“So be it,” my grandmother hissed. “We shall do this the hard way, ye ungrateful derelict.” She punched me full in the face and I slammed back, head rattling off stone. The metal tang of blood from a split lip filled my mouth. Another blow followed, then another. She leapt atop me, straddling my waist.
I tried to shove her off but my body felt heavy and clumsy, still affected by whatever alchemic she had given me. “Don’t make me use my magic on you.”
Her face twisted with cruel and heartless fury. “Ye are nothing, just street filth squeezed out o’ an ungrateful cunt o’ a daughter.
Ye will obey me!” She looked down on me with those sinister, glowing purple eyes that saw nothing but a tool of her making. “Ye would be foolish to try your Gift. I am warded against all magic. I created your faithless wretch of a mother, boy, and in the stupid cow’s absence her vulgar whelp must take her place in the ritual. For ye the future holds nothing save a life sacrificed to serve a greater purpose. I have dreamed o’ ye wading through rivers of blood as thousands die around ye. It is better that your life ends now to usher in a better future directed by my hands. At least your pathetic life will have a point to it.”
She waved to a wall where thirty-six yellowed skulls sat in niches. “There sit your aunts and uncles, who proved unGifted and their bodies unable to withstand the Queen o’ Winter’s power. Useless wretches the lot o’ them – Gifted children are so very rare. But ah, your ungrateful mother… such promise wasted! How glad I am ye are here to take that ugly cow’s place.”
“Go fuck a goat, you syphilitic whore,” I spat into her face, along with a goodly blob of phlegm and blood. “You are insane – you murdered your own children!”
She snarled and her nails extended into claws. “Not children. Flawed spawn carried in my belly like sacks o’ gold that turned to shite when they dropped. Useless creatures. But your body will serve me well – that harlot o’ a daughter did something right after all. I shall force the pact upon ye by carving the Queen o’ Winter’s name directly into your heart as painfully as possible.” She smirked as her claws raked down my cheek and neck, ripping deep through flesh and muscle before plunging into my chest, digging through muscle towards my heart.
My face burned like the wounds had been doused with salt and acid. Blood poured out of me. Agony chased away my grogginess. Warded against all magic was she? I thought not – when was the last time a proper mind-fucker like me was around? Far beyond her lifetime. I opened my Gift and slammed into her mind, squeezing hard. I didn’t give a crap if the shadow cats found my scent here and killed her because of it.
One of her wardings had some small effect on my power but it was probably a half-remembered ancient structure passed down through the centuries, one nowhere near strong enough to defy me. It wasn’t like they could have tested it.
Angharad was tough, many centuries old from the stray thoughts flashing through her mind, and she resisted mightily.
She gasped and drew her dripping claws back, shaking her head. It gave me enough time to reach up and grab the front of her robes. I pulled her down as I sat up, my forehead ramming into her nose.
We both screamed in pain, mine from the gaping wounds in my face and neck, and her from a broken nose and my blood in her crystal eyes.
She tumbled to the floor and I rolled off the slab to fall atop her, elbow crunching deep into her stomach. I went mad, punching her in the face, over and over until she shoved me off with one hand. I flew backwards into a wall with bone-jarring impact.
I had been too enraged by pain and panic to notice this lesser pain and surged back to kick her in the side. As I went for a second blow she grabbed my foot and twisted, taking me down.
She came at me claws bared, then slowed as I found a crack in her mind, forced myself into the oozing darkness inside and ordered her to stop. Her mind was like sticking my hand up an angry badger’s arse – she fought me every step with feral rage like I had never felt before.
The door to the chamber ground back and two angry druí in robes stormed in, shouting about their spirits sensing blood spilled across their holy signs.
At my command, Angharad dropped in a daze while I faced the other two. One flung razor shards of ice at me. I dodged, then kicked him in the balls hard enough to kill his unborn children. I smashed the other’s face into the wall and sprinted past, clutching my ruined cheek in one hand as she fell back spitting blood and teeth. I would have killed Angharad if I’d had the time but I could hear others stirring in the tunnels and rooms nearby. I only knew that I had to get out of that subterranean pit of daemons and take my chances under an honest sky.
The rest of that week was all a blur of blood and panic and pain, of frantic, vicious fights for survival and scrabbling down slopes of scrubby scree by moonlight as I fled on foot through the slumbering valleys.
I had vowed to never again venture anywhere near Kil Noth unless it was to kill my grandmother.
Perhaps when all of this Scarrabus nonsense was over and done with I would see about fulfilling that old promise. For now, I was here and being marched into the depths of Kil North all over again on my grandmother’s orders, except this time I was the angry badger with sharpened claws and wicked teeth bared that they were letting into their home. I was sure they would end up regretting it.
Chapter 14
The interrogations began with Granville. A dozen druí took him to the far side of the stone hall we were confined in and sat him down in a plush chair. They asked him seemingly innocuous questions that he seemed happy enough to answer. As interrogations of prisoners went, it was strangely friendly, with no chains and sharpened knives or pliers for fingernails and teeth – instead there was roast pork and ale on the table and comfy chairs for all, but a prison it remained.
A dozen men and women in fine woollen robes sporting ornate bronze arm rings and golden torcs stood scrutinising every single thing we did, and a handful of armed warriors with wary eyes stood ready at their side. All of the druí bore black and blue tattoos, some that proudly proclaimed their original clan from before they became druí, and others with more esoteric meanings. A few were just there for plain old vanity.
At least Angharad was elsewhere; I wasn’t sure I could bite my tongue and stay my hands much longer otherwise.
Bryant and Secca reached for mugs of ale. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” I said. “We are prisoners, which means no guest right prevents them lacing your drink with alchemics to make you spill your guts. Or poison come to that.” They swiftly withdrew their hands.
I watched carefully, wondering what their goal was here. This was no way to treat allies on the eve of war. Clansfolk druí were nothing like Arcanum-trained magi and with a few notable exceptions, relatively unaccustomed to using their Gift for direct offensive purposes. At least they had no idea what I was now capable of. I had thought myself so strong last time I was here, so very cunning. Hah! I’d been naught but a whelp then, and rudely disabused of those notions.
Despite their dire warnings, I eased open my Gift and sent out careful feelers. There was a reason this was happening, and I was certain my grandmother stood to gain something from it.
It did not take long for me to uncover the stain of Scarrabus in the room, quietly watching from inside the bearded man busy interrogating Granville. I was careful not to let it detect me as I scanned the rest of the Clansfolk. The others were clean.