Erlestoke gave the two quadnels to their weapons-master, Verum. A couple of other people had taken Castleton’s body from him and, off in a corner, were busy washing him and sewing him into a shroud. Across the room, on a table that had seen many a use in their campaign, the raven-haired Harquelf Jilan-dessa and the meckanshü colonel from Murosa, Jancis Ironside, had stretched out the creature. Even without its head, it was tall enough that its feet hung off the edge.
The prince crossed to them. “What is it?”
The elf shook her head. “I’ve not seen its like before, nor have I heard of anything similar. I could make guesses, but I like them not at all.”
Erlestoke rested a hand on her shoulder. “It wields magick more capably than a vylaen. It took two quadnel shots and still did not cease moving until beheaded. It gave orders to gibberers and they obeyed instantly. It’s bad enough as it is. Your guessing can’t make it worse.”
The elf healer nodded, then ran her hand over the creature’s belly, rucking up its fur. Beneath the white fur she exposed pink flesh and then a dark tattoo of some arcane symbol. “Do you recognize that?”
“Not really, though I’ve seen similar on Vorquelves.”
“Exactly.” She pointed to the creature’s head. “I worked magick on the body, just a simple diagnostic spell to get a sense of it. There is vylaen there, clearly, but also elf. Elves don’t really differentiate in sense depending upon their homeland, but if one is talented, you can pick up slight variations. This creature has a Vorquellyn taint to it.”
The prince nodded. “I noticed the eyes.”
Jancis Ironside reached over with her left hand and pried one of the thing’s eyes open. Being a meckanshü—one of the warriors whose useless limbs had been replaced with mechanical parts—her left hand only had two fingers and a thumb, yet moved with a singular delicacy. “Very hard to miss, these eyes. The look of them sends a shiver through even my metal limbs.”
The creature’s eyes had begun to cloud in death, but Erlestoke could still imagine something lurking in their depths. He looked at the elf again. “You think these things come from Vorquellyn?”
She nodded. “You know that Yrulph Kirun, centuries ago, forcefully crossbred araftü with elves to create the Gyrkyme. I fear that Chytrine honors her master once more in creating these things. They feel as if they are a cross between vylaens and Vorquelves, born on Vorquellyn. She took the homeland, now she uses it to breed a population of warmages to lead her gibberers against us.”
That idea sent a chill down the prince’s spine. “Is there any way we can tell for certain?”
“I will make measurements, map the tattoos, look for other clues. If we had more of them, it might help.”
Erlestoke nodded. “I’ll see what we can do.”
Jancis hugged her flesh-and-blood hand to her mechanical shoulder. “Highness, we know Chytrine left a week ago, maybe twelve days, and we assumed she had found and carried away all the pieces of the DragonCrown.”
“Yes, that’s what we concluded. And we decided she kept troops here to prevent anyone from reoccupying the fortress and threatening her lines of supply.”
“Both logical assumptions. But why, then, would she bring creatures so adept at magick here?”
The prince adjusted his mask. “I see your point. If she has a reason for bringing them, it must be an important one. Perhaps she’s missing a piece of the Crown, or there is something else of value here. So, just as vital as learning what they are will be learning why they are here. Good thinking, Colonel Ironside; I would have missed that.”
Ryswin walked over and nodded to the prince. “Highness, Castleton is in his shroud. Nygal and I shall carry him deep into the tunnels and find a spot to wall him up.”
“Ryswin, come quick!” Nygal Tymtas, the young soldier from Savarre, shouted from the corner where Castleton had been laid. “Something very strange is going on.”
The elf and the prince dashed toward the corner, then stopped. The stones in the floor upon which Castleton’s body rested had begun to glow; heat pulsed out from them. Nygal leaped back and the tips of his boots smoked, though oddly the white canvas of the shroud showed not a scorch or wisp of vapor. The rock became fluid and a thin crust crumbled, revealing a red-gold puddle of stone. The body floated there for a moment, then began to sink, starting at the head and shoulders, then gradually settling in at the feet. His toes were the last to go and when they disappeared, a small golden wave of rock lapped over them, then the stone darkened and cooled.
Erlestoke stared at the flat stone where his comrade’s body had lain. “No one here did anything? Said anything? Somehow invoked magick?”
A chorus of negative answers echoed through the chamber.
“Okay, I believe that, which means I don’t know what just happened. Inside the hour we’re vacating this place. Pack up everything we can. We’re going deeper.” He turned and studied all of their faces. “I don’t know if what just happened was for good or ill, but until we know, it’s reason enough for us to keep moving.”
12
It didn’t occur to Kerrigan that trying to catch a snowflake on his tongue might not be dignified until he heard someone behind him clearing his throat, and a hissed whisper accompanying it.
Until that point, Kerrigan had been out, knee deep in snow, not far from the inn in which he was being housed, marveling at how the snow softened the city of Meredo. It muted the gay colors splashed on houses and hid the red of the tiled roofs. Thick garlands of it covered the skeletal branches of the trees and little drifts had collected in corners. The thick flakes fell slowly, then swirled and eddied, sometimes dancing down the street, other times falling from branches and eaves in a puff of snow.
Kerrigan had seen snow before on Vilwan. Still, the warmth of the ocean tended to ensure that any snow that fell did not last very long. He’d certainly never seen the quantity that had fallen in Meredo, nor had he been allowed to go out in it.
Just raising his face to the sky and feeling flakes melt against his cheeks had made him laugh. His delight mirrored that of children playing in the snow, launching snowballs at each other, building forts, shrieking as they closed and threw, then ran as a volley from playmates chased them back. Other children lay on their backs, flapping their arms, making snow-Gyrkyme, while yet others crawled into barrels and careened wildly down hills, screaming all the way.
Yet Kerrigan’s smile had not been for the snow alone. His previous experience in cities had been something less than positive. In Yslin he’d gotten waylaid by a gang of street urchins and beaten up. And Fortress Draconis had been a city of war. There were few children and less laughter.
The thing that made the difference here was the attitude displayed. As he wandered into the snow-choked street, he had impulsively hand-packed a snowball and thrown it at a hitching post—missing horribly—a man gathering wood smiled at his effort. Some kids threw at the same post from further away, and they cheered and laughed as one hit it. A woman brushing snow from the steps looked at him and nodded, smiling as frosty breath wreathed her face.
None of them knew him, since he had arrived in Meredo with no fanfare. He was just a person and even in a city where those who wore masks considered themselves superior to others, everyone still smiled and was polite. There was a cheerful civility to the interaction of strangers that he’d never really known before, and he liked it.
The voice and the whisper, however, had none of the same friendliness. Kerrigan turned slowly and saw a trio of figures, two male and one female. He did not recognize any of them, but the cadaverous man in the lead wore the grey robes of a Magister, despite his seeming youth. The man’s shaved head, beaked nose, and prominent larynx conspired with the grey pallor of his flesh to reinforce the impression that he was dead or close to it. The woman and the other man, who made up in bulk what their leader lacked, both wore the blood-scarlet robes of Adepts, though without any other decorations that might cue him as to their areas of expertise.