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

Lanterns burst to life along the walls. The Wall Guards of the Enclave had also surmised that something was wrong.

  “What are you doing? What is it?” Terak backed away from the strangely entranced Mordhuk—

  “Kreeeee . . .” Something—or many small somethings—raced across the sky, small and black and falling down from the northern glow like angry rain.

  Thap! One of the things hit the rooftop and slithered, hissing.

  It was the Estreek, feathered serpents, spirits from the nightmare realm of the Ungol.

  Someone had launched an attack against the Black Keep.

  Ixcht! Terak swore as he braced his feet against the iron gutter, one hand on the slated rooftop and the other pulling the long-bladed dagger that he carried in his belt.

  The Estreek were familiar. Terak had been a part of an expedition to Brecha’s capital of Aldburg to stop the Ixchtian White-Faced Legion when he last faced the Estreek. These creatures were serpents with black, feathered wings, their clacking maws filled with tiny, sharp teeth. They were fast, dangerous, and very poisonous.

  The creature hissed and launched itself down the tiles at Terak.

  The elf had no room to move. All he could do was swing the blade in front of him—

  Thump! He caught the thing on one edge of its wing, batting it along the roof, only for it to spin and dive straight toward him again. Terak saw the gleam of the thing’s teeth getting closer and closer.

  Snap! The Mordhuk, springing lightly and as surely as a cat, bounded over Terak’s head and caught the Estreek in its jaws. It shook its head, making an obscene popping, crunching sound, before flinging the feathered serpent over the edge of the tiles.

  The Mordhuk landed gracefully. It slid a little way before its almost-stone claws gouged a purchase, and it looked up at Terak, its forked tongue lolling out in pride.

  “You didn’t bring them here,” Terak realized, as the Mordhuk eagerly turned its head to follow another of the serpentine missiles. If anything, the Mordhuk looked excited for the hunt, as a dog might around rabbits.

  “Well, come on, then,” Terak murmured, looking grimly at the roofscape below. The glint of scales could be seen as writhing, twisting shapes.

  We have work to do. Terak gritted his teeth, and gripped his long knife firmly.

  Lights were coming on all over the Black Keep, and cries of horror and alarm could be heard from all directions. Terak imagined the Estreek smashing through windows or slithering past doors, finding the Brothers and Sisters of the Enclave in their beds . . .

  Terak perched on the edge of the Main Hall roof, taking a breath before he lowered his legs over the edge, swinging them to brace on the ironwork guttering as he had been taught to do by the Chief External himself. He started to climb and slide, hand-over-hand, down the pipe.

  “Hsskr!” With a chittering growl, the Mordhuk leapt lightly over Terak’s clambering form to the roof below. By the time the elf’s feet thumped on the slate, the strange creature was already pouncing on another of the Estreek that had fallen nearby.

  “Hsss!” There was no time for Terak to think. One of the things appeared out of the night, swooping toward him.

  “Agh!” Terak grunted as he brought his blade up in a blocking arc, one that bit into scales and neatly severed the Estreek in two. It spurt a green ichor as it fell to the roof below.

  “Aii!” A sharp-pitched scream broke through the night. Whomever was being attacked was close. Terak wasted no time in running along the peaked ridge toward the sound.

  “Hsss . . .” one of the serpents shot out of the sky at him, and Terak ducked, and that one to sail harmlessly over his head—

  Thump! Another one hit him in the calf, knocking him off balance and almost somersaulting him in the air. He thumped onto the tiles and slid down toward a deep courtyard in the heart of the Black Keep.

  “Ach!” Terak cried out as he saw that the Estreek had already wrapped its serpent tail around his ankle as he slid toward the edge. It raised its head, mouth wide to strike.

  The elf slammed his own foot down on the tiles, disrupting the thing’s attack and loosening its hold on him by a fraction.

  Terak could see the edge of the roof coming up to him fast. He had to choose whether to die by poison or by falling thirty feet to the cobbled courtyard below.

  It was no choice, really. Terak slammed his heel down on the tiles once more. He heard a crunch and an alien squeal as something precious inside of the Estreek broke, and the thing fell away.

  His feet slid over the tiled edge and he bounced, spinning one arm back to slap the roof—to feel icy tile, then rough ironwork.

  Terak grabbed the gutter with one hand as he fell off the roof.

  “Hgh!” Pain tore along his arm and down his back, but his grip held. Just.

  He dangled from one hand over the courtyard, the night air around him filled with the hiss of flying serpents. When he foolishly dared to look down, he saw two dark shapes flash across the courtyard below in search of prey. How long before they decided to look up?

  Terak swung to reach the gutter with his other hand. Groaning with exertion, he pulled himself so that he could raise a heel to the gutter, and pushed himself onto the roof above.

  Creak. The black iron of the gutter creaked alarmingly and shuddered under his weight. They had clearly not been designed to sustain the weight of any climber—even an elf.

  Terak moved, pushing himself up the roof with his palms and knees as widely spaced as possible, as the gutter tore from the ancient mortar below him and fell with a crash into the courtyard below.

  But he was on the roof, his muscles aching with the effort. The Mordhuk sat above him, looking down quizzically.

  “Thanks for all your help,” Terak gasped breathlessly at the Ungol creature, just as there was a crash from nearby—and another shout.

  And it was a voice that Terak recognized.

  “Reticula!”

  3

  A Rose of Pain

  Reticula, his fellow novitiate who had entered the Loranthian Shrine with him, was in trouble. As Terak and the Mordhuk reached the end of their roof, he could hear her desperate shouts as she fought off the Estreek.

  “Quickly!” Terak said, although he had no idea whether the demonic creature would heed him. They reached the gabled end of the rooftop to see the form of the black-robed, blond-haired Reticula running down a walkway that connected two nearby halls. Behind her moved several of the feathered serpents, darting forward and hitting the flagstones that the young woman’s ankles had only just vacated.

  Reticula made it to the distant door at the end of the walkway and heaved on the iron ring.

  That leads to the training hall. Terak wished that he had his throwing knives—or magic!

  But the door wouldn’t open. He saw Reticula panic, banging on the mahogany wood, before realizing that it was no good. She was trapped.

  Thwap! One of the Estreek hit the wall beside her with an audible slap of scale against stone. Reticula shrieked, turned, and Terak could see the realization galvanize through her body.

  I have to get to her! Terak thought. But how? The walkway was easily twenty feet below them, and ten feet from where he stood. There was no way that he could make that jump. The best he could do was work his way around the near rooftops and battlements until he was closer—

  But his fellow novitiate had apparently already made up her mind how to proceed. He saw her leap up to the ledge of the battlements that edged the walkway—and jump.

  “No!” Terak called out instinctively, before he realized what lay adjacent to that walkway. The entire Black Keep had been built inwards, with complicated galleries and funny-shaped buildings and ledges and raised plazas with halls underneath them. And he knew that the First Moon Garden sat right next to that walkway. A quiet, forgotten spot, the garden held relief carvings of the old Magisters of the Enclave and giant ceramic pots with dead or dying plants.

  I’m still too far away . . . Terak growled i
n frustration as the Estreek that had been chasing his friend surged against the closed door, becoming a boiling mess—before slithering and hopping on their short black wings to the wall’s edge, to follow their quarry.

  I can’t make it in time, Terak thought in dismay. Not for the first time did he curse the fact that he was a null, completely lacking in natural magic. If he had even an ounce of battle magic, he could fire magic missiles or bolts of fire down on the creatures. But he could do nothing of the sort.

  Unless . . . Terak looked at the giant, dog-like creature beside him.

  “I don’t know if you can even understand me,” Terak hissed, edging toward it as it watched him with its beady little eyes. “But you brought me out here to show me the sky. You came and found me, so we must share something.”

  The sound of hissing and scrabbling from below lessened as more of the Estreek followed the first, in search of Reticula.

  “I want you to carry me down there,” Terak said, laying a hand on the thing’s back. It hissed in its guttural, low-voiced way—but it didn’t flinch. The skin felt oddly pliable, like normal flesh from some normal Midhara creature, yet it was utterly cold to the touch, like stone.

  Reticula gasped below them, fighting for her life. Terak had no time for niceties. He leaned harder on the thing’s back, and when the Mordhuk just regarded him sagely, he swung one leg over, grabbed onto its writhing tentacles, like reins—

  “Hsskr!” the thing growled, then it pounced. The elf felt the shockwave of pent-up strength shudder through the creature’s body as strange muscles and sinews moved according to their own unnatural biology.

  Suddenly, they were sailing through the air, Terak astride the thing’s back as if it were nothing but an Enclave pony and not a living statue.

  With a powerful thump, the Mordhuk hit the walkway, its claws scratching the flagstones—just as the remaining Estreek attacked. They launched toward the interloper from all directions. The Mordhuk reared up to swipe one out of the sky with its paws, seized another in its grip, and yet another between its jaws.

  Terak slashed at the shapes that flung themselves toward him. For a moment, all was chaos as the elf struck out to one side and then the other, one hand clutching tight at the Mordhuk’s mane of tentacles, as the creature moved underneath him. He could feel the powerful snap of the thing’s jaws as it closed on another Estreek, and another.

  Then Terak could see the walkway wall, and the lower platform of the First Moon Garden below. It looked to be in turmoil, ceramic pots overturned and broken, spilling bone-dry earth over the flagstones.

  In its center lay the still body of Reticula.

  “No!” The elf didn’t wait, leaping from the back of the Mordhuk as the monster completed its deadly rampage. His foot hit the walkway, then he was leaping to the low wall, and flinging himself into the night-time airs of the Black Keep.

  A single moment of terrifying, exhilarating weightlessness, and then Terak’s feet hit the gritty dirt of the First Moon Garden. He rolled to a halt against the one remaining ceramic pot.

  “Hsss!” One of the feathered serpents threw itself at him out of the darkness—and Terak caught it with his blade in a move that would have made even Father Gourdain proud.

  A terrible anger filled the elf’s usually cool head. He couldn’t separate himself from his emotions this time. He couldn’t lower his rage and think clearly as the Path of Pain demanded of him. Instead, Terak reacted like a wild animal, snarling in the cat-like way of the elves as he leaped forward.

  Swipe! He severed the head of another leaping Estreek, then stamped the tail of a third. He pinned it to the floor as he chopped down with his long blade, cutting it neatly in two.

  Then—as suddenly as the comings and goings of the Tartaruk storms—the Estreek were all gone. Terak was left standing over the stilled form of Reticula, swaddled in her black order robes.

  She hadn’t always been kind to him, but she was the only classmate who hadn’t tried to kill him. And she seemed to know that the attempts on his life were wrong, or at least he hoped so. In the harsh world of the Enclave, that made her one of his closest friends.

  “Reticula? Can you hear me?” He knelt down at her side, gingerly raising her shoulders and head. The girl gave a low, anguished moan.

  She was pale—even paler than normal—and her hair was disheveled and plastered to her forehead with sweat.

  “Hnnh . . . Terak?” her eyes fluttered, but they had trouble focusing on him.

  There was the soft thump and snicker of the Mordhuk’s claws as the creature landed in the garden behind Terak, reaching down with its snout to sniff at the bodies of the Estreek that the elf had killed.

  “She’s injured,” Terak murmured, talking as much to himself as to the Mordhuk. He looked down to where there was a bloody tear in Reticula’s robes. When the elf gingerly peeled the robes back to reveal her arm, he suddenly saw the cause of her state.

  There, on her upper left arm were two puncture marks from one of the feathered serpents—radiating out from them were fine traces of black lines, like the roots of some insidious tree.

  “Oh no . . .” Terak groaned. He had seen the effect that one of the Estreek bites had on a Tartaruk pony. It was a fast-moving poison, spreading its fingers of blackened ichor under the skin as the wounded thrashed, convulsed, and died. Even now, Terak could feel tiny tremors shaking through his fellow novitiate’s body, like the chills taken in the northern winter.

  “Mordhuk . . . ?” Terak looked over to the thing, and the creature raised its head and looked at him solemnly. The elf didn’t know if there was anything that the Mordhuk could do for Reticula, even.

  “But you healed me, twice before . . .” he pleaded with the beast.

  The Ungol spirit bared its rows of sharp teeth and made a guttural, hissing sound for a moment, which could have been a laugh or a rebuke. It padded gently over to Terak’s side, leaning its head down to the young woman that he held in his hands.

  Terak watched as the forked tongue lashed out, skipping over the puncture wounds on Reticula’s shoulder. It could have been his eyes or the gloom of the night, but he thought he saw something effervesce, like one of Father Jacques’ strange powders and concoctions.

  The Mordhuk raised its head and stepped back, revealing its work. The black lines appeared to have faded back a little bit. They now formed an angry rose around the two sealed and red blotches where the Estreek’s fangs had bit.

  But the poison isn’t gone completely, Terak saw. It seemed that this was a task beyond the uncanny properties of the Mordhuk itself.

  “Terak? Is that you?” Another low murmur, as Reticula’s shaking subsided, and she appeared a little calmer.

  Until her eyes saw the shape of the Mordhuk over Terak’s shoulder. Her body convulsed as she let out an agonizing scream.

  “No! Reticula, it’s alright!” Terak hissed, clutching at her shoulders tightly. But she had been with him when the Mordhuk had first been awakened. She and the elf had both fled for their lives as the creature had appeared intent on tearing them limb from limb inside the Everdell Forest. Terak tried desperately to find the words to encapsulate everything that he had learned about the creature since then: that it appeared to have bonded to him in some way, and that it didn’t want to hurt him.

  But Reticula slumped unconscious in his arms, her fatigue, terror, and the poison all proving too much.

  “I have to get help for her.” Terak looked worriedly between his friend and the Mordhuk. He had no idea if what the creature had done had saved her or only prolonged the inevitable.

  The Black Keep was alive now with the sounds of fighting, and Terak could see the flashes of purple, red, and blue battle magic from all around—as well as screams. The elf knew that the night was far from over, but he couldn’t leave Reticula.

  There was only one person he thought might be able to help her, and it was the last person that Terak wanted to see.

  “Where I have to go, you
cannot follow me,” Terak said to the beast beside him as he lifted Reticula in his arms. She was surprisingly light for one who was nearly the same size as him. The elf tried not to imagine that it was the poison, sucking out all vitality from his friend, and leaving her hollow and boneless, like a discarded shell.

  “Hsskr . . .” the Mordhuk growled at Terak’s assertion, but raised its snout anyway to look over the roofscapes. Its eyes darted to each flash of magic and sound of screams.

  “Go,” Terak nodded. “If you can help, then help, but stay out of sight—the others will try to kill you!”

  No sooner had he said it, then the Mordhuk turned to leap from its spot to the walls of the First Moon Garden. For a second, it was silhouetted against the flashes of magic. It looked like a nightmare come to life. Which it is, Terak knew. Then, with a swish of its barbed tail, it hopped lightly away and was gone.

  The elf was left alone in the dark, looking at the thin door that led back into the training hall.

  And to the Chief Arcanum. Terak’s face froze in a look of grim determination as he stepped forward.

  4

  The Baleful Signs

  Terak hurried on stumbling feet through the corridors of the Black Keep, hearing distant sounds of shouts and screams. Twice, he heard running footsteps and cries from the defenders.

  “They’re concentrating at Center Plaza!”

  “Send more Wall Guards!”

  Terak ignored them, taking twisting stairwells and racing across open galleries. He made his way to the person who knew more than anyone else about magical lore.

  The Chief Arcanum was the aging master and tutor of magics for the Enclave—and he detested everything that Terak was. He detested the fact that Terak was a null and still breathing under these roofs, or breathing at all.

  A part of Terak was terrified, and even hoped the Chief was busy with the defense of the Keep, but it was a cowardly part. The elf thrust that thought down.