Cursed Bones

chapter 46



After it had become painfully clear that something had happened to the scouts, Trajan led everyone along the path they’d taken and were relieved to meet them returning to make their report. They’d found a cave with a door at the back of it about ten minutes away. Had the Sin’Rath and House of Karth not left so many footprints, the cave would have remained completely hidden.

“So that’s one way in,” Trajan said.

“You think there might be another?” Isabel asked.

“I’m certain of it. There will be at least one escape passage and probably another entrance as well.”

“If we could find the escape tunnel, I bet it would lead straight to the king’s chambers. We could get behind them,” Isabel said, “and avoid fighting your men altogether.”

“That may be more difficult than you imagine,” Trajan said. “Escape tunnels are often deliberately unfinished, with three or four feet left to dig so the exit point can’t be easily found.”

The rear guard raced up, low and quiet, and whispered something to Trajan, then returned to his post.

“Regency soldiers are coming this way,” Trajan said. “They’re about ten minutes out.”

“We could always hide and let them fight it out,” Isabel said.

“If my father weren’t inside, I would agree with you. As it stands, we have little choice.” He signaled to his point man and they started toward the cave.

The entrance was covered over with hanging vines. Once inside, they found a small cave, measuring ten feet deep, four feet wide, and almost five feet high. The back wall was occupied by a large, stout door. Trajan tried to open it, nodding to himself when it didn’t budge.

“If you give me the space I need to use my magic, I can open that door,” Hector said.

His tone was monotonous, void of passion or feeling, simply conveying information. Isabel made a mental note of his mood. She’d been worried about him since Horace died, but things had really changed with him after he woke the ghidora. His mood was dark, devoid of passion or humor or desire, as if some essential part of him had gone missing.

Trajan and Isabel withdrew about forty feet from the cave and waited for one of his men to signal. They returned to find the door open and two freshly killed men on the floor—both of them Karth house guard. Hector was cleaning one of his swords.

“What have you done?” Trajan said. “These men were of my house. Why did you kill them?”

“So they wouldn’t raise the alarm,” Hector said slowly without looking up from cleaning his sword.

Trajan started to take a step toward him, but Ayela stopped him with a hand on his arm.

Isabel went to Hector and stood in front of him, waiting until he looked up at her. She saw so much desolation in his eyes … it worried her.

“Don’t kill any more of the Karth guards if you can help it,” she said quietly but intently.

He nodded and went back to his sword, checking the sheen by looking along the length of the blade, then carefully, deliberately, sheathing it.

They filed inside, bolting the door behind them, and moved deeper into the underground stronghold with Trajan in the lead. He stopped at a corner, peering around momentarily before quickly pulling his head back.

With hand signals, he indicated three targets, one witch and two house guards. He selected two of his men to attack with him. Then he motioned for everyone else to remain where they were.

Isabel looked around the corner a moment after they moved, watching them race toward the trio without saying a word, weapons up and at the ready. They got within twelve feet before the three turned around. The witch tried to throw some kind of spell at Trajan. The expression on her demonically contorted face transformed from confusion to horror as his club whistled through the air, catching her on the side of the head just above the ear and caving her skull in with one stroke. She slumped to the ground. Trajan’s men grappled with the house guard until they could be shown the truth of the Sin’Rath. Once they saw her true form, they both agreed to work with Trajan to kill the rest.

He questioned the two guards intensely for several minutes, gaining a basic understanding of the stronghold’s layout and learning where his father and the Sin’Rath were likely to be, then assigned them to lead the way.

They quietly passed many doors, some with muffled sounds of snoring behind them. These people had just fled the Regency in the dead of night, narrowly escaping with their lives. Isabel suspected they were all exhausted; the emptiness of the corridors bore that out. The two guards led them ever deeper, winding through some levels and bypassing others entirely. Where they saw guards, they were able to pass without arousing suspicion because of their uniforms and bearing … until they got close to the witches and Severine.

They came upon two guards at the bottom of several flights of stairs. The guards seemed willing to hear them out, waiting patiently as they approached, until they saw Trajan and Ayela and immediately cried out an alarm, drawing weapons. Their two fellow guards that had joined Trajan attacked them with clubs, knocking their swords aside and lunging into them, followed by two of Trajan’s men who took their weapons when they went down.

Isabel smiled as she approached the two men. They stood, held from behind, and looked past her like she wasn’t even there. She casually tossed a pinch of sleeping powder into each guard’s face. They fell in turn.

Trajan nodded his approval. Isabel knew it was about to become much more difficult to survive without killing. At least a dozen men were coming, footfalls in the distance, but getting closer, and quickly. Trajan deployed his men in a line, each loading a dart into his blowtube and facing the end of the hall. They waited patiently until ten soldiers and two witches stormed around the corner into the wide hallway.

Five blowdarts found five men, each of them toppling to the ground moments later from the potent paralysis poison coating the darts. Both witches raised their hands to cast spells over the fallen van of their guard force, but nothing happened.

“Look at what you serve,” Trajan said, pointing his club at the witches. “See the truth of them and strike them down!”

One glimpse of the true form of the Sin’Rath, coupled with the elimination of their magical charms, and the five men bringing up the rear of the witches’ guard set upon them with a kind of frenzied ferocity, as if killing them quickly might bring some measure of atonement for ever serving such loathsome creatures.

Two more of the Sin’Rath Coven fell screaming and cursing. That left seven.

After a brief conversation, the guards swore loyalty to Trajan and agreed to help locate Severine Karth and kill the remaining Sin’Rath. He sent one man to the upper levels to warn of the Regency’s approach, and instructed another to attend to the seven men left sleeping in the hall. He took the remaining three men with him, expanding the number of soldiers under his command to eight.

The wide corridor turned right without any change in size, then ran straight for fifty feet, ending at a large set of stoutly banded doors, closed and barred from the inside.

“Can you open those doors?” Trajan asked Hector.

“Not if the witches are on the other side.”

“They are, I’m certain of it,” said one of the guards.

They started to hear the muted sounds of fighting coming from levels above. Isabel felt helpless. Alexander would be able to see through the door, then open it with ease, but then, he wouldn’t be able to do anything without his magic. She was helpless because of the Goiri bone. With magic, she could burn a hole through the door.

“Hold this, Ayela,” Isabel said, handing her the Goiri bone. Ayela took it, nodding ever so slightly.

Isabel marched off toward the door … and then it hit her. When she stepped out of the null magic field, Azugorath slammed back into her mind. Isabel crumpled to her knees with a scream that filtered through the entire subterranean complex. Azugorath pushed harder and in several different ways than ever before, trying to capitalize on the first few moments of the attack to overwhelm Isabel … and it was working. She felt her control slipping. Azugorath was making inroads, moment by moment, worming her way into Isabel’s mind.

Then the psychic onslaught was gone … vanished in an instant.

Ayela raced up to Isabel, kneeling next to her.

“Are you all right?”

Isabel nodded, taking the cursed bone back from her and smiling sadly.

“I’ll be fine, but I can’t open that door.”

The muffled sound of the bar being thrown stopped them all, every eye on the doors as the bolt slid aside. The doors came open in a rush, twenty soldiers standing ready to charge any intruder. Seven witches stood behind them along with Severine Karth and several of his attendants, his man-at-arms, Erastus, among them.

Trajan stepped forth, his hands held wide, club held high.

“I am Trajan Karth, heir to the House of Karth, and I will be heard!”

The soldiers faltered … Trajan got closer.

“I only seek an audience with my father.”

“Attack!” one of the witches shrieked.

The commander looked to Severine for the order but the king hesitated. Trajan reached the line of soldiers and the men parted. With sudden quickness, he raced through the men and straight to his father.

The witches howled in fury, but they were too late. Trajan got close enough to his father for the witches’ magic to fail, revealing their true nature.

“Behold, Father,” Trajan said, pointing with his club, “the true form of the witches you have served for so long.”

Peti cried out to her sisters from one of the passages leading out of the room. “Come, we must flee!” Only two heeded her warning quickly enough.

With the spell over Severine Karth and his men broken, the witches looked around frantically for a way to escape. The battle turned very suddenly after that. Trajan marched up to the witch nearest his father and brained her with a stroke of his club, a line of black blood-splatter running diagonally across his face.

Then the soldiers set on the remaining witches, killing another three in moments before turning to pursue the three who had fled into the hidden passage. Isabel was still in the hallway. She’d withdrawn to the corner where she could hear the sounds of battle getting closer by the minute. The Regency was here and they were winning.

An explosion rocked the corridor, dust billowing from a room adjacent to the main room. The three surviving witches had collapsed the ceiling of the escape tunnel.

Isabel raced to the main room.

“Trajan, is there another way out? Regency soldiers are coming fast.”

Severine looked old and haggard, like something within him had broken when he learned the truth of the Sin’Rath, but his eyes cleared slightly at Isabel’s question.

“One level up is another escape route,” he said.

“Lead the way,” Isabel said, “we don’t have much time.”

They reached the level above and found a pitched battle taking place between two squads. The Regency were faring better, employing group tactics, fighting in a formation that took advantage of the limited area of the battlefield, using shields in conjunction with spears to present a united front.

The Karth guards were trying to breach their defensive line but only had numerous injuries to show for their trouble. Unfortunately for the Regency, Trajan and his men came up behind their shield line and attacked without warning or mercy. The battle ended very quickly.

Severine led them to a storeroom, everyone filing inside, when soldiers started pouring into the other end of the hallway from the staircase. First dozens, then scores, of female soldiers, all trained and equipped as well as any soldier ever fielded.

“Hector, I want you to go with Ayela,” Isabel said. “Protect her and be ready because at some point I’m going to need you.”

“What are you planning, Lady Reishi?” Hector said.

“I’m going to buy you the time you need to escape,” Isabel said. “Ayela, Trajan, thank you.”

With that she turned and ran down the hallway shouting, “Help!”

Behind her she heard Hector and Ayela yell her name but she ignored them, focusing on her plan.

The lead soldiers fanned out and formed up as Isabel approached.

“Halt! Who are you?”

“My name is Isabel Reishi. Go fetch your commander.”

The soldiers looked back and forth at each other, unsure what to do when a wraithkin pushed his way past the battle line and approached Isabel confidently, a devious smile spreading across his lips.

“Hello, Sister,” he said.

Isabel drew her dagger and slashed his throat in a stroke. His expression was one of stunned shock when he tried to blink and couldn’t, slumping to the ground, bleeding out in a pool of red. The hall fell deadly quiet, all of the soldiers eyeing Isabel with a mixture of fear and awe.

“I’m not your sister,” Isabel said to the dying wraithkin, then looked at the soldiers. “Someone go get your commander or I’ll start killing you,” she said, casually cleaning off her dagger. A few moments later, a woman with emblems of rank pushed through the soldiers arrayed before Isabel.

“What is the meaning of this?” she demanded, a look of alarm ghosting across her face when she saw the dead wraithkin.

“Are you the commander of this unit?” asked Isabel.

“Yes, I’m Commander Henna of the Regency Army. And who are you?”

“I’m Lady Isabel Reishi. Take me to Prince Phane.”