Raven Unveiled (The Fallen Empire), page 15
They waited outside an empty stall, watching the gate, which from this side looked to Siora like the rippling surface of a mirror. Instead of showing the corridor of the abandoned brothel, it reflected back the Maesor and its yellow sky.
Gharek stood in front of her, tense, ready to face a second assassin coming through the gate. Several moments passed in funereal quiet but no one emerged from the other side, and the rippling mirror remained undisturbed. He glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t think we’ll be followed. Someone must have heard the same rumors in Domora’s marketplace and chose not to risk a visit.”
Siora shivered despite the ambient temperature. Neither hot nor cold here. No sun and no breeze. No people and no sounds except for her and Gharek’s voices. Instinct warned her to keep her voice low. “Can you blame them? There’s a wrongness here. Do you sense it?”
“Beyond the fact that it’s completely empty of people? Yes.”
She scanned the many stalls, all full of goods left as if frozen in a moment, nothing ransacked or looted. She’d never seen the like. Even graves weren’t safe from thieves. “What happened to everyone?”
Gharek shrugged and stepped out of their hiding place, still keeping a wary eye on the gate. “That is an excellent question and one we can’t answer if we linger here.” He motioned for her to follow him. “I doubt he’s here, but if anyone can tell us what happened, it’s Koopman.”
They returned to the market’s main avenue. The stillness was eerie, a living thing that observed them from every shadowed stall and alley they passed. The hairs on Siora’s nape rose and remained standing. She’d faced raging spirits, malevolent ones that made her grateful she’d never met them while they were still living people, battlefields swarming with ghosts, houses crowded with whole families of spirits not yet ready to leave this world—all of these she’d seen and experienced. This though was different, its strangeness making her feel as if something fundamental to her soul had shifted the tiniest bit, changed in a way she didn’t understand but definitely didn’t like.
They stopped in front of a large, lavish tent. There were no goods displayed at the entrance to entice a customer to step in and see what else the vendor sold, only a plain stool next to a forgotten walking stick.
“A blind guard who saw better than most and his dog always perched here,” Gharek said. His mouth thinned to a grim line and Siora’s alarm ratcheted even higher when he unsheathed a second knife. “Don’t ride my heels. I need the space to fight if needs be,” he told her. “But don’t wander off.”
Gharek slowly eased into the tent, announcing his presence in a casual voice. “Koopman, you’ve a customer. Your guard’s gone missing from his station so I came in.”
No one greeted his announcement from the tent’s depths. Once Siora’s eyes adjusted to the interior’s dimness, she got a good look at its contents. This Koopman person was a textiles dealer judging by the number of carpets and tapestries piled on the floor or displayed on hanging racks. Such ordinary goods seemed out of place in a market known for selling demon bowls, curse scrolls, forbidden grimoires, and potions that actually worked.
“Don’t touch anything in here,” Gharek warned her as they moved cautiously through the shadowed tent.
“Why is a rug merchant selling in the Maesor?” she wondered aloud. As soon as she asked the question, she had her answer. They passed the ragged remains of a tapestry still stretched on a loom, its center exploded outward as if something had burst through it from the other side, snapping warp and weft in its escape.
Trap shadows. She recoiled from the tapestry, and her skin shrank tight against her bones in an effort not to brush against anything in the awful stall. Revolted by her discovery and frightened, Siora was tempted to disregard Gharek’s warning and flee outside, leaving him behind to continue his search for a monster who trafficked in enslaved souls.
“I see you’re familiar with trap shadows,” he said, peering into various alcoves half hidden by beaded curtains or sheer drapery. “A lucrative business for Koopman along with extortion. Outlawing sorcery only made it exceptionally profitable.” He stopped to stare at her. “Do you see any ghosts?”
The question brought her up short. She’d been so focused on the newness and strangeness of her surroundings, and the fact no other living person besides her and Gharek occupied the Maesor, she hadn’t thought to note if the dead remained. “None, thank the gods,” she said. At least she hoped their absence meant those who lingered chose not to do so here in a place scoured clean of anyone. She eyed the tapestry, wondering what happened to the imprisoned soul that managed to break free.
Finally satisfied that Koopman was truly absent instead of hiding from visitors, Gharek gestured for her to return outside. He didn’t have to do it twice. Siora led the way, relieved to escape the tent and its vile contents. “Now what?” She hoped they wouldn’t visit another stall like this one, though this was the Maesor. The gods only knew what else the merchants here sold, and she doubted demon bowls and potions were unique or that trap shadows represented the worst things traded.
“We check a few more stalls,” Gharek said, disappointment etched into his features. “And then we leave. I’m not a scrounger or a mage to know what in these stalls might be of use to us without guidance from the seller. I’d have better luck at the royal library.”
How she wished they’d gone there instead of here. She regretted her curiosity concerning the Maesor. No wonder whoever entered the brothel and stalked them chose not to go through the gate. “Do you think your friend Koopman disappeared with the others?”
Gharek snorted. “Koopman was no one’s friend, just everyone’s source. If that torn tapestry tells the story I think it does, Koopman is dead and his slave souls finally freed.” He bent for a closer look at whatever floated in an apothecary’s jar on a stand placed outside of a nearby stall. “It’s why I asked if you saw any ghosts. The fact you haven’t is a good thing.”
No sooner had he uttered the words than an unearthly shrieking—horrific enough to freeze the blood in one’s veins and one that nearly made Siora jump out of her own skin—shattered the market’s stifling silence. A wind that wasn’t a wind tore through the stall, snapping curtains aside and knocking over display cases. Invisible, violent, it hurled Siora hard enough against Gharek that he fell backward, taking her with him. Sharp pains tore across her back, as if something raked her with claws. She yelped, then yelped again when the shrieking entity yanked her hair hard enough to wrench her head back and bring tears to her eyes.
Gharek wasn’t spared its aggression either. He clapped a hand to his cheek when a bloody line suddenly bloomed along his cheekbone, flesh parting under the same unseen talons that struck Siora.
As quick as the spirit attacked, it retreated with another blood-curdling screech and fled in a small whirlwind of dust. Siora caught a glimpse of it as it spun down one of the deserted alleys, a shifting, warping shape becoming vaguely human with the hint of a face twisted by absolute madness.
She and Gharek watched it until it disappeared and its shrieking died away, leaving only the suffocating silence. He turned to her, the nasty scratch marring his cheek dripping thin lines of blood like the teeth of a hair comb. He smeared the blood away with a swipe of his sleeve. “Are you wounded?”
Her back stung, though she didn’t feel any warmth or telltale trickles on her skin. “I think it scratched me too, though not as deeply as you.” She touched her scalp. “The hair-pulling hurt worse.” She peered down the alleyway where the entity had disappeared. “Was that one of the trap shadows?”
“Most likely.” He touched his cheek. “Vicious bastard, yet you can’t help but pity them.” He frowned at her raised eyebrows. “Anyone with a sense of their own existence would feel sorry for those creatures and pray such a fate would never become theirs.”
Siora shook her head. “You always manage to surprise me, lord.”
He regarded her for a moment, as if deciding whether or not her reply held some hidden condemnation. She chose not to enlighten him.
Fearing the trap shadow might return for another screeching round of scratching and hair-pulling, Gharek suggested they linger no longer and head back to the gate. “If we hadn’t managed to avoid that second assassin, I’d call this a failed endeavor and a waste of our time,” he grumbled. “I’d suggest raiding one of the stalls for something to sell, but the risk is too great. The Maesor holds many things that will literally eat you if you’re not careful.”
More than happy to depart, she hurried alongside him. She desperately wanted to leave but without anything in hand to break wards or help Zaredis’s brother, Estred remained at risk and Gharek would surely be executed if the library too offered up nothing. “I hope the library has something,” she said.
His features had grown grimmer with every step. “So do I. The records available to the public won’t have anything we need, but one of the oldest librarians there was once my mother’s lover. He may be able . . .”
Siora’s heart knocked hard against her breastbone when Gharek abruptly went silent, clapped a hand over her mouth, and nearly tore her arm off yanking her into the stall behind them. In the semi-gloom, his eyes were wide as they stared into hers, pupils dilated like those of a terrified feline. He pursed his lips in a silent “shh” and, at her nod, eased his hand from her mouth. Body so tense he practically quivered against her, he pointed out furtive movement not far from the gate.
She stared at what he indicated, and her fear turned to horror, the kind that reduced one’s knees to water and made your bladder forget to hold its contents. Like the trap shadow, this creature was human in shape but had a solidity to it the trap shadow lacked. The color of bleached bone with misshapen limbs far too long and lanky for its torso, the thing scuttled along the main avenue, pausing randomly to raise a bulbous head and sniff the air.
Only it had no nose. No eyes either, just a wide mouth with fleshy, crimson lips stretched partially over a cage of jagged teeth. The talons tipping its bony fingers looked as lethal as the teeth, with the same purpose of shredding whatever unfortunate victim it caught in its grasp. Those claws dragged across the dirt and cobblestones, making quick skittering noises as they spidered along the wooden supports holding up one of the stalls.
Every survival cue inside her screamed for her to run, yet also kept her frozen in place, barely breathing in case the abomination without ears heard her. Gharek, motionless beside her, had ceased breathing as well.
The thing drew nearer to where they hid, darting in and out of stalls, its movements quick and nimble. Here was the ultimate predator, a thing that made wolves seem like rabbits and lions like sheep, the Spider of Empire a sweet toddler who loved flowers. As it got closer, Siora’s eyes blurred with tears and her throat seized closed on a scream. She knew what it was to be the hare under the serpent’s stare.
She clenched her jaw to keep the scream in her throat trapped there when a misty shape suddenly took form in front of her. Relief made her knees buckle when she recognized the beloved, familiar wraith standing there.
Papa. If her thought had been voiced, it would have bellowed across the Maesor. Relief instantly changed to fear. You shouldn’t be here. Whatever this new horror hunting the Maesor was, she suspected it was somehow tied to the eater of ghosts and the two were likely not far from each other.
Take my hand, daughter, so the cat’s-paw can see me. Skavol held out his hand, and for the first time in her memory, Siora touched her father’s ghost. Next to her, Gharek startled, his body twitching in surprise at the sudden appearance of an apparition in front of them.
Skavol’s touch was as cold as Kalun’s had been, but his beloved presence blunted the razor’s edge of her panic for a moment.
You don’t have much time before it reaches this stall. I can distract it. The moment you see your chance, don’t hesitate. His phantasmic features hollowed with their own terror. I won’t have my daughter suffer the same fate the Maesor traders did at the hands of that thing.
His revelation regarding the disappearance of so many, once more sharpened the edge of her panic, made it jagged, but she only nodded. Thank you, Papa. Be careful.
Gharek couldn’t hear their conversation and Siora didn’t dare speak and risk being heard, but he understood both her and Skavol’s hand gestures, nodding once. When Skavol let go of her hand, he faded from Gharek’s sight but not hers. She held Gharek’s arm in preparation of giving the signal for when to run. Her father walked through the stall’s fabric wall as if it wasn’t there and for a moment the creature continued its inexorable approach to their hiding place.
It suddenly spun on its thin, skeletal legs, making a triumphant chittering sound so reminiscent of what she’d heard in the abandoned barn’s provender room that every last hair on Siora’s body stood straight up. She spotted her father’s shade flitting quicksilver through the labyrinth of streets. The faceless predator spotted him too and bolted toward him in a ground-eating stride.
Gharek didn’t wait for her signal. Instead, he shackled her wrist in a bone-cracking grip and nearly lifted her off her feet as he burst out of the stall at a dead run. The gate wasn’t far but seemed a continent away. Terror gave her a deer’s swiftness and she easily kept up with him as they fled for the gate; an enraged, inhuman cry behind them splitting the quiet.
Gharek’s sudden epithet and his order that followed put wings on her heels. “Fuck! There’s two of them! Run!”
The chittering screeches had changed to howls, one set directly behind them and another to their left. Oh gods, oh gods. The chant clanged in her head, a half-crafted prayer raised from despair, fueled by fear and the primal urge to survive.
She and Gharek leapt through the gate. The strange vertigo didn’t plague her this time, but a new, even greater threat faced them. Entering a gate to the Maesor at one place didn’t always mean you exited in the same spot. The street they hurtled onto bore no resemblance to one in Domora, nor did the blasted ruins around it.
Their sprint slowed to a jog, and the tightening of Gharek’s already hard grip on her wrist told her he was as confused as she was, but only for a moment.
“Gods damn it,” he said, not in fury but in despair, and the hopelessness in his voice sent her stomach plummeting to her feet. “We’re in Midrigar.”
As if saying the cursed city’s name out loud conjured more of the repulsive, faceless hunters, a series of feral calls sounded all around them, some closer, some distant, a blood-hungry sound of anticipation as cold as the silvery moonlight plating the remains of the city’s towers.
Gharek didn’t need to tell her again to run, and this time they raced for another gate, one not created by sorcery but by human hands long dead and then destroyed by an army and its battle mages.
She stumbled when Gharek suddenly gasped and his pace slowed, though he strained to reach the gate. Siora recognized his expression. He’d worn it as Midrigar or whatever was imprisoned inside it cast a sorcerous net over him. She felt it as well, though not as strong, an insistent tugging on her spine and limbs as if some viperous vine tried to coil around her body.
She fought off the sensation, and now it was she who clamped an unyielding grip on Gharek and dragged him with her, fighting his weight and the bewitchment of a malice whose whisper in the mind coiled into her ears and slithered along her backbone.
“Come, meat. I hunger.”
Triumphant howling bore down on them, and from the corner of her eye she spotted a pale, faceless hunter sprinting toward them.
Gharek tried to twist out of her grip. “Let go, you stupid girl, and run!” he ordered in a voice slurred as if the ability to speak took monumental effort.
“No!” She pulled even harder, and with a renewed burst of strength, hauled them both through the shattered gate to the other side of the walls.
She slammed hard into an immovable barrier, crushed between it and Gharek, who did the same. They both fell; Siora onto him before she rolled away onto her back. She didn’t stay that way, levering herself up on her elbows and squinting as the glow of a raised lamp blinded her for a moment. The enraged screaming of the faceless hunters still cut the night but they remained trapped behind the walls and drew no closer. The eerie pull on her spine lingered, annoying, skin-crawling but no longer so insistent or with the strength of a command as it was for Gharek. Even now he tried to crawl back to the gate but was held down by someone’s knee in his back and someone else’s grip on his legs.
She blinked until her eyes adjusted to the greater light. Several silhouettes surrounded her and Gharek, their regard focused hard on them. A face came into clear view, lit by the lamp. A familiar face, a human one that hid so much more, and one she never thought she’d see again.
“Malachus?”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Come, meat. I summon you.”
The command boomed inside Gharek’s head, and his limbs convulsed with the compulsion to obey. To crawl, to lurch, to sprint back through the gates into the heart of Midrigar, where a dark god, served by pale demons, waited to feast upon him.
He and others had named this entity the eater of ghosts, yet the force of its enchantment on him, the idea of some drooling, ravenous monstrosity eager to snack on him body and soul, made the name a lie. This was an eater of the living as well.
He squirmed in the dirt, pressed down hard by a sharp knee in his back and heavy weights on his shoulders and legs. The far-off sound of voices speaking teased his ears, but deafened as he was by the sonorous command in his head, they were mere unintelligible murmurings.
His jaw locked as the pressure came off his back and he was jerked to his feet. He tried to speak, to beg for help from whoever held him. Tried to say Siora’s name and confirm she was uninjured during their race to the gate. Only gibberish squeezed through his clenched teeth, and he twisted in a desperate bid to gain his freedom and race toward his own death.
