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

  There was a subdued crunch, and the ferry-beast awkwardly stumbled backward. The pole in his too-pale hands was now barely longer than his grip. Its end was splintered, as if something with a very large mouth had bitten it in two.

  Water plumed over the boat, seemingly from all sides, as whatever it was that had attacked them finally showed itself. Terak saw water sparkling off the shadows in the mist—shadows that flashed down, revealing themselves to be fattened, rubbery tentacles of a sickly purple-gray hue.

  “Rargh!” Terak swiped with the short sword at the first tentacle that thrashed down from above them. The elf felt his blade bite flesh. A muffled squeal came from somewhere beneath them as the tentacle limb recoiled, dripping a green-black ichor from where Terak had almost severed it in two.

  Slap! But that had only been just one of the many tentacles that sought to overpower their boat. Terak felt the wet slap of something against his leg, and he was thrown to the floor of the leaf-craft with a painful thud as the tentacle latched onto his calf and started pulling.

  “Agh!” Terak spun over, lashing down with the blade at the pulsating limb to score another deep cut. But the beast was still dragging him toward the boat’s edge, dragging one leg over the side as the leaf-craft rocked disturbingly down toward the water.

  “Die, damn you!” Terak slashed at the thing with a renewed fury, sending up spurts of the thing’s ichor. Another squeal and the tentacle let go and shot backwards into the water.

  “Grk!” But the ferry-beast was in trouble, as the leaf-craft rocked and swayed. Terak scrambled to all fours, He saw that a much larger tentacle had wrapped itself completely around the black robes of the ferry-beast’s thin ribcage and had hauled it bodily into the air above the boat. The ferry-beast struggled, beating ineffectually at the tentacle that was wider and stronger than it was.

  “You shouldn’t. BE HERE!” A slithering voice shrieked out of the lake’s mists, as a shadow resolved itself.

  Terak might have expected a strange, grotesque alien-like face of a fish or crustacean, but instead what he saw in command of the tentacles was a woman. She might have even been considered a beautiful woman, were it not for the fact that her lower half dissolved into a mess of boiling, thrashing, and rearing tentacles.

  The mer-creature was almost naked, apart from a strange harness-garter that looked to be made out of lake-weed or kelp. Her skin was of the same sickly purple-gray as her tentacles, and her hair was long and soaked, clinging to her form like a flimsy shift.

  The mer-woman rose her hands toward the captured ferry-beast, and in response the tentacle drew the beleaguered creature toward her.

  “My Lake. MIIINE!” The mer-creature roared. Terak heard a terrible cracking sound as the tentacle holding the ferry-beast’s chest started to tighten.

  Terak tensed, hissing like a cat. The other tentacles attacking the leaf craft had pulled back, waving in the air or rolling in the waves as if the mer-creature’s attention was only concerned with the crimes of the ferry-beast she held.

  Terak could have fled. He could have dived into the water and swam for the safety of the Crystal Forest. The shore wasn’t so far away, after all, and the mer-creature appeared to be consumed with her hatred.

  But Terak couldn’t. Maybe it was the fact that the ferry-beast had unknowingly given him back his most-secret memories, the image of his own mother. Or maybe it was just that the null was hurt and frustrated, and his own feelings of savage rage were proving too difficult to control, too—

  But Terak sprang into action with all of the years of skill and training of both the Chief Martial of the Enclave and the Chief External of the more secretive Enclave-External.

  He jumped, one soft-soled foot hitting the edge of the rocking leaf-craft. It dropped toward the water’s edge without the ferry-beast to hold her steady . . .

  Terak’s next leaping stride took him clear over the water. One foot landed on the twisting roll of a tentacle, which shivered and retracted into the water just as he kicked off, leaping again to the next tentacle-limb.

  His foot slipped on the rubbery flesh, and this time the tentacle reared up out of the water in alarm, throwing him to one side.

  “Urk!” Terak reached out and caught the tip of the rising tentacle in his gloved hands, using it like the practice bars in the Enclave Martial Halls. He swung himself upwards and let go before the tentacle could fold itself around his arm.

  Terak saw the head of the mer-creature spin toward him in alarm, as if she was seeing him for the first time. The elf snarled with a feral rage, falling against her body as he plunged his short sword into her side—

  “Skreeeee!” Green-black ichor spurted up all around Terak as the mer-creature screamed with a weirdly undulating cry. Terak felt a clawed hand scratch across his face as the mer-creature fell backwards into the water, flinging Terak wide as she did so.

  “Aii!” Terak shouted in alarm as he spun and tumbled through the air, before smacking against the lake surface like a dropped cannonball and dropping below the water.

  Gah! Terak knew to keep his mouth shut, even as he writhed and twisted in the inky black. He was unsure which way was up, and the water was freezing.

  But Terak the elf was familiar with black waters. A part of their training in the Enclave had been to race across the frozen Tartaruk slopes with hailstones chasing at their heels before diving into Mourn Lake. There, they swam as hard and fast as they could under the ice to the prepared exit-point on the far side. The ice had been so thick on some days that the water had been as dark as night, and the only guide would be the burning feeling in Terak’s chest as he fought for air.

  “Pbhuh!” The elf broke from the surface of the lake with a sudden gasp for air, and turned around and around, treading water as he did so. The lake was still in an uproar of turbulent waters, and the leaf-craft was upturned on its side. Terak could not see any sign of the mer-creature. He wondered if he had killed her—or it— but knew that he couldn’t rely on luck.

  You rely on Pain. He remembered the words of the Book of Corrections. Pain teaches. Pain guides.

  And right now, the pain and the ache in his legs told him that he would be in an awful lot more pain if he didn’t get out of the water. He was no good as a fighter in the middle of a lake, but he would be good with his feet on dry land.

  Terak swam, expecting the waters to boil and burst with tentacles all around him at any moment, but they didn’t. He reached the slabs of mossy-covered rocks and dragged himself up over them, heedless of the painful bangs and scrapes to his knees and elbows.

  The elf didn’t stop until he had managed to haul himself under the eaves of the nearest crystal-veined tree. He thumped his back to it, and drew one of the smaller knives from his belt, holding it in front of him.

  But the lake was at once almost silent, save for the lapping of the waves against the rocks. The upturned leaf-craft was slowly spinning its way toward the shore, turning around and around in un-directed circles as it did so.

  And there, ebbing at the water’s edge, was the bedraggled body of the ferry-beast, floating in the shallows.

  “No!” Terak found a new burst of energy as he dove toward the body, splashing into the shallows to grab the creature and heave it to the safety of solid land. Terak was surprised at how incredibly light the seven-foot tall form of the antlered ferry-beast was, and how frail and bony its flesh felt beneath the sodden black robes.

  “Gruhk . . .” It made a wheezing, hissing sound as Terak settled it against the bowl of the nearest crystal tree.

  “I have no idea how you are made,” Terak muttered under his breath, “but I will do my best . . .” Terak tried to remember the Chief Martial’s advice for broken ribs and bones.

  “Splint or wrap what you can. Unless you have healing magic or potions, then only rest and sustenance will cure it . . .”

  “Ixcht!” Terak swore. There was next to nothing that he could do. He had one small roll of bandages and pins, but nothing els
e. No healing magic—Because I’m a null. And no matter whatever importance Mother Istarion had placed on being a null, right now, Terak would have traded it to be able to have some healing magic of his own.

  “I’m going to bandage your ribs,” Terak said, tearing the roll of soft linen wrapping from his utility harness. He found it sodden and bedraggled, but still strong. “It’ll hold your bones together until they reknit . . .”

  The Ferry-beast raised a shaking, white-fingered hand and laid it slowly and seriously over Terak’s own, pushing the bandages away.

  The creature’s meaning was clear.

  “No, you don’t understand. You helped me. I have to help you . . .” Terak insisted, but this time the antlered skull of the ferry-beast managed to shake its head once, in apparent disagreement.

  “Cross,” the ferry-beast’s skull rested back against the tree. Terak heard a long, rattling sigh.

  “Oh.” Terak could tell from the resignation emanating from the creature that it was not talking about crossing the lake once more, but instead a much more permanent and final journey. The elf eased back in his crouch and thought that the ferry-beast had exhaled its last breath, when it suddenly jerked its antlered head toward him., A croaking whisper emerged from the bone caverns of the thing’s jaws.

  “Payment,” it said, and raised its frail white-fleshed hand toward Terak’s forehead. The elf let it touch the center of his forehead, and once again felt the cold and the slight buzz as another memory blossomed from the depths of the elf’s mind . . .

  Once again, Terak was thrust into a realm of dreamy, almost-recognition. It was dark where he was, but it wasn’t a threatening dark, and he did not feel scared. Instead, he felt warm, safe.

  There was a scent to the air that even as a babe, his finely tuned elvish senses picked up. It was something sweet and light, like meadowsweet and lavender, but shot through with a sharper note, like pine.

  I know that scent, Terak thought. He knew it on multiple levels. It was the scent of Everdell Forest, and the reason why the eaves of that great wood had felt so familiar to him as soon as he had stepped into it.

  But there was a deeper resonance there too, wasn’t there–it was the scent of his home. His real home, in the township of the Second Family.

  “Terak Vardalion,” his elf ears heard a contented woman’s voice say.

  Mother. The knowledge was imprinted deep into his mind as surely as his flesh hid his bones. A certainty that his whole being was built out of, and around.

  A shadow moved toward him and, although Terak’s eyes hadn’t worked out how to shape faces and forms, he still knew that the pale blob would be the soft skin of his mother, and the black waterfall would be her hair. She was cooing at him in her singsong, lark’s tongue. Terak had never felt so at peace.

  “Terak Var,” said a new voice, an austere voice, and Terak’s vision swam with a flinch of shadow, as worry clouded his as-yet un-formed senses.

  Lord Alathaer. Terak’s more modern self recognized the voice.

  “What!?” His mother’s shock and anger pooled through the elven babe. and Terak cried out at the sudden shock and worry that he felt in sympathy with his mother. He had never known before how deeply a child was interwoven into their mother, but now he wondered if this, too, was some sort of magic.

  “His name will be Terak Var—or Terak the Dagger, in Old High Elvish,” the Lord of the Second Family and the Brilliant Host said. His tone was grim.

  “I—I’m sorry, my Lord, but I think that you misheard me. I proclaimed his name as Vardalion, which means—” His mother sounded shocked and panicked, even a little outraged at this imposition by the elvish lord.

  “—the brightest edge of the dawn.” This time a third voice joined the conversation, and it was the musical chimes that Terak had heard only recently: Mother Istarion. “Yes, Austiel, we know what Vardalion means in the Old Tongues.”

  “Mother Istarion!” Terak could feel his mother—Austiel! My mother’s name is Austiel!—react with shock at the new arrival. “I was not aware that you would be coming to my Naming Day. I would have prepared, had I known . . .”

  “Pfft.” Mother Istarion’s voice took on a gentler, kinder tone of one who had overseen many hundreds, if not thousands, of young elvish lives into the world. “You are still only one moon past the birth, Austiel. I think we can forgive you a little housekeeping.”

  Austiel—my mother!—murmured her thanks, but there was still an undercurrent of worry emanating from the warm, meadowsweet and lavender shape that held Terak.

  “As you know, Austiel,” Mother Istarion’s voice took on a more serious tone, “it is only in the modern age that we of the Second Family have relaxed the Old Ways. It used to be customary to have the name agreed and chosen in court with the elders of the Family for any new elvish life.”

  “But—but Mother Istarion! No elf has had to ask permission to name for a generation!” His mother sounded confused, even a little scared. Terak felt his baby-self start to cry in sympathy.

  “Maybe the Old Ways are making a come-back,” Lord Alathaer said seriously. “The child’s name shall be Terak Var.”

  “Terak Dagger.” His mother sounded appalled. “What sort of name is that to bestow on a child? Forgive me if I speak out of turn, Mother Istarion, but this is a time of peace. I cannot have my boy growing up to be a weapon!”

  “The name and the child are the same, just as they have always been.” Mother Istarion appeared to be quoting some form of elvish scripture that Terak had never heard of.

  “Which is why I want Terak to be the brightest edge of the dawn, a beacon of joy and hope—” His mother continued to argue, but a weary sigh from Mother Istarion silenced her.

  “If we lived in a different age fifty years from now perhaps, then I could agree to Terak Vardalion,” Mother Istarion said. “But we do not.” The older matriarch fell silent for a pause. “If any of us are even alive in fifty years, that is . . .”

  “What under the Moons do you mean?” his mother breathed, a creeping horror spreading from her breast and into Terak’s own, quieting his sobs. A fear that no new-born babe should ever experience was placed into his marrow.

  “This is not an age of new dawns, Austiel. This is an age of challenge. You will understand when you are older.”

  She is talking about the cycle of the Blood Gate, isn’t she? Terak remembered the explanations that Father Jacques had given him, that the three worlds of the Midhara, the Ungol, and the Aesther—existed in a complicated balance, perennially drawing closer and farther apart and closer again. Every few hundred years a new “season” was entered into, although no one had been able to accurately predict when the shift occurred or what might trigger it.

  And our season is the imminent opening of the Blood Gate itself. Terak knew this was when the Ungol drew as close as it ever could to his world of Midhara, and a new tide of monsters and nightmare-gods attempted to take it over.

  “But take heart, Austiel: we will always have need of hope. And a dagger can bring hope in times such as these as surely as it can deliver death,” Mother Istarion continued.

  “I still don’t understand, Mother—” Austiel continued to attempt to argue with the older woman. There was a sharp knock against a floor, or a table or a wall, and Terak felt his mother fall silent.

  “Sometimes it is not for us to understand, Austiel. But know this. That babe that you have borne in your body, that child that you have birthed with your own hands and whom you now carry—that child will be a dagger. The Dagger. The Dagger of the World that has been foretold.”

  “What are you talking about!?” his mother whispered in morbid panic.

  “It would be unwise for me to say more, but as you are the child’s blood-kin, you have a right to know this.” Terak listened, rapt in amazement and anger at Mother Istarion’s words that he had heard and forgotten, so long ago.

  “There are still scriptures left from the First Family and their time of Empires.
” Her voice grew dark and serious.

  The First Family were the civilization of elvish-sorcerers, Terak knew. The ones who created an empire—and created the Blood Gate itself.

  “They are forbidden, of course, but some of us Mothers and Elders have access to them. We seek to study the past, so as to avoid its mistakes,” the Mother said gravely. “And all of the portents and signs, all of the ciphers and calendars pointed to the fact of your child’s birth, in this time, one moon ago—”

  “Impossible!” Terak heard his own mother say, but Istarion was insistent.

  “To the very watch and hour of the First Moon in which your child was birthed!” Istarion said urgently, before taking a calming breath. “Terak will be one known as the Dagger of the World, if he survives. And his fate is to know only pain in this life.”

  “No!” his mother shouted. Terak felt the ripple of his mother’s fear and dread wash over him and through him. It carried the modern memory-self of Terak away from the babe that he was, flinging him, gasping, onto the shores of the lake in the Crystal Forest, where he opened his eyes to find that he hadn’t moved an inch.

  There was a soft thump as the ferry-beast’s too-pale hand slumped onto the black robes of its crushed chest. The Ferry-beast was dead, and Terak was left alone in the strange, dangerous realm of the Aesther, unsure if what the ferry-beast had given him was a gift that he should be thankful for after all . . .

  17

  Take What You Came For

  Terak’s face was cast with the bluish umbral glow of the crystal trees as he picked his way between them. A deep silence blanketed this part of the forest, save for the soft tread and crackle of his feet on the forest floor.

  But, as anxious as Terak was about what the Aesther might throw at him next, his heart still rattled with the memories that the ferry-beast had awoken in him.

  I was born to be a dagger . . . His head spun. Both the Second Family and the Enclave knew that I was a null. In fact, they had always known. But what did it mean? His chest felt tight and panicked, as if he had discovered that his whole life had been a lie.