embankments. When he had met other travelers on the road, they had instinctively veered away from the man. He looked crazy or perhaps diseased.

  The man had crossed the kingdom of Brecha, ignoring and ignored by all except guard dogs, running out of crofts in the middle of the night to protest his passage.

  The man had ghosted through Everdell Forest without even Lord Alathaer of the Second Family of elves and his Brilliant Host knowing of his coming and going.

  He had trudged step by step with grim purpose, and it was as if some terrible fate had been laid upon him. No person disturbed him, and no creature dared cross his path. When he stopped at a stream to quench his thirst, the place would feel cold and unwanted for hours after he had left. Whatever enchantment had been laid on him was a powerful one, and it had protected the man thus far.

  So no, he was not concerned about the coming storm. His journey had been blessed so far—or cursed . . .

  “Hrk!” the man’s steady gait was disturbed suddenly as he seemed to stumble a little, his voice making a low groan of pain or discomfort.

  Something was fluttering and moving under the robes that covered his chest.

  “Easy . . . almost—there!” the man placed one gloved hand over the moving thing in the center of his chest and forced himself to take another step and another. Whatever strangeness sat in his core appeared to be eager for him to complete his journey.

  Then, a sound that came from the man’s chest itself. A chittering sort of hiss, like the voice of a baby bird.

  “Gah!” Once again, the man stumbled, this time falling to one knee in the stone, his back rising and falling with the effort of breathing.

  He carried a heavy load, and it was only getting heavier the closer he got.

  The thing under the man’s robes convulsed one more time, but the figure’s long determination and patience were suddenly rewarded as the clouds ahead of him lifted.

  He had been walking down the boulder-strewn hillside toward a sea of drifting whites and grays. The distant shadows of other Tartaruk mountains were vaguely discernible high ahead of him, but now, some trick of the coming storm worked to raise the wintry fogs like a blanket.

  And there, nestled near the end of a long gorge, the walls on either side hundreds of feet high, stood the Blood Gate.

  “Ah . . .” the man let out a contented sigh at the sight.

  The Blood Gate was almost the height of the gorge walls, easily a hundred feet high and forty feet wide. It was made of strange stone in various shades of red: ruddy ochre, crimson, plum, and dirty orange. The legends of this place stated that it was so-colored thanks to the lakes of blood that were spilled around it, either in battle or ritual.

  But it wasn’t just the color that was eerie.

  It was the fact that it hung in the air, unmoving and still, as if it had always been there. No snow or frost touched its red substance, and a rough circle of perfectly bare, black-and-gray rock stood underneath it. Even the weather didn’t dare disturb it.

  The Blood Gate was roughly shaped like a trilithon—two floating uprights with a third that formed its lintel. But that was where the similarity to any natural structure ended. Its stones were fabulously carved and shaped in bulbous and organic lines. In some places, the gigantic posts became so thin, it appeared there was no way it could support the weight above. The lintel appeared to have grown out of the posts around it, connected with stone sinew and tissues like the bones of an unlikely giant.

  The Blood Gate radiated strangeness, and it was a feeling that excited the thing in the figure’s chest.

  “Hgh!” The man gasped and coughed once more, holding his hand over his chest as the heavy black cloth fidgeted and moved obscenely.

  “Almost . . . there!” his voice strained. He forced himself up on one foot and then the other to trudge forward again, down the slope to the mouth of the gorge. The Tartaruk storm winds rose behind him, but the man was still unbothered by their icy wrath. He trusted that whatever had kept him safe this far would protect him now, as his journey drew to a close.

  The half-alive man and the thing he carried would make it to the Blood Gate. He would be the first human to step foot into its hallowed circle for over three generations.

  And when he was fin
ally there, he would open the Blood Gate . . .

  1

  Night Visitors

  Terak dreamed of fire and darkness, and rows upon rows of shining, sharp teeth—

  “Ugh!” the elf gasped as he jolted upright in bed. He could tell that it was still night-time from the dark of his window. The only illumination in his small cell in the upper attics of the Black Keep came from the candle stub in the lantern by his bed. It had barely burned down at all.

  But Terak wasn’t completely alone.

  “Ratachook! Ratachook!” The little creature that Father Jacques kept as a pet suddenly burst from under the blankets at the foot of the bed, leaping and scampering in agitated circles.

  “Frebius?” The elf groaned and rubbed his eyes. Frebius was a strange little beast, something akin to a shrew or a rat, with a long snout and a deep brindle fur. Apart from its current state of excitement, what was strange about the thing was its large emerald eyes that appeared out of place on its small head.

  Something was up, though, as Frebius wasn’t usually this wound up over anything but food.

  “I guess I know why I was dreaming about teeth—” Terak reached down to scoop the creature up, but the creature turned fast and bit him hard on the end of one of his long fingers.

  “Ow! Hey—what did you do that for?” Terak sucked his finger and tasted blood. He was used to Frebius nipping his pointed ears and even nibbling on the ends of his fingers or toes in the morning—but it had never drawn blood before. Terak inspected the two small puncture wounds on his index finger, also seeing the heavy red scar across the back of his knuckles from one of his many fights in the service of the Enclave. The creature uttered a new sound.

  It was a low, warning chitter of a growl. Frebius backed to the end of the bed, its green eyes now slits of anger.

  “Frebius, I don’t understand . . .” Terak murmured. Just then, he heard a smash from beyond the door to his room. It came from the workshop space where Terak learned his trade.

  And he heard a hiss.

  It was an unmistakable sound, and one that the only elf in the Black Keep knew well.

  That is the sound of the Mordhuk, he thought, his body flushing with energy and panic.

  Novitiate Terak had a strange relationship with the living statue called the Mordhuk. Though he would never venture so far as to say that he had any sort of relationship with it at all.

  The Mordhuk was a bound spirit of the Ungol, placed in a statue in the Loranthian Shrine to protect the Scroll which Terak had retrieved for his master, Father Jacques. Jacques was the Chief of the secretive Enclave-External. He was one of a few Chiefs of the black-robed Brothers, Sisters, Fathers, and Journeymen of the order, including the Chief Martial, Arcanum, and Hospitality.

  But the Chief External was the only one without any offices, studies, or official recognition. All of his work was carried out in secret for the good of the order, both at the Black Keep and abroad.

  Which was why the workshops that Terak called his domain were completely unknown to any but the underground cabal of the Enclave-External.

  “Yet somehow, the Mordhuk found me,” he whispered. As soon as his words split the silence, the hissing grew louder, followed by another crash of jars and tumbling objects.

  “Ratachook! Ratachook!” The other creature in Terak’s vicinity chittered warningly, before leaping off the bed and into the shadows of the room.

  The Mordhuk makes me feel the same way . . . Terak thought, easing himself out of bed and reaching for his long-bladed dagger.

  Terak knew that the blade wouldn’t stand a chance against the living statue. Its giant, almost dog-like body was flushed with life, but nevertheless as hard as the black rocks of the Tartaruk themselves. Its teeth were as long as Terak’s fingers and around its head was be a mane of writhing, twitching barbed tentacles.

  But it hasn’t killed me yet, Terak thought optimistically as he crept toward the door. He could see the long, silver-white scar across his belly where he had almost been disemboweled by a maddened Enclave novitiate. The Mordhuk had healed his wound by licking it with its long, forked tongue.

  Terak paused, his hand raised to open the latch on his door. He knew that he shared some sort of bond with the evil thing out there, but he did not know what sort of bond it was. Maybe the Mordhuk had finally come to eat him? This could be one of the strange practices of the Ungol. Terak wondered if he should shout and call for aid. Would anyone hear him?

  Probably not. The elf squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and set his fingers to the door—

  Wham-wham-wham! The door juddered on the frame as the evil spirit on the other side scratched it.

  “Okay, easy . . .” Terak whispered as much to his own rapidly beating heart as to the thing outside. It won’t kill me. It healed me. It saved my life several times.

  The elf swallowed nervously, strengthened his grip on the long dagger—and opened the door.

  “Hskr!” The Mordhuk filled the doorway, opening its snout to snarl with rows upon rows of shining, sharp teeth.

  First Moon! Terak staggered back into his bedroom, bringing the blade up in front of him—

  The Mordhuk hesitated, panting heavily in his doorway, eyeing him with its black and glittering eyes.

  Around it, Terak could see the trail of destruction it had already wrought. One half of an entire table had been cleared of jars, books, tools, and utensils, and the smaller table by the seating chairs had been smashed. Terak saw the route the creature must have taken to get to his suite of rooms, as one of the high windows was smashed.

  But it could never fit through that gap! A small, observant part of Terak’s mind thought as the rest of him tried to gauge what the thing could want.

  The creature wasn’t about to tell him, however. It turned with a springing jump to launch itself onto the table under the window. It growled and shook, whipping its head back and forth.

  “What are you doing!?” Terak whispered.

  There was a horrible crunching noise, and the thing’s ribcage appeared to cave in. And then something painful and awful happened to its hips and leg joints. Even its head became emaciated.

  The Mordhuk gave one harrowing look back at Terak before jumping to scramble to the window, its claws catching it easily. It kicked and squirmed its way through.

  Oh. Terak felt vaguely disgusted by the whole sight. “That’s how you got through, I guess . . .”

  The elf stood still for a long moment, looking at his trashed workshop and wondering what under the two moons all that had been about. Then he heard a muffled scrambling and scraping noise from the other side of the wall. Terak got the strange impression that the Mordhuk wanted him to follow it.

  Without really knowing why—other than that this demon had saved his life more than once—Terak grabbed his cloak and his utility belt, before leaping upon the table to follow his monstrous guide.

  2

  Old Enemies

  The night air that far north was brisk and chill, and Terak found his hands and knees slipping. A rim of ice had already laid itself over the stone slates of the Main Banquet Hall. His workshop window opened out into a small annex of peaked rooftops in the center of the Black Keep. All around him stood the complicated halls, towers, walls, and courtyards of his austere home.

  Right then, however, Terak was more concerned with not slipping as he lay spread-eagled on the roof—and still felt himself starting to slide.

  “No-no-no!” His fine elvish hands scrabbled for purchase, but the ice was thick, and the slates were large and flat. He moved inexorably backward—

  Until suddenly—he wasn’t. Something very heavy and very strong slapped the center of his back, pinning him to the slates.

  Terak looked up at the Mordhuk, with its paw pressing him down as it stood on the roof. It balanced as easily as if this were its natural habitat and let out a low, rattling hiss from its throat. That did not sound good, and Terak almost believed that the thing was going to e
at him—until he realized that the creature’s hissing snout was raised to look over his shoulder.

  To the distant glow on the horizon.

  Immediately, Terak was transported back to the sight of the kingdom of Brecha’s air galleon, The Lady of the North, when it had broken through the stormy skies above the Black Keep. That had been a long summer ago. Had they come back?

  No, that glow is . . . Terak felt the back of his jaw ache with the bone-shiver that he always got around magic. It wasn’t the lantern-lights of the air galleon. For a start, it was purple and orange, with hints of green.

  And it’s a long, long way off, Terak saw. It had to be through the Darkaan Gap, the only pass through the Tartaruk Mountains for a week’s travel either east or west.

  “Is that what you brought me to see? Is that why you came for me?” Terak murmured as the weight lifted from his back, and his feet slid to gently hit the iron gutter.

  “Hssseee . . .” The Mordhuk raised itself up on its back legs and made a strange, high-pitched keening noise. Terak saw it rock slightly from side to side, almost as if it were calling to the glow.

  I don’t like this . . . Terak was thinking, just as there was a new sound on the wind. A rising keen, as if something was answering the Mordhuk’s call.

  “I think it’s about time we talked,” Terak murmured distractedly to the Mordhuk. The sensation in his bones like someone was scratching them with sharp fingernails increased in time with the wind’s rising howl.