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

  No, not a lie, Terak considered. Expected. The people that he had spent years around had known what he was.

  Thock. Terak’s foot hit something solid, which made a sharp sound instead of the soft crackle and sigh of moss and leaf-litter. Looking down, he saw that there was a plate of . . . glass? No, crystal. On the floor, oddly rounded. He stepped around it to see that his tread hadn’t cracked it at all. It looked like a drop of frozen water, edged with the stuff of the forest.

  Terak raised his eyes to see that there was another one, between the roots of the trees, and then another, and another a little further away.

  Like a path, Terak thought as he peered into the gloom of the forest.

  And there, in the distance, he saw a soft, hazy yellow glow.

  The Demiene Flowers have yellow blooms, he thought, picking up his feet to jog forward—

  “Elf.” A voice stopped him in his tracks, as something moved out of the foliage, lowering itself in front of him.

  It was a person, Terak saw, but one that didn’t belong to any race that Terak had ever heard of or seen described in any bestiary. She wasn’t tall, for it was a woman who descended out of the canopy. She stood on one of the crystal teardrop “plates” and wore a silvered tunic and robes. There was something elfish about the fineness of her features, but that is where the similarity ended. Her head was subtly elongated and spilled platinum-silver hair. On her brow of white skin was a single drop of silver, as if a part of her skin itself.

  And her eyes were a total jet black.

  Terak paused, his small knife in his hands. He had every reason to believe that anything he met in the Crystal Forest could be a danger, as it had shown so far.

  The plate of crystal that the woman stood upon settled to the ground, but the woman did not move from it. Instead, she turned her head slowly to one side, to look at him bird-like, out of one eye.

  “No one enters the Crystal Forest without wanting something. What is it that you want?” she said.

  Terak breathed for a moment, sensing the challenge in the question. His training in the Enclave-External had taught him to always dissemble, always misdirect from his real work.

  But that doesn’t seem to have gotten me anywhere so far, has it? He considered. And time was running out. Reticula might already be . . .

  No. Terak pushed that thought down.

  “I came to pick the Demiene Flowers,” he said simply. “My friend is very ill, and only the Flower will save her.”

  “Her?” The woman, who could have been young or old—it was impossible for Terak to tell—gave a small half-smile. “Only fools and lovers come to the Crystal Forest,” she observed, making Terak blush furiously.

  “No—it’s not like that!” he said hotly. He didn’t love Reticula. She was his friend.

  As if the strange woman could sense his thoughts, she raised one amused eyebrow, but did not comment. “The Flowers are beyond this place, but there will be a cost.”

  “Anything,” Terak said immediately.

  The woman stepped forward silently, her feet hitting the next plate of teardrop crystal. “You shouldn’t be so eager to give away what you have, elf,” she said with an even greater tone of amusement.

  “My friend is dying,” Terak answered simply, still not moving as the woman stepped again toward him, only using the crystal plates as she did so. Terak watched her come closer until only one of the silver plates separated them. His agitation grew.

  “I have no time for riddles and games! What is the cost? Tell me, and if I can pay it now, I will . . .”

  “Hold out your hand,” the woman said, gesturing for him to do so.

  In confusion, Terak did so, as his other hand tightened on the small dagger at his side. If she does anything—he thought. If she attacked him, he was already thinking of a thousand ways in which to counter.

  “The cost is simple,” the woman said in her musical tone. “You will do something for me in your world. A task.” She reached up to lightly touch the silver gem on her head, and there was a flashing glow that transmitted itself to her finger.

  “A task?” Terak’s suspicions raised. “What task? What under the Moon could one as powerful as you need me to do that you cannot do yourself?” he said. The woman lowered her glowing finger to Terak’s outstretched palm.

  “You will right a wrong that has been centuries in the making.” The strange woman paused. “You will kill someone for me.”

  “Who?” Terak snatched his hand away. He was no mercenary. He was no hired killer, although even he was aware that the skills that the Enclave-External had trained him in equipped him to perform the task.

  “I will tell you when the time is right. For now, all you have to do is to agree, and then you can save your lover,” the fey woman said, gesturing for him to take off his glove and offer his hand once again.

  Terak felt his lips pull into a snarl. He didn’t like this. It felt wrong. Just like the rest of the Aesther, it felt dangerous and unpredictable.

  But Reticula . . . he argued with himself.

  “Do they deserve it?” he snapped at the woman.

  “They always do,” she said mysteriously, holding the glowing light in the air between them as she waited for Terak to come to his decision.

  Reticula, the elf thought. And how different, really, would taking this task be from any of the others that Father Jacques has charged me with? he debated furiously. Isn’t it, after all, what everyone had always expected of him? Had wanted for him right from the very start?

  To be a dagger, he remembered. To be a weapon. But the thoughts brought him no solace. Instead, he felt a rising tide of despair in his breast. Was this really all that he was to be? Was there no other path for him other than the Path of Pain?

  “Your answer, elf,” the woman said coldly.

  Terak screwed his eyes shut and thought of Reticula, lying somewhere with that black rose of poison spreading over her body. He nodded and tore off his glove to hold out his palm.

  “Ach!” There was a blinding flash of light when the mysterious woman lightly tapped his hand. Terak stumbled back as it felt like she had dropped a hot coal into his hand. He opened his hand gingerly to see that there was a large waxy burn in the center of his palm—but it was colored silver.

  “What is this? What does it mean?” Terak breathed through the pain as he had been taught, telling himself that it was only pain, only another sensation like hunger or tiredness or joy. It faded to an angry mumble in the back of his mind.

  “I have placed a geas upon you. You now have an oath to keep to me: Hyxalion of the Aesther.”

  “Hyxalion,” Terak repeated the name heavily. Not a name that he had ever heard of. The woman was still looking at him expectantly, as if her name should have provoked fear or awe in the listener, but Terak merely shook his head irritably. “Fine. Now, the Flowers?”

  Hyxalion gave a small nod over her shoulder.

  “Take what you came for, elf,” she said. Terak slowly edged around her, careful not to step on any of the crystal plates. He could feel Hyxalion’s eyes on him as he moved and kept her in his peripheral vision. He got to where he thought was a safe distance beyond her and called back to the motionless creature.

  “Don’t you want to know my name? Who you are hiring?” he said.

  At this, the woman laughed, and it made a sound like tinkling glass. “I do not need to, elf. I have never needed to,” she said with another amused chuckle, and slowly the crystal plate once again rose into the air, to disappear between the canopy of trees.

  “Well, that was weird . . .” Terak grumbled, looking down at the silver mark on his hand before shaking his head at the strangeness of this place. He could always decide whether he was actually going to go through with what she wanted when he was back home and safe in the Midhara.

  And when Reticula is healed. He started to jog forward, seeing the yellow glow resolve itself ahead of him. There was a small clearing in the forest. Clustered at the base o
f the trees were vine-like plants slowly climbing the trunks. Their blossoms were the large, yellow-petalled Demiene Flowers.

  I’ve found them! Not wasting any time, he snipped several large blooms from their stalks. He carefully pushed them under his jerkin and tunic, where he could feel their gossamer-soft petals touching his skin. A smell like rose and frankincense rose up to meet him, and it brought with it a heady feeling of midsummer.

  Terak breathed a sigh of relief. He had done it. Finally, he had done it—

  Just as the ground started to shake, and the crystal-rock veins of the trees flashed and pulsed in alarm.

  18

  Incursion

  The Crystal Forest shook around Terak as if the very trees were angry at what he had done. But I had an agreement! Terak thought in anger and alarm. Or had that, too, been a trap?

  But no, this appeared to be something different. Something far bigger than just his actions. For the first time since he had been here, Terak could feel a rising breeze in the trees, quickly becoming a gale. He saw the limbs start to thrash. As they waved, they revealed the sky far above—

  They also revealed a spreading glow over the twilight sky. It was a sky that should be glittering with strange stars. But now a deep purple-and-red bruise was spilling over the dome of heaven, like the glare from a new-born sun.

  It was a light that Terak had seen before. It was exactly the same as the baleful light that had spread out across the north of the Tartaruk Mountains.

  The Ungol-light! Terak thought. But what was it doing here?

  Accompanying the rising storm came the sound of buzzing and thumping feet, as Terak started to see shapes moving across his vision, deeper in the forest beyond. The denizens of the Crystal Forest appeared to be fleeing from the direction of the Ungol-light.

  Terak saw fast-moving clouds of the same aggregate-imp creatures that he had fought before, interspersed with larger, stranger creatures. Some were of a size with Ghrike, white or pearly-skinned, with long limbs and flattened heads. Other creatures were far smaller. Terak saw a dizzying array of creatures with wings or tails, fur or feathers, scampering and flying away in sheer terror at what was coming.

  Boom! A sudden peal of thunder from the skies shook the ground and trees alike, even though there were no clouds and no rain.

  And Terak saw the panicked herds startle and veer away from the noise. And head straight toward him!

  “Ixcht!” Terak swore, as he hurriedly patted his chest to find the Call-shell that Mother Istarion had given him. He drew it out to blow three loud and clear blasts—

  And nothing happened.

  “What the—” Terak looked at the Call-shell in frustration, just as the first wave of creatures hit him.

  “Urgh!” Terak was flung from his feet as one of the larger, troll-like creatures barged him to one side. He rolled over the tree roots. A giant four-toed foot slammed into the ground as some other creature bounded past him, and he swerved just in time.

  “Dammit!” He wedged himself against a tree as the clearing broke and heaved with the passage of panicked creatures. The air was filled with the roar of the wind, the thunder of their feet, and the buzzing of the clouds of imps. The only benefit to this state of alarm was the fact that nothing was busy trying to kill him.

  In fact, it looked as though everything around him was hell-bent on getting as far from the Ungol-light as possible.

  BOOM! The ground shook with another roar of noise, but it was certainly no peal of thunder. Terak risked flattening himself to the tree and peering around the edge—

  To see that, in the direction of the heavy sounds there was rising a cloud of dark smoke and debris, hundreds of feet above the forest canopy.

  It’s like some giant cannon-shot, Terak thought. Then he saw what it really was that the inhabitants of the Crystal Forest were running from.

  Coming from the direction of the booming sounds, there approached a haze of scarlet red between the trees. And coming with it was the scent of burning.

  “Fire,” Terak whispered in horror, seeing the flames flicker from tree to tree, jumping and racing along the branches and boughs above the forest floor. Is someone attacking the Crystal Forest? he thought.

  Or was someone attacking the Aesther itself?

  Terak fumbled for the Call-shell again, raising it to his lips—Why hasn’t Mother Istarion brought me back home yet?—He had the flowers, and he had sent the signal.

  And then the Call-shell was flung from his hand as shell, elf, and tree, were hit by the stumbling form of one of the Aesther troll-beings.

  No! Terak rolled just in time to avoid the crash of the tree and the tangling limbs of the Aesther troll. All around him was chaos as he spun himself to a crouch.

  Where is the Call-shell!? He scanned the ground, dodging and ducking as more of the creatures ran past him. The smell of fire was strong now and filled his nostrils. The air hazed with gray smoke—

  There! He saw where the Call-shell sat, exposed on a patch of moss of the clearing as creatures of all types charged past. Terak had a moment’s window, and he dove for it, his silver-marked hand reaching out to almost touch his means home—

  Smash. The Call-shell was shattered into a hundred pieces by the stamp of a strange, long-legged gazelle type creature as it ran past.

  “No! No!” Terak had to roll again to avoid more of the Aesther deer-things. His movements made him look behind, where the scarlet haze of the forest fire had been transformed into the heavy wall of approaching flame.

  “Elf.” A voice hissed in alarm at him. Terak blinked and looked up to see that it was the Aesther fey woman, Hyxalion. She was swaying to one side as she crouched on her floating crystal plate, narrowly avoiding first one beast and then the other.

  “You cannot kill who I need you to kill if you are dead,” she said in an annoyed snap, and reached down with her hand.

  “I can’t leave. I’m stuck here,” Terak said as he jumped up to grab the fey’s hand with his silvered one. He imagined that she would carry him higher into the canopy or further away from the forest.

  But Hyxalion didn’t. As soon as the Aesther woman touched Terak’s own silver-marked hand, there was another blinding flash that was so bright and a noise that was so deafening that instantly everything went white and silent.

  Silent except for the whispered words of Hyxalion, growing dimmer with every syllable.

  “The Ungol is firing on the Aesther. You must get back and kill the elf Istarion to save us all!”

  Terak tumbled and fell once again through the pearly-gray light. All sound, sight, and sensation of the Crystal Forest had vanished, to be replaced by the dizzying, frantic tumbling of the rift between the three worlds.

  But Terak’s heart was pounding, and his thoughts were racing. What did Hyxalion mean, kill Mother Istarion!? He was confused, frantic. He couldn’t do that. He wouldn’t do that.

  The elf tumbled just as he had before, and his skin once again started to feel like it was on fire. Whatever protective properties that the potion that Mother Istarion had told him to put on—the Mother Istarion that he was supposed to assassinate—the potion had clearly outworn its use.

  Terak gritted his teeth and hissed into the pain as it tore at him. It was only pain, after all. It was only another sensation—

  He tried to tell himself this, but it took every ounce of his training not to scream as he fell. Then red light was blossoming around him—just like before.

  The red light of the Ungol? he thought in horror as once again he saw shadows and shapes in the glare: black-peaked mountains, plumes of fire. Had Hyxalion thrown him into the Ungol realm directly?

  No. The red light started to fade into opalescence once again. Terak felt the nausea of his journey rising in him as his frantic spinning grew faster, and faster, and faster—

  Thump. Until he landed.

  Terak blinked his eyes open, feeling his body ache as if he had been through two consecutive training sessions with the
Chief Martial himself. He was alive, and he was lying on the wooden floor of the ritual room of the Second Family’s township. He was not alone.

  “Mother Istarion?” he coughed and whispered, seeing the elvish matriarch slumped against the far wall of the room. Her skin looked almost gray, and there were wrinkles about her eyes.

  You have to kill her, Terak remembered. But he pushed the thought—the oath—away fiercely. It didn’t look as though she would last long anyway.

  “Mother?” he whispered, slowly pushing himself to his pained feet to see that the ritual room appeared destroyed. Some of the windows were smashed, and the ornaments and ritual supplies on the hooks and in the shelves were broken and scattered.

  “The— the Baleful Sign . . .” Mother Istarion murmured, before breaking into a hacking cough, one that sounded like the scrape of metal and rocks. It echoed hollowly inside her chest. Terak felt a shiver of horror.

  The plagues, he thought. There were five Baleful Signs–the light, then plagues of monsters, disease, darkness, and then the Gatekeeper.

  Mother Istarion raised a fluttering hand to gesture to the elf before her, before breaking once again into a hacking cough. “Did you . . . did you get it?”

  Terak knew what she was talking about immediately, and his hands moved to pull the Demiene Flowers from his vest. They still glowed a pale yellow in his hands as he held them up. “Maybe we can use them to heal you, too . . .” he whispered, as the Mother Istarion feebly raised herself to shaking knees.

  “Too many . . .” she coughed and hit her chest. “Too many ill. Come, I will heal your friend,” she said, gesturing for Terak to follow her—

  There was a sudden flash of red light, from behind Terak.

  It came from the Circle.

  Time slowed down. Terak saw Istarion’s haggard and sickened face react with shock, looking past the elf’s shoulder.