part0040

Vulfort’s sword swept out of its scabbard and through the neck of a necrotic elf before the blasphemous thing could latch onto him with deformed teeth soaked with sewer scum. The flailing body thrashed dark water as what little life clung to it fled and its master laughed.

Clayton had been no necromancer, despite his brief dally with the Morbiclaustrum, the plaguestone that had turned the richest district of Kaharas into diseased hysterics. He sidestepped another at the end of its chain, continuing to flood the unseen rivers with turbulence even as his Sergeant Detector pushed himself into a corner. Someone had taught this sorcery to Constus, someone other than his old master.

Vulfort felt a swell of power, and moments later lances of fetid ice shot up from the surface of the water where he’d stood only heartbeats before. Constus cursed. The turbulence in the rivers was weaker with Boshea and Benedict fighting off the chained aberrations, but Vulfort was feeding it with every ounce of will he had. Dropping it meant a swift and painful death, but if he could make it to Constus he might be able to press the boy to the point of distracting him away from the unseen rivers.

Constus saw his intent, and his glance to the side betrayed an unease, having seen Vulfort for a capable swordsman. He scrabbled at his own waist for his sword, drawing it as Vulfort lunged closer. The Titanum boy erected a swift barrier of ice, making use of the abundant water, and retreated behind it. Vulfort swept his sword down. No longer gifted the spell-etched sword of office, he had nevertheless paid a prodigious commission for one of his own. And it cleaved through the enchantment holding together the barrier with the hiss and shriek of protesting sorcery.

The sword grew hot in his hand as he passed over the quickly-melting ice and after Constus. The tunnel had become as much a horror tableau as the lab, the chained elves emerging from their opaque shrouds of sewer waste to gnaw at the civil watch detachment, dead to a man. How hard they’d tried to ignore the uneven footing beneath the shin-deep water. They snapped at him as he passed, jerking at the ends of their chains as he labored to keep the turbulent rivers centered around Constus Titanum.

“Leave off and die, you old demon!” the boy shouted over his shoulder. He seized on the rivers again, flash-boiling a cloud of scalding steam just as Vulfort dipped to the side to avoid it. Strong he may be, but a full wizard he was not. And Vulfort had seen many of his tricks before. If only he could get close. A powerful sorcerer could kill you a thousand different ways, but a man with a blade needed only one. A sword was as lethal as any spell and just as quick.

He was, however, feeling the weight of his years more than a man his age ought. Ravages of the job had slowed his body, and they showed in his pace as Constus pulled ahead of him. His legs burned. Only two seasons past he’d still been relying on the aid of a cane after being weakened by an alchemical tonic.

Constus turned as he reached the door, lofting the orb and bringing forth two more of his warped and chained elves to bar Vulfort’s path. But as he did, the orange corona around the Remote shuddered and flashed, making Constus flinch as if struck. A hollow thrum, lower than any lute string, echoed through the chamber. Again the orb flashed and jerked in his hand, and his concentration faltered enough that the orange tethers to his two newest pets winked out.

Both cast rotted out eye sockets and jagged, ingrown teeth with macabre intelligence as he clutched the Remote to his chest and stumbled back. Reanimating the dead was one thing, but controlling them? Something else entirely. The spark of necromancy, once ignited, could burn uncontrollably in the presence of death, and now the enchantments fueling these creatures were self-sustaining and without a master to keep them in check.

One lunged at Vulfort while the other dove for Constus. Vulfort heard the singular note of rusty chains snapping as they reached the limits of their tethers and parted. From the corner of his eye, he saw his quarry tumble over the threshold into the sewer, even as Vulfort raised his sword to intercept the howling ghoul leaping for his throat.

His sword took it in the upper chest, the blade grating against bone as its momentum carried them both into the wall of the tunnel. Jagged, hardened nails slashed through his thick coat as Vulfort’s head thumped against the slick stone of the tunnel. His eyes slipped out of focus as white hot pain lanced across his chest and the last of his feedback into the rivers vanished, replaced by a familiar migraine.

With all his might, he rolled the ghoul off him. The heavy corpse wrenched the sword from his grip, caught in warped bone that would not relinquish it. Some life yet clung to the devil, but everything below where his sword cut into spine went limp and useless as it gnashed at him fruitlessly. Amateur work, this necromancy. Deadly, to be sure, but sloppy. He could hear its craftsman’s screams from beyond the side passage, so Vulfort climbed to his feet. His chest burned, and more than sewer water soaked into the shirt.

Try as he might, he could not summon the focus to muddy the rivers again. He lurched on toward Constus’ cries, leaning on his sword for support. He felt sorcery surge again as he entered into the drainage main. Disjointed and haphazard, the spell work created more flash than substance. But it succeeded in frightening whatever senses the ghoul still possessed, and the thing fled into the dark of the tunnel toward the gambling house. The Gravers would have a time chasing it down if it made it into the main accesses to the myriad tunnels beneath the city.

Constus whimpered against the rounded wall of the tunnel, hand wrapped around the tatters of what had once been a trouser leg and the ravaged flesh beneath. Muck dripped from his hair and his clothing, and grime crusted his face underneath a cut above his left brow, forcing that eye shut. His other hand clutched the Remote, so caked with filth it was visible now, its soft orange glow all but extinguished as Vulfort slowly approached.

“The bitch broke the other one. Only three in the world and she smashed it to bits, Alcott. Just like you took an axeblade to my future,” said Constus. He took a half-shuffling step down the tunnel, hissing as his injured leg received weight and taking several deep, panting breaths. Vulfort felt the boy reach for the rivers, and felt them dance away from his touch. He was too pained to concentrate. Deeper in the tunnel, an answering call flared from his Detectors. He allowed himself a small sigh of relief as the subtle winding of the Mulkovas river provided proof that his men were still alive.

Constus tried to wipe the blood from his face with a shaky hand, succeeding only in smearing further filth across his fair skin. “Lord Alcott Vulfort, an adept. That was you spying on me the night I took your radial quartz. You intended that I should have taken the last crate, yes?”

“You are a hard man to kill. Do you know that?”

“I have, on occasion, heard words along those lines.” Vulfort took a step forward. “You are spent, Constus. Give me the Remote.”

Constus hefted the glass ball. “Do you know what I could have done with a dozen of these? I could have owned the southern passage. I could have quelled the kala’del, secured trade contracts, brought my house back from the brink of devastation.”

“They were never for you. Whomever you built them for would have taken them back.”

Constus’ eyes rolled back into his head as he brushed a hand against his wound. “Perhaps,” he said. He made another failed pass at the rivers as Vulfort took another step closer, holding his hand out. “Your raider bitch. I saw her find a clever use for these while I watched her comrades fall. Before she shattered my window.”

Vulfort never saw the swing coming before the Remote crashed into his temple. Constus had not the strength remaining to deal him a lethal blow, but Vulfort still saw lights dance across his eyes as he spiraled down into the water. He sputtered and choked as his face fell below the surface. He tried to pick himself up but a weight fell upon his back. Constus had dived on top of him and had dug his filthy hands into Vulfort’s short hair to hold him under. Vulfort flailed in panic, reaching for the rivers only to have Constus slap away his attempts with no more effort than it would take to brush dust from his shoulder.

His lungs burned, and his fingers slipped on Constus’ wet clothing. The boy was taller and heavier than Vulfort. He could see nothing, hear nothing except the water of the culvert rushing over his head. He desperately cast about with his sorcerous senses. There was only one thing within his reach.

Setting his will to the task, he felt for the ward he had sabotaged with Boshea and Benedict. It lay above him, blazing in his mind’s eye with vicious hostility. It burned so bright he could almost see it through his eyelids and the thick sewage, and he was connected to it through his tampering. With a thought, he removed the safeguards he’d painstakingly put in place.

The reaction was instant. Recognizing his intrusion, the malefic sorcery released its stored energy. He felt Constus figure out what he was doing an instant too late, and jerk backward as the power of the ward flowed over them in a wave like a viscous, oily slick. The pressure on his back disappeared and Vulfort pushed his face out of the water with a great gulping gasp of decrepit air. A small flame flickered where once the ward had been, the wood underneath scorched and sooty. Constus had slid back against the wall, panic on his face as he struggled to open his shirt.

“You killed us!” he screamed, tearing at the buttons.

Vulfort could feel a sickness welling deep within him. “Not if we reach a Mulkovas healer,” he said. A skilled practitioner of the unseen river of life could fortify their bodies against the corrupting influence of the killing ward and expunge the sorcery.

Constus seemed uninterested in waiting. As he opened his shirt, Vulfort could see black creepers slowly spreading under the skin—half a hundred tiny worms of dark sorcery that bored through his flesh. The Titanum boy took several deep breaths to steady himself and then pressed his fingers to his chest.

“Constus, no!” shouted Vulfort.

He felt it as Constus Titanum flooded his body with healing magic, white searing light at the points of contact blinding bright after the relative darkness of the culvert. Constus shrieked in pain and fell on his side, his back arching as his eyes bulged. Such attempts at self-healing were foolhardy at best, and more often lethal. Vulfort didn’t need his sorcerous senses to tell him what damage Constus was doing to his body in his attempt to undo the magic of his own ward. He could see the undulating cords underneath the skin of his chest, see the flesh of his wounded leg boiling over with scar tissue. Foam pushed through his clenched teeth as his body seized. Vulfort was certain the effort would kill him.

And yet, his hands fell away, and instead of launching into convulsions, Constus lay on his back in the muck, moaning, one eye open and unfocused. The corruption was still there, Vulfort could sense it, but it had diminished. Vulfort tried to move from where he leaned against the wall and found he could not. The strength had fled from his muscles as well. His head still throbbed from being struck with the heavy glass of the Remote. Even had he the will to draw upon the unseen rivers, a self-healing was beyond his skill.

Slowly, focus returned to Constus Titanum, and he focused a single bloodshot eye on Vulfort. He struggled to right himself but succeeded only in wallowing in the muck. Even as his body failed him, Vulfort could feel him extending his sorcerous senses, calling to the unseen rivers with the sharp clarity that only an adept of significant power could. His fiancée’s cousin did not seem content to let the killing ward work its slow path through Vulfort’s body.

Before the errant sorcerer’s killing spell could reach him, Vulfort felt another power grow, in the direction of the culvert outlet. It struck out, a bright bolt lancing through the tunnel, shredding Constus’ latest attempt at his life. It howled as it scorched the air, and cast them in sharp relief as it passed overhead. It felt identical to Constus’ own machinations, just as it had at the duel when she’d interrupted his work.

Avarine Titanum conjured an array of witchlights about her person as she drew up the tunnel toward her cousin. They floated, tethered to her and bathing her black hair with their harsh light. Vulfort leaned his head back against the wall and watched her approach.

“Oh Constus, what have you done to yourself?” she asked. Her high boots did an admirable job of keeping out the muck as she sloshed her way to him, arms held out for balance. It was, Vulfort reflected, a very undignified way for an unregistered sorceress to move about.

Constus still maintained only a single eye above the water, and it tracked his cousin’s approach. “What I must,” he spat from the side of his mouth. “For our house and for our teacher. I could not stand idle while you helped the Vulforts dismantle all I had built for us.”

Avarine knelt down, examining the slipshod healing Constus had forced upon his own body. She placed a hand on his leg, coaxing a spasm from the ruined muscles.

“Oh cousin, I did what I did so that you could stop this madness and put the past behind us.”

The boy laughed, spewing dirty water.

“Now you have undone it yourself. You shall swing, dear Avarine.”

The woman rose, turning her back to Constus and once again stopping his attempt to strike at her as the rivers flared. Six Gates, her touch felt just like her cousin’s. Even Vulfort’s finely honed senses couldn’t differentiate the two. Vulfort could smell the sorcery all over her when she knelt in front of him and looked at the killing ward’s work.

“This is vile business,” she said, “even for you.”

“Nothing, compared to what comes. You will wish you had not pushed me away so,” said Constus. A puck of ice began to grow beneath him as he spoke, a tiny trickle of the unseen rivers crystalizing the water of the culvert. It grew large enough to lift his face from the water, and he wrapped the fingers of his limp arms around the rim of the icy disc. It continued to grow until it bobbed in the water and began to carry him downstream.

Avarine began to ply her own healing efforts as Constus slowly floated past. A slower, more concerted healing by practiced hands was still painful, and Vulfort grimaced at her touch.

“So you have chosen him over your own blood, Avarine? The day comes this city will have need of me, and you bear the weight of having cast me out.”

She didn’t turn to look at her cousin again as he faded into the darkness of the culvert. Her hands were full examining the effects of the ward and dredging the deadly sorcery from his body. She didn’t move or make any attempt to hide her abilities several minutes later as Sergeant Boshea assisted a limping Benedict from the derelict lab. The Corporal wore a shocked expression, but the Sergeant Detector merely paused and nodded before the two came forward. Benedict’s leg had been stitched up, likely with the surgical materials from the lab.

“Do not interrupt me, sir,” said Avarine as the pair stepped forward. “I have almost succeeded in saving your commander’s life after his foolhardy escapade with an adept many times his better. I should like to make it a certainty before you arrest me.”

Vulfort heard chains jingle behind Boshea’s back as he replaced the spell-etched restraints in a pocket. He turned to Avarine. “How did you know where to find me?”

She huffed, blowing back a black strand of hair that had fallen free. “You always wear those same flat boots. I put a charm on them the morning of the duel, once I saw how badly Constus wanted you dead.”

“Thank you, My Lady.”

She hesitated a moment, then continued extracting the sorcerous toxin. “It was not just Constus that Daishad Clayton instructed.”

“Yes, I surmised.”

“There is little recourse for one to learn if one’s parentage forbids registration and education as an adept. It would not do, they believed, for their progeny to be seen as a practicing witch. Sorcerers were no better than servants in their eyes. Daishad was my teacher, and a horrible man at times, but he showed me a kindness in his own way and never looked down upon me for what I was. Not often did his values match my own, and I left his tutelage some years ago. I had not touched the rivers again until I met you.”

Vulfort grunted as he repositioned himself. “A tenth of a percent of the population has the gift to feel the rivers. What are the odds we two should find ourselves in this circumstance?”

Boshea approached. “What do you mean, sir?”

“He should conserve his breath,” said Avarine with a pointed look. “But what he means is that coincidences of this magnitude simply do not happen naturally.”

“One tenth of three percent,” said Vulfort. It was the amount of people in whom the gift for sorcery manifested powerfully enough to have to register under the Menetes International Accord that governed the use of sorcery across the civilized nations of Varshon. “And unregistered. Your secret was not as safe as you thought.”

The power in Avarine’s hands dwindled, and Vulfort looked down at his chest. The deep scratches had transformed into a mass of tightened scar tissue, and most of the black creepers that he’d seen on Constus’ chest were absent on his, though some still meandered sluggishly beneath his skin.

“I failed to remove all of it. Your body could not handle the trauma should I try. It latched on too quickly. There was a darkness in you already, Lord Vulfort, and it opened you.”

The Devilbone, and after such a short exposure. Even now its lingering power held sway over his body. He wondered if Sergeant Aimes suffered similar side effects from her exposure.

“You shall be sick, but you should live.”

“Should?” asked Boshea.

She held out her wrists for the restraints. “Nothing is certain, Detector.”

The Sergeant Detector looked between Vulfort and his fiancée and sighed. “I somehow think that will not be necessary, Lady Titanum. I think I shall hold on to my restraints for now.”

Vulfort was sick as Boshea and Benedict hoisted him between them, and twice more as the four of them left the culvert. Vulfort could keep his feet beneath him, and he’d only just grown strong enough to walk without the aid of a cane. They dropped down from the entrance to the tunnel and left the stream where it joined a canal. No sign of Constus or his ice raft. The boy was probably halfway to Borreos by now.