killed in battle many times, but there was an additional strain involved because of the need for silence and the proximity of guards and sorcerous guardians.
Be calm, he told himself, and breathed deeply. Think.
Swiftly he moved back to the wall. Of course, he had lost the exact location in the scuffle. He glared around frantically. His heart raced. At any time, more servants or more sentries might come and find him. He doubted he would be so lucky a second time.
He froze, trying to decide what to do. Should he go back for the bodies and drag them into the warehouse? If he left them lying there, surely someone would find them. On the other hand, every heartbeat he stood here was another heartbeat in which someone might notice him.
He leaned against the wall until the fit of trembling left him. There was blood on his hands, particularly the one that held the knife. He put the blade down carefully and tried to wipe it off on the wall, leaving a series of bloody smears and handprints. It came to him that he might have left similar prints on the outside, a tell-tale sign, along with the corpses, that would let the inhabitants of the Tower know where he had gone.
Another thought occurred to him. What if he had nicked himself with the knife? What if he had somehow accidentally poisoned himself? He checked his hands for cuts and found none. He paused and listened to his pounding heart and rasping breath, trying to detect any signs of either slowing or becoming abnormal. It was long minutes before he decided that there were none, and that he had better get on with his mission.
It was only then that the realisation began to sink in that he had extinguished two human lives as casually as he might have swatted flies. Perhaps Asea was right about him, and right about the Shadowblood.
He pushed the thought aside. Under these circumstances such a heritage could only be an advantage.
The Nerghul pulled itself over the lip of the cliff. Huge walls of glass-like substance loomed over it, wet and slick and gleaming. It was not the walls that troubled the creature, it was the enormous power surging through them. The Nerghul sensed the presence of an intelligence within, tapping that power, one that it would be foolish for it to challenge.
It paced along the narrow ledge, considering. Its experience of the other night had taught it caution. It had taken hours crouching in the darkness among the old ruins to heal its injuries and that place had not been nearly as well defended as this. Still, the scent of its prey led here and it needed to kill, the way a lover needs the caress of its beloved.
There was something strange in the air this night. The flow of power around the Tower was odd. It surged and sank, peaked and troughed. The Nerghul felt the unease of the intelligence chained within the walls. It felt that unease itself the way an animal senses a coming storm. It sensed moments of weakness in the defensive wards, and moments where to touch those walls would mean instant death.
It crouched down to wait for another trough. When the moment came it sprang, reaching the top of the wall with ease. A moment later, it knew the defences were working again, but now it was inside, and it sensed the nearness of its prey.
Soon it would be time to kill.
Chapter Twenty-One
Rik strolled casually around the base of the Tower, trying not to attract any attention. Where had all the people gone? Most likely into the Tower. The hair on the back of his neck rose. His skin tingled. There was a strange feeling in the air, like the closeness before a storm, of that brief instant before a cannonball hit close by.
Something was happening here; he had no idea what, but it made him nervous.
He needed to get inside the Tower and be about his work. Above him he could see a balcony, jutting out from the body of the tower in a streamlined bulge. He took the grapnel and knotted rope from his duffel bag and swung it swiftly upward. It caught on the third attempt. All the while the skin on his back crawled. He expected to be shot by a guard.
Not likely he told himself. It was dark and it was raining. Damp powder would most likely misfire. The thought did not make him feel any better.
He tugged the rope to make sure it was firm then pulled himself up using the knots in the rope for purchase. His fingers struggled for purchase on the rain-slicked spidersilk. His arms burned from having to support his weight. After what felt like hours, he reached the balcony. He had a moment of sheer, stark terror as his fingers slipped on the rope, but he managed to get a grip and pull himself over.
Rain puddled on the slick green stone under his feet. He listened at the closed shutters but could not hear anything within.
He pried the shutters open with his knife. He turned to glance over his shoulders for a last look at the world beyond the Tower, knowing he might never see anything beyond it again.
There was only the great walls, the huge surrounding courtyard and the massive outbuildings. Then he saw it, moving crouched but with unnatural speed across the courtyard, pausing head down to sniff occasionally.
It took him a moment to realise it was following his path exactly and that it had found the bodies of the men he had killed. When it did not immediately give the alarm, the nagging sense of familiarity about the thing crystallised. He had only seen it for a few moments back in the House of Three Swans, but those few moments were enough to burn the memory of it into his consciousness forever.
The Nerghul was on his trail. Fear clutched his heart. His mouth felt dry. He was uncomfortably aware of the throb of his pulse. Sweat beaded his brow. He could not survive an encounter with the thing. He froze for a moment but then the image of the Nerghul clambering up his own rope came to him. Swiftly, with fumbling fingers, he pulled the rope up, then stepped inside the room.
He cursed. He had barely begun and already things had gone badly wrong. How had it got past the guardians, he wondered? What other miscalculations has Asea made? As he crossed the room, he told himself there was no sense in apportioning blame. He checked his surroundings. There were pallets on the floor and small heaps of personal possessions. This looked like servants quarters.
What to do, what to do, he wondered? He already felt as if the Nerghul were only a few steps behind him.
Sardec stood beside Asea as she stared out the window at the Tower.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“I was not thinking, I was praying,” she said.
“There’s nothing we can do now. The carters have returned. Our man is inside. All we can do is hope he is not caught.” Sardec thought about how he had once felt about the half-breed and felt slightly ashamed. He had to admit the man was brave. Sardec was not sure he could have gone into the Tower alone to do what the half-breed was doing.
“If he fails,” Asea said. “We fail.”
“Perhaps not. Perhaps Ilmarec is not as powerful as he thinks.”
“You are not a sorcerer, Lieutenant. You cannot feel what is radiating out of that Tower. Ilmarec is powerful if he controls it, perhaps more powerful than any other living being on this planet.”
Looking at the way the green-lit clouds swirled around the peak of the Tower, Sardec was prepared to believe her. When the lightning and thunder started, it seemed merely another manifestation of the Tower’s ancient evil energies.
Sardec let out a long breath. He was going to suggest that they sit down and have something to drink, but he did not. If all they could do now was keep this vigil, it was what they had to do. Anything else would seem like a betrayal of the man they had sent into that terrible place.
Ilmarec lowered himself into the command throne. All was in readiness. The servants were gathered in the great hall. All of his troops were in position. Kathea was confined to her chambers nearby. The great ritual was complete. Tonight he would unleash the greatest weapon this world had seen in millennia.
He took a final look around. The central chamber was empty save for his demonic bodyguard. It would keep watch while he was at his most vulnerable and deal with anybody who managed to get past his guards and into this sacred place.
