Chapter 32 – Interlude II
Six years ago
Prologue - The Fel Witch of Dragonmaw
Beneath the pale light of twin serpentine ghosts, the city of Dragonmaw burned. Not for the first time, or likely, the last. Burning was something of a tradition for the city. The elves had built it. The orcs had razed it. The dwarves had raised it back up. The orcs had razed it again, and humans, never the quick study, were responsible for its latest incarnation. Dragonmaw swallows all, so the saying went. But, if it were up to one particularly bitter pill of a witch, this would be the last time anyone tore down this particular boil on the surface of the Bastard.
The Fel Witch, Margot Bethane, descended narrow steps into the western slums of Kindledown. She strode to a song of ringing steel and distant screams. Where the witch stepped, inky footprints lingered, smeared by the ragged remains of the once-highborn's expensive dress. From those inky pools, eyes gazed, tentacles probed, and tongues tasted. They sampled and savored this new and vulnerable world. A cloaked servant of the Fel Witch, careful to avoid those footprints, edged along the woman’s trail.
“Mistress Bethane, the daemonologist has betrayed us. The astrologists have turned their eyes from the stars.”
“IT MATTERS NOT. THE WAY IS OPEN.”
The cobbles vibrated under her voice. The light from the oil lamps lining the street seemed to retreat. At an unremarkable crossroads, the woman stopped. She pointed straight down with a finger dripping steaming pitch.
“READ HERE.”
With a whimper, her craven servant stepped forward and drew a deck of thin wooden tarot cards: the Deck of Wills. It had taken great effort to forge the girl into something resembling a useful Soul Seeker, skilled in calling forth the magic of other worlds. But it would pay off tonight. The Deck of Wills spread out in the air. Three cards lifted themselves, infused with the servant’s power to read the answer to Margot’s question. Who has the power to stop me?
Margot Bethane watched the wills reveal the answer. While she couldn’t work them herself, she knew the reading well enough that she need not wait for her servant. She turned left, passing beneath a sign that read Stitch Alley—not that most of those living in it would have been able to read that marking. This was among the poorest districts in Dragonmaw. Not for long. All would be equal soon. Oblivion had that effect. If she could but hasten the convergence, it could be within months. So long as inconvenient prophecies from abyssal prophets could be sojourned, just for a little while.
A column of spearmen turning the corner diverted her attention. They froze, staring when they saw the witch and her servant, but two of their number pushed themselves to the front: a swordsman and a mage. Idly, she noted their guild badges. Truesilver and Platinum. The 8th and 9th ranks of the Adventurers Guild. She was only slightly surprised they had kept their wits. Powerful, in their own right, she was curious what tricks they might bare against her.
The pair didn’t keep Bethane waiting long. The swordsman struck with his blade, creating a crescent of light that gouged a path through the cobbles, slicing stone as easily as air. Magic sword, she noted. Force enchantment. Bethane shoved it aside with a whim. Bricks exploded at her feet. The deflected crescent sheared through the corner of the building behind her, spilling dozens of loafs of bread from the bakery—and half the baker, who she had sensed cowering among them.
“Bitch!” shouted the swordsman, looking at the mess of ruined flesh his handiwork had wrought.
Strong as they might have been, Margot Bethane was a once-in-a-generation talent. She flicked her black-stained fingers forward, shaking loose drops of pitch that splashed upon the column of spears. The guild mage managed to erect a shield over herself and the swordsman, but the rest of the column was not so fortunate. Where the drops fell, they burned and blistered, and spread. Men and women screamed as their spears clattered to broken, cracked cobbles. Gaping wounds turned into lashing mouths filled with teeth and thrashing tentacles. New, blasphemous appendages pushed through holes not just in skin, but reality.
The guild mage, protected behind her shield spell, watched in horror. The fact she could maintain such a working of arcane magic in the light of the magic-devouring wane dragons amused Bethane, but not enough to spare them. The guild mage dropped her shield and poured fire onto what remained of her own spearmen.
“Finish her!” the guild mage called. “I’ll buy you the time!” Flames filled the alley, curling up and singing the tiles of the steep roofs. Daub crisped and the air boiled. Dry town flats burst into flame. The swordsman pushed forward. He dipped into a stance, sword above his head, and whipped his blade in a wide, flat arc. Margot could sense the magic clinging to the blade. Not bad. Not enough. She lifted her hand. The crescent came sideways this time, shearing through the buildings to either side. Where the technique met her own shield spell, a sun-bright glare deflected the energy away. Not nearly enough.
Behind, Margot felt a working of the Deck of Wills. Two disparate suits weaved together, and an eruption of stone spikes penetrated the cobbles beneath the adventurers, skewering the pair from stem to crown. They gasped, struggling against the barbs. Such fortitude to have not been instantly shredded. But they’d soon wish they were.
Bethane left them, walking past as figures lumbered, shambled, or rolled off into the night. Several of them stayed and set upon the spitted pair. None of them mattered. The flames from the mage’s fire spell fled from her bare footsteps.
Again they came to an intersection. Again, Margot Bethane pointed. “READ HERE”
Down. A cellar, this time. The bottom of a filthy hovel awaited her, unmarked and fetid. Indistinguishable from tens of thousands of others in Dragonmaw. Bethane descended the stone steps. The thick wooden door offered no resistance. She crushed it with her will alone, bending reality to her whim. The stone foundation fractured around it, and the door exploded inward, showering the interior with splinters.
Bethane floated across the threshold, bare feet setting down among the splinters. Her simpering servant followed close behind, tripping on the detritus and sorting through the mess of cards in her hand.
In the corner, dressed in filthy rags and already bleeding from a dozen splinters that pierced her flesh, a woman stood with her arms stretched to the side. A boy of perhaps fourteen peeked around her, though he might have seen clearly through the holes in his mother’s threadbare linens. He clutched a knife in his malnourished hands. Neither looked as though they had seen a meal in weeks. Famine. Starvation. Soon to be things of the past. Soon, the slate to be wiped clean.
“Leave us be!” the mother called. “There’s nothing down here that you could want!”
Bethane didn’t answer her. Instead, she twitched her chin toward the shadows in the corner. Grasping claws and pincers shot from inky dark splotches on the stone, lifting the woman from her feet. She screamed, but the screams cut off just as suddenly as her head was pulled through, to those who waited beyond. The rest of her fell to the cobbles.
A flick of her fingers moved the body from her path.
Cards shuffled behind her. Her servant had done another reading. “Mistress, more soldiers come! We are vulnerable here.”
The mother’s sacrifice had left a blood curse upon the boy. Margot regarded it. Contemptible. Born a pauper, it was likely the woman hadn’t even known she had the talent. Ancient magics, obsolete in their function and tepid in strength, made for a paltry obstacle. She brushed them aside as one might sweep away cobwebs.
“WHO ARE YOU?” demanded Bethane, leaning over the boy. He said nothing, eyes wide in terror. Bethane grabbed him by the chin, points of her fingers leaving smoldering sores where they touched, but careful not to squeeze hard enough to crush his jaw. She needed him to live, needed him to speak. Else, she would have to find the next in line. She pulled a small silver mirror from her pocket and held it at an angle to see the boy’s face in it. “NAME YOURSELF!”
The boy shouted. “D-d-Darcent!”
Bethane shook him harder. “NO! YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE! NAME YOURSELF THUS!”
“I’m not!” he yelled.
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The timbers cracked as Bethane’s temper grew hotter. The building threatened to collapse down upon the three of them. Behind her, she felt more power rising in her reader’s deck.
“Mistress, the cards, something is happening!” her servant moaned.
Fools and incompetents. That’s who surrounded Margot Bethane. She growled. Squeezing harder. She felt bone start to give way “YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE! SAY THE WORDS! SAY IT, SAY IT, SA—“
A thin blade erupted from Bethane’s chest as her servant screamed. She heard the footfalls of her last ally pounding up the stone steps, even as the blade lifted her into the air. She looked down, uncomprehending. The various shields and protections she’d woven, enough to deflect even a dragon’s fire, fell away. All her defenses sheared through and pierced without apparent effort. Cards from the Deck of Wills fluttered in the air around her, settling to the floor of the cellar.
Fetid breath, hot against her ear, chuckled and whispered in a voice lower than the deepest cavern. “Sorry, witch. You’re not the only one with designs for the whelp.”
She felt a shock of pain as the knife slid up, carving a channel from her heart to her collarbone, and then twisted before withdrawing. Blood poured from the ragged hole in her flesh. She fell, unable even to gasp her dying breaths.
For a time, minutes, maybe, the boy was alone. But the clatter of armored feet soon descended the stone steps.
“In here, cap’n! I heard Bethane, I did. Said sommat about a chosen one! I reckon—“
The voices stopped at the tableau.
“Dragons above,” said a voice. What must have been the captain, as his helmet had a half-dozen feathers and his badge had a dark luster, stepped forward and nudged the dead sorceress with the cap of his toe. “It is her.” He knelt down and picked up a handful of scattered cards. The two of knaves was soaked in Margot Bethane’s blood. Not playing cards then, but the thin lacquer suits of the Deck of Wills that Soul Seekers used to read fortunes and conjure magics.
“Is this how you did it, lad?” he asked. The boy said nothing, clearly in shock. The captain sighed, turning to his second. “Sergeant, we've got a mage, here. Get a detail to take this boy to the Seekers Guild.” he lifted the boys chin. “You got a bright future ahead of you, boy. You’re going to a magic academy.” He twisted and looked at the marks where Bethane’s fingers had burnt his flesh with their very touch. He tilted his head to shout at his sergeant. “And get a salve down here! No sense letting these burns scar over.”
* * *
Now
It nearly killed her. Of all the stray demons Mother Mayaz had fought, that had been one of the worst. The formless horror had finally retreated after killing twelve of her disciples and letting those wretches from Barrowdown escape. She shook her head, hair still slick with gore. That had been too close, and it had the stink more than just the undercity about it. The whore hadn’t been worth it. Whoever she really was, and her patron certainly wouldn’t be keen to illuminate. No matter. The girl was nothing to her.
But the boy…
Mother Mayaz shuffled and cut her deck. Sticks of incense burned beside her, doing little to mask the smell of the carnage while the rest of her useless children scrubbed and scraped and picked shards of bone from the walls.
The boy had the taste of Margot Bethane’s blood on him—something few had ever managed, in fact. Drawing blood from the fel witch of Dragonmaw was not something one did, let alone live to see the sun rise. And he would have been but a child when she fell. Mayaz drew three cards from the deck, three cards laced with her will, and spread them on the table under the pale oil lamp.
The boy was a Soul Seeker, as well. She had felt the wild Wills in his deck that he had not yet managed to tame. Her own suits had given her some trouble, but the boy had an unruly chorus of stubborn suits. Would that have been enough that Margot would have sought him out? She collected Soul Seekers like trinkets. She used their reading to safeguard herself. But all her paranoia had gotten her was dead in a basement, her haste pushing the convergence back years. At one time, Mother Mayaz had designs on being her right-hand woman, standing beside her as the surface world fell and the deep law tore down the foul spires of Dragonmaw, striking the highlords from their towers. Now, the witch was little more than a bothersome memory of time and effort wasted.
Mother Mayaz flipped the cards. She looked down, cocked her head, and began to laugh.
So, that’s who he was. Oh, but she ought to be thanking that demon for sparing him. But what to do with this knowledge. Sell it? Hoard it? Bury it deep and stay the course? Margot Bethane had enemies in the city who would be keen to disrupt her plans, even postmortem. Of course, she still had friends, too. Friends that worked desperately to continue the old witch’s legacy.
Oh, this would be interesting.
She put the back of her hand to her temple. After evoking cards for over an hour to try and fend off that demon, even the simple reading had left her light-headed. Will debt was not something she had suffered in years. She caught the eye of one of her retainers.
“Child, come here,” she said. Her eyes glowed.
The man dropped his mop and came to kneel before her. “Yes, mother?” he asked.
Mother Mayaz took him by the shoulders, drew him close, and sank her teeth into his neck. He bucked and thrashed, flopping and gasping as her teeth drove deep into his flesh. Her nails dug into his arms, holding him like vicious hooks.
All around her, her children stopped to watch their brother die in her mouth. They dropped their buckets and their rags and their lye and approached her. One of her daughters took the dying man’s arm in her hands, and bit down, crunching bone between her jaws. One by one, the rest of her children crowded around, vying for position. Within moments, little was left of the man but one more stain to be cleaned.
Mother Mayaz wiped her mouth on an oft-stained sleeve. There was no taste like family.
***
Kridick shouldered open the door to the small safehouse, heaving his love along on his opposite side.
“Lights, when did you get so heavy, Zar’?”
The mongrel coughed into Kridick’s chest. “Taking wagers all day has made you soft, you old drork.”
“Shush,” said Kridick. He looked down at the former pit fighter. Zarry had nearly died getting out of Hollowdown. And Kridick didn’t know what he would have done if—well. He looked into Zarry’s swollen eye, at the hint of mirth that persisted through the pain. It wasn’t the wagers that had softened Kridick.
But look where it had got them. On the lam. Few enough people knew about the girl, but one of them had set the Mayazians on the trail. Despite Daggertongue’s efforts to keep her penned. But Daggertongue wouldn’t see it that way. Kridick had failed to protect her, been out at brunch while a rival gang swooped in and took her right out of the front room. The useless fledgling mage had been in the room and done nothing.
And that devilborn… If Zarry was right, she had blown the whole rescue. Blown his one chance to get his and Zarry’s heads off the chopping block. Daggertongue would do Zarry first, just to make Kridick watch. The damn plane-touched girl, barely more than a whelp herself, had botched it all. And then, not even had the decency to die in the process.
Kridick made his way to the bed, laying the injured mongrel down. He’d left soothing herbs and water for steeping by the bed and started to prepare a basic numbing tea. You learned how to salve wounds in the pits—back when the fighters were mostly slaves. You learned to salve them, and you learned to live with them.
“It’s not their fault,” said Zarry, as if reading Kridick’s thoughts.
“Now who’s soft?” growled Kridick. He put a hand on Zarry’s chest. His shirt was matted with blood. The half-orc had lost his pursuers in the unsheathing, thanks to his orc half granting immunity, even at the center of the cursed district where the air still wavered and puddles boiled after the heavy summer rains. Both of them would be safe here.
But Daggertongue would be waiting. If Kridick wanted to prove his use and keep their heads firmly upon their mongrel shoulders, he’d have to worm his way back into Daggertongue’s pocket. He had to get the girl back. And the path led straight through that thrice damned pair of kits that had caused far more trouble than he could have imagined.
He knelt down and felt around underneath the bed frame until he found a small chest he’d tucked there years prior. He pulled it out and opened it, revealing a set of items he’d thought never to need again.
“Rest up, Zar’. We’ve found ourselves back in harm’s way.”
***
Annalisa sat in the corner of the room she’d claimed at the Mop n’ Bucket, back to the wall and arms wrapped around her knees. The light of dawn crept through the window, and the house was quiet. All those men who came to visit her friends had gone home or fallen asleep, and even the elf boy in her bed snored softly. But Annalisa hadn’t slept in two days. Every time she tried, she saw that horrible pale lady with cards like Darcent’s. Only, Darcent couldn’t do that thing with the shadows. At least, she was pretty sure he couldn’t.
She hoped he couldn’t. To be locked down, unable to move… just like one of those sows wrapped in canvas. And they’d very nearly ended up that same way. Annalisa shook her head.
She had to be stronger. For Darcent, for her family, and for herself. She looked at her own trembling hands. The champion of Dragonmaw had to be tough—the toughest. So why did she feel so weak?
It was because she knew, deep down, that she could have gotten them out of that cellar. If only she’d been able to tunnel. She hated tunneling. It made her head fuzzy, and it was so hard to keep her mind in one place when it wanted to buzz about all the million amazing things she was going to do and see and experience. She could never keep it in once place. The only time it was easy was when Darcent used his magic to help her. But he had been trapped just the same as she was.
It was in one place now. The shark-faced grin of Mother Mayaz burned in her mind. It was the only place her mind went to now. But it would be enough. Plane-touched, they called her. Devilborn. Ripped her way into the world through a birth born and bought with blood. The temperature in the room began to drop. It wasn’t fair. She never chose it. Mother Mayaz had. Who was Mother Mayaz if not a devil? With those eyes and those teeth and that pale, pale skin?
Annalisa held her shaking hands out in front of her. Mother Mayaz, and frost. Two things was way less than a million. If she could just make those two share a space. The shark lady could keep out everything else.
Mother Mayaz and frost.
Slowly, Annalisa began to tear open the veil between planes. Almost as soon as the breach opened, it collapsed with a burst of snowflakes and rime. They drifted down into her hands. But even though the temperature in the room had plummeted, her hands no longer shook.
On the bed, the dozing elf mumbled and pulled the blankets tighter over himself.
She held her hands out, flexing her muscles, and, again, reached for her connection. Her goal had only ever been to become stronger. And now, she had one more reason.
Mother Mayaz and frost.
She wouldn’t be trapped again. Ever.