A loud crash of metal told him that Aegis had dispatched the last of the skeletons, so Tallis took that moment to retrieve his hammer. He caught a look of disbelief on Soneste’s face. “Hence, never touch the sword. Ever.” He used his hammer to smash the jeweled hilt from the man’s preternatural grip, then used the man’s own cloak to pick it up by the blade-which had already reappeared on the hilt. “It’s called the Ferine Blade. Something went wrong during its creation, I suppose. It’s cursed, what we in the business call a ‘backbiter.’ ”
Tallis returned the weapon to its sheath on his back. He kicked the corpse at his feet. “These are Charoth’s fodder, muscle recruited from the Low District, but those”-He pointed to the shattered skeletons-“are the Cult’s work. It confirms Gan wasn’t lying about their involvement. We should expect more.”
A muffled voice drew their attention to the corner of the chamber. In the light of the recovered sunrod, Tallis could see that that the shape in the corner was a large, high-backed wooden chair set against an unusually protruded section of the wall. Seated within was a figure lashed with thick rope with its head covered in a black hood.
“Gods, please!” he heard Soneste whisper as she hastened to the captive. Aegis approached beside her, sword and shield ready.
“Be careful,” Tallis warned as he made his way over. “It could be a trap.”
With her dagger in her left hand, Soneste pulled the hood away with her right. She gasped, then dropped to one knee and bowed her head.
“Thank the Sovereigns,” she said, then looked back up into the disheveled-and gagged-face of a young man who could be no more than nineteen years of age. “Your Highness … I am so sorry for this.”
Prince Halix-by Aureon’s light, it really was him! — tried to speak through the muffle. His eyes were wild and he shook his head with alarm.
Tallis held up a hand. “Be care-”
Something fast and hard struck him in the head. He could barely make sense of it, the world spinning too fast for him to guess at his attacker. The room pitched sideways and he felt the hard floor crash into his side. There was some shouting, a woman’s grunt and the warforged’s bellow. Tallis forced his eyes open again, only to see that he’d fallen to the ground. His brow and cheek stung from the unexpected blow. He looked up to see Soneste and Aegis battling-
The chair?
Strange, blunt limbs had reached out from the back of the chair to which the prince was still bound and some even sprouted from the wall behind it. Halix remained in place, though the coils of rope appeared to have loosened as they shook in the attack. Soneste’s dagger lay flat against the suddenly mobile chair’s back as if held by some magnetic force, and Aegis’s sword had been plucked away by one of the sticky limbs and stuck to the wall. As he watched, the chair and wall protrusion undulated weirdly, like an elastic construct, reaching out with ropey strands the texture of the rest of its body to strike at the Brelish and the warforged.
Not a construct. A creature of flesh. That could imitate furniture?
Tallis climbed to his feet even as Aegis attempted to barrel into the moving wall. Instead of smashing it, the thing merely quivered like rubbery flesh. The warforged’s whole body remained attached to the creature precisely where it had struck it.
“I am stuck,” Aegis announced. He struck at the creature with an empty fist, even as it pummeled him in turn. The flexible limbs rebounded off his plating, but Aegis grunted with each strike.
Halix, held fast by the creature’s adhesive body from the start, could only struggle in vain. Even the coil of rope appeared to be part of its body.
Soneste stood back for a moment, unable to get in a clear strike with her rapier without risking the prince harm.
The whole situation was absurd. Tallis rotated his hammer, ready to strike with the sharp mithral pick’s head. “At the same time, then,” he said to Soneste.
“Watch the prince,” she warned him.
At her words, the false ropes tightened around the boy’s torso. Even gagged, the prince gasped from the constriction. At the same time, Aegis broke free. He staggered away from the counterfeit wall.
“Prince will die. Move away!” a genderless voice called out. Tallis searched for the source.
It had come from the creature. Something akin to a toothless mouth had formed on the false section of wall and spoke again. “Move away.”
Tallis and Soneste both backed up.
“I do not understand this,” Aegis said.
“We’re away now!” Soneste demanded. “Now let him go. We’re not interested in killing you, only freeing your captive.”
“Trade,” the mouth said. “Your prince for your sword.”
“My sword?” Soneste asked, looking down at the rapier in her hand. She was more puzzled than dismayed.
“Your sword,” the wall said, pointing one of its springy limbs in Tallis’s direction. “Green fire sword. Give.”
“The Ferine Blade?” he asked, perplexed.
“Prince dies.” The coils tightened again, and Halix groaned in its grasp.
“Fine!” Tallis shouted. He pulled the sheathed weapon from its place at his back and tossed it by the chair’s legs.
The foremost legs of the chair stretched and grasped the Ferine Blade and in that same moment expelled Halix. The false ropes melted away into the creature’s body. Soneste jumped forward to catch and steady the boy, but Tallis couldn’t tear his eyes away from the bizarre creature.
It immediately altered its shape. The stony wall-shaped portion of its body fused with the woodlike chair and together they transformed into a boxlike shape. When it had finished, the creature resembled a massive, iron-bound oak chest. The appendage that still held the Ferine Blade dropped it into the open cavity of the chest’s interior, but not all the way. The jeweled hilt protruded from the lip of the chest, gleaming in the light of the sunrod. The creature remained perfectly still.
How inviting, Tallis thought.
Prince Halix ir’Wynarn moved away from Soneste, tearing the gag from his mouth and trying to give himself space. Aegis, in a surprisingly expressive display, unbuckled the Rekkenmark sword from his waist and offered it to him. Halix accepted it without a word, drawing forth the blade. With a weapon in hand, the boy-it was difficult for Tallis not to think of him as such-appeared to regain his composure, as if regaining control of his own fate. Even roughed up as he was, Halix carried himself with an air of dignity. He looked young, dauntless but untried.
Halix gave the chest-shaped creature a final look of disgust then looked around.
“Where is this?” he said, gesturing with the blade at the chamber around them. The aristocratic Brelish accent was unmistakable.
Soneste dropped to one knee again. Aegis followed suit. Here in these filthy catacombs, Tallis found the sight almost comedic. “My prince, we are beneath the estate of Lord Charoth Arkenen, whom we have reason to believe is a traitor to Karrnath.”
“And you are …?”
Soneste’s eyes widened. “My apologies, Highness. I am Soneste Otänsin, inquisitive of Sharn and Thuranne d’Velderan’s Investigative Services, now in Korth by request of the Citadel. This is Aegis, formerly in service to the ir’Daresh family, now sworn to service directly to the crown. This …”
Soneste looked over to Tallis, who shrugged. “This is … Tallis.”
“Major Tallis?” the prince asked, eyes widening ever so sleightly.
As he heard his name spoken by the young prince, the enormity of Charoth’s stratagem sank into his gut like an anchor. Even Lenrik’s death, while egregiously painful to Tallis, would go unnoticed to the rest of Khorvaire, but the demise of a Galifar royal like Halix ir’Wynarn? That could unmake the tenuous peace of the remaining nations. Was Charoth aiming to renew war? What did he stand to gain?
No, the prince was still alive. In fact, Halix was still in pretty good shape.