I saw Ryshad looking down on the body, stony faced. “Is that recompense for Aiten?” I slipped my arm around his waist.
“No.” He hugged me close. “Nothing would be. That’s the problem with revenge.” Hard satisfaction warmed his expression. “Which is why I’ll settle for justice.”
“Justice, vengeance.” I met his gaze on level terms. “The important thing is he’s dead.”
“How long have we got to dishonour this body?” Sorgrad held out a hand to ’Gren. “Let’s use his own knife.”
“However long it takes that kitchen maid to convince someone she saw Eldritch Kin in the garden?” I hazarded.
Ryshad shook his head. “You don’t have to believe someone to go and see what they’re scared of.”
“Then we leave.” I’d have preferred to see Ilkehan suffer longer, just to balance the scales for the torments he’d inflicted on Geris but, vengeance or justice, I was finally ahead of the game. The man whose malice had haunted my nightmares and blighted my hopes with fear was dead at our feet and I was still alive. I intended to keep it that way. “Come on, let’s go.”
“What about all these books?” Shiv was looking at the closely packed ranks of shelves. “This is a priceless archive. There must be the answers to all Planir’s questions and ten times more.”
“Knowledge is power.” I stared round the room. “Power we don’t want to leave for whoever ends up top dog around here.”
Squatting next to Ilkehan’s corpse, ’Gren looked up. “Books burn.”
“I can do that.” Sorgrad snapped his fingers and flame played between them.
“Fire’s always a nice distraction for anyone thinking of chasing you.” It wouldn’t be the first time the three of us had fled under the cover of a hearty blaze. I opened a coffer beside the desk that proved to be full of parchments.“Talmia megrala eldrin fres.” Flames sprang up to dance across the written surfaces, blurring the words. Maybe I would learn a little more Artifice now that Ilkehan was too dead to come picking through my brain.
“Here.” Sorgrad had ripped down a tapestry and tucked it around the coffer. As soon as the wood caught, the tapestry would carry the fire to the carpet.
“Can’t we take a few books?” pleaded Shiv.
“Which ones?” I demanded.
“Better hurry”
’Gren was ripping the binding from a slender tome as we spoke, piling the leaves around the coffer where the parchments now blazed nicely. Sorgrad was breaking open another chest to find three silver gorgets and a golden one along with a considerable spill of coin. He scooped it up, heedless of Ilkehan’s blood on the floor.
“We’ll share it out later,” ’Gren assured me before belatedly including Ryshad and Shiv in his glance.
Not that my score with the Elietimm could be settled with gold. I added a handful of reed pens to my little fire and ’Gren pocketed the silver cup they’d stood in.
“If Kellarin’s to restore the study of Artifice, we need to know so much.” Shiv was looking desperately round the book-lined walls.
“Knowledge can’t ever truly be destroyed, Shiv,” Ryshad said impatiently. “Just lost. Someone, sometime will rediscover it.” He stopped abruptly. “What we must find are any artefacts Ilkehan’s holding.”
“The sleepers in Kellarin!” Saedrin forgive me but I’d clean forgotten. “Come on Shiv, people are more important than aetheric abstractions.” I left ’Gren happily tending the burning coffer.
“Help me here.” Sorgrad was already trying to lift the toppled desk. Ryshad helped him, both of them levering open the drawers with daggers.
“Let’s have anything that’ll burn.” ’Gren held out a hand.
A door slamming below us struck us all silent for a moment. The sound of running feet and cries of distress fading into the distance.
“I think there’s blood coming through their ceiling,” Sorgrad said thoughtfully.
“Let me bespeak Planir,” begged Shiv. “If he can raise a nexus, they might save some of the books before they burn.”
Ryshad coughed. The air was thickening. “We don’t want Ilkehan roasted if we’re aiming to shock people with Eldritch vengeance on his body. Get him into the corridor and do your worst while we look for any artefacts.”
’Gren and Sorgrad immediately took an arm each and dragged the bloody corpse out of the room.
“Shiv, the plan was your illusions would keep Ilkehan’s men scared as we fight our way out.” Ryshad hesitated. “All right, try reaching Planir as you keep watch but don’t get us all killed for a few worm-eaten books.”
“I want my hide whole as much as anyone else,” Shiv assured him. The wizard snatched up a polished silver salver and went into the corridor, green magelight swirling around him.
Ryshad coughed again. “If there are artefacts here, we need to find them quickly.” The coffer was blazing like a watchman’s brazier, scorch marks darkening the plaster above our heads.
Closing my eyes, I pictured the vast irregular cavern of Edisgesset, empty but for those few still bound beneath ancient enchantment. I heard the soft steps of those that kept vigil in the hollow silence. A single shaft of light would be coming down the steps, soft breeze fragrant with the summer’s growth outside. I remembered the subtle chill as I passed between that dissolving sunlight and the all-encompassing darkness.
“Thervir emanet vis alad egadir.”
It wasn’t much of a charm, just a jaunty snatch from a ridiculous tale about a lackwit called Nigadin. He went looking for his knife and, finding it, recalled he’d left his belt somewhere. Finding that reminded him he’d mislaid his boots. Tracking them down, he realised he was without his breeches and so it went on. But I’d used the charm when young Tedin has lost himself and it had led me to the lad. I held those whose bodies rested in that cave in my mind. The old man Gense, sallow face sunk away from his beak of a nose, wisps of hair still surprisingly dark across his bald pate. A boy whose name escaped me, skin pale as milk, tousled hair touched with red that hinted at Forest blood, his head looking too big for the frail body beneath it. Velawe, long a friend of Zigrida’s, work-roughed hands with swollen knuckles clasped beneath her sagging breasts, even this enchantment unable to smooth the lines of worry and toil graven between her brows. Porsa, her daughter, beside her, silly, pretty face swathed in a frivolous lace wrap, the curls in her hair still as crisp as the day the tongs had made them.
“Thervir emanet vis alad egadir.” Belligerent shouts from the stairs opened my eyes.
“Well?” Ryshad watched me intently.
“Next door.”
The corridor was a scene from an addled drunk’s nightmare. Shadows played on the walls like black flames, licking along the floor and up to the ceiling. Shapes came and went on the edge of seeing, distorted heads and bent bodies scampering on unnaturally elongated limbs. One capered in the stairwell, darkness incarnate, eyes of starshine, teeth and nails the pale silver of a mist-shrouded moon. A valiant arrow shot through it, clattering against the wall behind. The figure ducked, huddling in on itself, shadows folding and moulding anew. We heard determined boots thudding on the stairs, shouts urging them upwards.
The darkness reared up with a new mask, a wolf’s head snarling and weaving, twice life size and topping a man-shaped body with clawed hands tipped with ice-white talons. The beast snatched up the fallen arrow and threw its head back to howl like a gale from frozen -heights. Breath steamed icy from its maw and rolled bodily down the stairs. We heard frantic feet taking flight even before the arrow tumbled down after them.
“Nice to see Shiv paid attention to ’Gren’s yarns,” muttered Ryshad.
I was too busy gaping for comment. Startling illusion overlaid Shiv’s crude disguise with a vision of Eldritch Kin seen in fever dreams. Too tall and too thin for ease of mind, a shaft of moonlight in one bony hand, his skin was the bottomless blue of a still pool caught beneath twilight. His hair was shadow darker than those rarest of nights when lesser and greater moons both quit the sky for mysteries of their own. His eyes were black hollows seeing into the very shades, threatening to suck the life from any who caught their gaze.