The Tide of Unmaking Read online

  “I know how I sound,” Kiri Lee whispered at last. “I know what I’d think if I were you: she’s the one Jett died for. Her guilt has frayed her sanity at last. Maybe it has. Maybe, but I don’t think so. If there’s anything I remember, it is the feel of Jett’s touch. He healed me, remember? He healed you, Autumn. Don’t you remember what it felt like?”

  Autumn looked away.

  “Well, I won’t ever forget his touch,” Kiri Lee said. “He broke through the window to touch me again. And I felt him.”

  “That settles it,” Tommy said.

  “Settles what?” Kat asked.

  “Kiri Lee’s not crazy,” Tommy said. “And while I don’t know who or what she saw, it’s clear that we need to take this visitation seriously.”

  “A Wisp?” Jimmy said, “yu think it might’a been a Wisp?”

  Kiri Lee shivered visibly. “I…I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “I don’t know,” Tommy said. “But there’s one way to find out.”

  “Jett’s grave,” Goldarrow whispered. “You propose we visit his grave?”

  “It’s the only way to know for sure,” Tommy said. “We’ll go at first light.”

  “Now,” Kiri Lee said. “I want to go now.”

  “But it’s still a wee bit dark,” Jimmy said.

  Kiri Lee glared at him.

  “Ah,” Jimmy said, “now it is, then.”

  Eleabor Thrain’s shoulders and back ached as if he’d just wrestled a Gwar infantry unit. Since he’d taken over the chief caretaker position, he’d never worked so hard as he had this night.

  Eleabor tossed his shovel into the corner of the workshop and made his way back to his chair. His comfy chair. He patted the cushions and ran his hands lovingly over the backrest.

  He glanced through the eastern window. The sun would be up in no time. Layers of mist floated among the gravestones and monuments, out in the blue-gray twilight.

  Eleabor wiped the sweat from his brow and was about to plop down in the chair when dremask lights appeared out in the mists. They moved swiftly, bobbing closer like so many will o’ the wisps. They were upon the cottage threshold before Eleabor could blink.

  “Caretaker Thrain?” came a voice. Torchlight danced on his cottage ceiling, and seven visitors stood before Eleabor. He recognized them instantly and suddenly felt as if he stood in quicksand.

  Guardmaster Goldarrow and the six Great Lords of Berinfell, he thought, swallowing deeply. Now that’s a first for me, and no mistake. And…maybe a last.

  Eleabor swallowed and bowed low. “My Lords,” he muttered, “I…I’m honored by your visit. But, er, I must admit to some confusion. The hour is very early, and I had no notice of your coming. Is something amiss?”

  Goldarrow stepped forward. “Good caretaker, we have an errand most urgent,” she said. “Please conduct us to the resting place of Lord Hamandar Nightwing.”

  A chill raced up Eleabor’s spine. How could…? There was no answer to that question in his old mind. He felt pangs of guilt like waves of filth splashing on the sewer banks. “Uh, of course, of course,” he said. “Please follow me.”

  Eleabor grabbed the dremask lantern he’d shuttered only moments before and set off reluctantly for the monument. He took a circuitous route so that he’d have time to think.

  Telling the truth was only right and proper. He’d simply have to explain that he’d fallen asleep while on duty, allowing some Gwar hoodlums to come in and wreak havoc among the dead. Oh, and why, yes, they did rob Lord Hamandar’s grave…all on my watch.

  As appealing as that admission sounded to Eleabor, there was a rather large hurdle; one that prevented him from telling the truth, that might just earn him the gallows if the Lords discovered what he’d done.

  The sun was still blessedly far below the eastern horizon, allowing the tendrils of night to hold Berinfell in its grasp for yet a little longer.

  As Eleabor followed the final turn past the grand resting place of the Lords of Old, his heart thudded so loudly in his chest, he thought it might burst. He stopped a dozen feet from Lord Hamandar’s monument and turned his dremask lantern so that the most direct light fell elsewhere.

  But Guardmaster Goldarrow and the Lords would have none of it. They jostled by Eleabor, surrounded Hamandar’s grave, and held their torches and lanterns high.

  Eleabor refused to breathe for several interminable moments, waiting for the questions to fly. And then the accusations.

  “What do you make of this?” Goldarrow asked at last.

  Lord Felheart Silvertree, called by his earthly name, Tommy, said, “I don’t know what to think.”

  Their eyes all seemed to shift back and forth between the grave and Lord Lothriel Oakenflower…Kiri Lee.

  “I can’t understand it,” she said, her cheeks already splashed with tears. “I saw him.”

  “But the glass?” Lord Thorwin Valorbrand said. “It’s not yur fault. Yu could’na seen too clearly—”

  “I know what I saw, Jimmy,” Kiri Lee retorted, but the conviction drained from her words as she spoke. “He touched me. I can’t doubt my own senses…can I? Well, can I?”

  “Wisp,” Goldarrow muttered. “Had to be.”

  “That could explain it,” Tommy said. “Kiri Lee, do you think—could it have been?”

  Kiri Lee knelt at the gravesite and ran her fingers over the costly marble gravecap.

  Eleabor tried to swallow his heart back down to his chest. She knew. She had to know. I’m as good as dead, he thought.

  Kiri Lee stood and exhaled deeply. “It must have been a Wisp,” she said. “But to what end? And under whose direction?”

  “This bears long thought and keen discernment,” Guardmaster Goldarrow replied. “Come, it has been a long night. Let us return to Gladhost.”

  “Consult the Prophecies?” Tommy asked. Goldarrow nodded.

  “My Lords?” Eleabor Thrain blurted out. “Forgive my intrusion, but I don’t understand—”

  Goldarrow raised a hand. “No, good caretaker,” she said. “It is our intrusion. Doubtless this place and your occupation here are hard enough without our unannounced invasion during the wee hours.”

  “It is no trouble,” Eleabor muttered, trying to maintain some kind of eye contact but failing miserably. “But…what has drawn you here? If there is some assistance I might provide—”

  Goldarrow smiled and actually put a hand on Eleabor’s shoulder. “No need to concern yourself,” she said. “We came to Innskell hoping to find, well…I am not certain what we were hoping to find or that hope is even the correct term. In any case, we have found nothing amiss here.”

  She turned to walk away but stopped suddenly. “One question, good caretaker,” she said. “You know Innskell better than anyone in Berinfell. Do you see anything amiss with this monument, the final rest of our friend?”

  Eleabor couldn’t squeak out a word. He shook his head vigorously.

  “Have you seen anything strange this night?” Tommy asked. “Anything at all out of the ordinary?”

  Eleabor felt like he’d swallowed broken glass. His stomach twisted, and something railed at him to tell the whole awful truth. But again he shook his head. No.

  Tommy nodded. Goldarrow and the Lords turned to depart, and Eleabor followed.

  Somehow, the journey back to his caretaker’s cottage seemed even longer than the trip to Hamandar’s tomb. Guilt weighed most heavily upon Eleabor as he watched the Guardmaster and the Lords departing Innskell, the rising sun painting their backplates and cloaks in dawn’s pink and orange.

  Eleabor thudded into his favorite chair, but it brought him no comfort. He couldn’t believe he’d pulled it off. He’d taken one of the pricey marble tomb caps from the storage chamber and hewn it to a design like to Lord Hamandar’s. He’d even engraved it from memory, and in record time, though far more sloppy than he cared to admit. And somehow, the Lords and the Guardmaster hadn’t noticed.

  A stark image would not leave Eleabor’s mind though. He could not push it away. It was the tears streaming down from Lord Lothriel’s huge dark eyes.

  Eleabor’s job was safe, but he felt somehow his soul was not.

  5: Cloak and Dagger

  THRUM.

  ERAGOR HATED THE SOUND: the muted buzz of the daggerflies, thousands of them, recently hatched and thrumming their wings as if there were no tomorrow.

  Close enough, thought Eragor as he lumbered along the central duct. Blasted daggerflies lived only a month. The Chief Practitioner hadn’t found a rite to extend the lifespan beyond that. It didn’t really matter much, not with the sheer numbers they’d been breeding, with five-hundred more each day. The delvers had tripled their shifts just to create enough cavern space to house the things.

  And now: Thrum.

  Six square miles of corridors, catacombs, chambers, and caverns hidden beneath Canada’s mountainous Northwest Territories—all that space—and not one place a self respecting Gwar could go to get away from the sound. Eragor halted outside Lord Asp’s chamber and put his hand up to the stone wall. It was faint but even here, a restricted space far from the hatcheries and hangars, he could feel—and hear—the vibration. Thrum.

  Twin doors of black wrought-iron marked Lord Asp’s quarters. Eragor lifted his fist to strike the door but froze.

  “You…are bidden enter, General.” Asp’s resonant voice drifted out from under the doors like smoke. Few words, but somehow filling the hall…suffocating.

  Eragor swallowed. Hate when he does that.

  He adjusted the leather at his collar beneath the chestplate, shoved the doors inward, and then strode inside. Asp’s chambers were far from the tiny, honeycombed living quarters used by the soldiers. Six steps in, and one found a multilevel, cylindrical library that went up a hundred feet or more, like a silo. A diffused shaft of light rained down from an ice window high above. Earagor wondered if Asp had taken every old book, scroll and manuscript from Earth and brought them here. It was dizzying to look up at them all.

  “My lord?” Eragor called. There was no answer.

  Eragor squinted, but Asp was nowhere to be seen. The Gwar went forward, out of the natural light in the library into the unnatural glow of green dremask in Asp’s laboratory. On one long table, all manner of oddly-shaped, glass containers bubbled away over open flames. Some were clear. Some viscous. Some faintly luminous. And others as dull as dead eyes.

  One of the largest containers, a gourd-sized globe filled with a sloshing, bruise-colored fluid, fed into more than a dozen rubber tubes. These emptied, one tiny drip at a time, into an army of small vials. A massive book lay open nearby. Eragor ran his fingers across the page, following the script as much as he could. He knew as much of Asp’s wiry script as any Gwar might, but it was nearly impossible to decipher. Something about blood and fire and…control.

  Eragor looked up suddenly and found himself staring into cold, blue wolfs eyes.

  He staggered backward a few steps and ripped his war mallet from its holster. He didn’t swing the bludgeon. The wolf, he saw now, was already quite dead. It lay motionless, sprawled on a four-legged grate. The wolf had been a magnificent creature: a hundred-fifty, hundred-seventy-five pound gray with a lush pelt. Gone now.

  The wolf had been split from its torn-out throat down to its abdomen. Its blood still dripped into a metallic catchment. From there it seemed to be siphoned off in several directions and—

  “General.”

  Eragor jumped again, spun and made no aggressive movement with his weapon. No aggressive motion whatsoever. His Commander, Lord Asp Bloodthorne, stood before him. Towered over Eragor to be precise.

  And at six foot six inches tall, the Gwar general was not easily dwarfed.

  But Asp was Drefid-kind and…something else.

  “You have come all this way.” His voice cascaded down from the darkness beneath his huge hood. Not even a glimmer of eyes. The words seemed disembodied. “You bring news, then?”

  Eragor stared at the Drefid’s gnarled hands, the only part of Asp not hidden by the cloak. He knew well that, with a thought, Asp could summon long, razor-sharp talons from those fists. “I-I do,” Eragor said. “The Practioners have succeeded at last. They’ve diluted the Gnomic cloaking paste without affecting its, uh…unique properties. It won’t hinder the Warflies or daggerflies now.”

  “Of course the Practitioners have succeeded,” Asp said, walking past Eragor to the long table.

  “You knew?” Eragor cleared his throat. “But it was just now…how could, well, I just came to tell you.”

  “Relax, General,” Asp said. “I am endowed with many unique skills, but not among them is the ability to see through walls.”

  Eragor swallowed. “How then did you know?”

  There was a wet clicking sound, and Asp used his talons to turn the page of the huge tome. “Motivation, General. I was simply confident that my will would be carried out. You may have noticed that the Practitioners who succeeded were not of the same team that began the work some months ago.”

  Eragor blinked. Come to think of it, he hadn’t recognized any of the Gwar and Drefid Practitioners who’d succeeded. The Gwar laughed nervously. “What? Did you send the first team to clean the spider pens?”

  Asp skewered the dead gray wolf and flung it into a wide cask in the corner of the chamber. “No, General. They failed,” Asp said, casually wiping his talons on his cloak. “I gutted them and hung their carrion for the spiders to feed upon.”

  Asp turned back to his thick book, read a moment, and said, “You cannot afford to have a message misunderstood, you see.”

  Eragor felt as if his collar had tightened three sizes. “Lord Asp,” he managed to croak, “I have understood your message…completely.”

  Asp stood very still for a moment. His hooded head bobbed once. “You continue to impress me, General,” Asp said. “Join me at the table.”

  Eragor approached.

  Asp pointed to the text. “Could you follow…my recipe?”

  Eragor shook his head and involuntarily stepped backward. “Your work,” Eragor said, “is beyond my skill.”

  “Is it?” Asp turned and bent toward Eragor. “I believe you underestimate your potential.”

  Scarcely eighteen inches separated Eragor’s face from his Commander’s. So close that Eragor felt Asp’s chilly breath, but he couldn’t penetrate the shadows of Asp’s hood to see his face. Not that he wanted to.

  Asp turned back to the table. “Do you see what I am brewing here?” Asp asked. “I am close. So close. The wolf’s blood was key, and yet I still do not understand why.”

  Eragor peered more closely, watched the bruise-colored liquid drip into the smaller vials. He asked. “What is it?”

  “It is what changed me,” Asp said. “After all, General, it’s not about what you are…but what you may become.”

  Asp turned suddenly, and his cloak swirled around him like a dark curtain. There was a glimpse, the briefest impression of Asp’s torso.

  There was something very unnerving about that impression. A bend or hinge where there shouldn’t be, a rigid edge or jagged point—whatever it was, Eragor didn’t like it. He chastised himself to never again look inside Asp’s cloak.

  The master strode out of the lab, and Eragor followed at his heels.

  “I have found something extraordinary,” Asp said, stopping in the center of his library where the ethereal light fell upon him from above. “Among the humans, there are great works to be read. Surprising, but true. I have plundered their vaults and brought many hundreds of their books to rest here among my own. There is history, lore, even primitive religion. And one not so primitive. One moment.”

  Asp suddenly leaped up into the air. His cloak flapped, and he came to rest on a rail at the second level of his library. He clambered sideways a moment and then jumped out into the open air. He landed on another rail a level higher up.

  Eragor watched as the Drefid leaped from side to side, from one section to the other. He went up and up until he was just a shadow flashing across the small circle of light high above. Then Asp returned, descending the same way, and landing with a dull thud right next to Eragor.

  Asp held a thick black book in his hands. “This,” he said, “is inspired work.”

  Eragor squinted at the title. “On the Origin of—”

  “Species, yes,” Asp replied. “By Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. In this book, General, are the same teachings as the Dark Arts Masters. I am convinced that this, this Darwin, was one of our own from long ago. His wisdom is beyond mankind. Strength, General, rules all and outlasts all. Survival of the fittest. This book confirms what I have always believed…what I have always seen. Do you understand?”

  Eragor stared at the book and shook his head.

  “But you will,” Asp said. “When I solve the last remaining problems and perfect the venom, you will understand all too well. You see, General, I am the apex creature, the strongest of all. The Dominant. The Favoured Race. But we must all be stronger still so that we may endure through the ages. For there is much to do. The Vulrid declares it.”

  Asp raced into his laboratory and returned with a vial of the purple liquid. “What of you, General?” Asp asked. “Will you evolve? Will you drink with me?”

  Eragor stared at the vial and blinked. “I…I do not know. Of course, if your book—uh, the Vulrid commands it, I—”

  “No?” Asp said. “Of course not. You’re no fool. You would see it tested on slaves first. As would I. It is time, General.”

  Eragor had anticipated this much at least. “Which base?”

  “Yellowknife,” Asp said. “Only about 200 personnel, but plenty of what they call mechanized weaponry. Take Warspiders and daggerflies. Cloak everything and go in bright daylight.”