The Brat's Final Gambit

Niam faced the door, which was much more than a door. So different from the boxes, a distant part of him realized, but he pushed all thought away. He closed his eyes against a garish light pouring out of the thing, but it did no good. What he saw was not light, but more like an inner illumination of another person’s mind, somehow condensed into something physical—viscous, inky, and ultimately malleable. When he looked at it, what he saw were writings and drawings, yet that wasn’t exactly it, was it? What had first looked like words flowed and transformed into brilliant and complexly woven strands. Niam felt that if he reached his hands out, he could touch them like yarn. This was part of the trap, too, he knew intuitively, for the glowing strands were like sticky webbing waiting for prey to become ensnared in their lines. Yet instead of a spider there were the five symbols on the door, each one of them deadlier than a red-belly lurking in a woodpile.

Through Niam’s closed eyes, light that was not light pierced his lids and seared into his skull. His head throbbed and then began to pound. He closed his eyes even more tightly, and the lines and threads still glowed in the darkness. Somewhere nearby, someone urged, “You’ve got to hurry.” But Niam paid no attention to it. He pushed that voice away. Where the Sorcery impressed itself on his awareness as writing, now Niam saw currents of energy, a script working the threads of someone’s will into the fabric of the world. One that was also drawing his attention toward a powerful nexus. That was very clever, but he forced himself to direct his attention away. The pressure behind his eyes began to recede, and he noticed a curious gap in the weave.

Anyone attempting to use their knowledge of magic to undo the warded door would become ensnared by the thing and set it off without even having to touch the door. This was meant to protect what lay on the other side from magic users and non-magic users alike. With force of effort, he reached his hand out, dangerously close to the nexus that threatened to tear his head apart—so close to it that only a fool would have dared keep his attention on it for long. Curiously, his fingers did not want to move, but Niam made them move. He opened his hand and pulled at one of the threads within the sorcerous weave.

Suddenly, all of the pressure in Niam’s head vanished, and he was aware that his legs wobbled. Maerillus whispered urgently, “Grab him.” Niam fell as strong arms reached around his chest and pulled him through the doorway. Darkness closed in, and for a time, he knew nothing except a burning in his palms.

Niam stood somewhere dark. His palms stung furiously. Before him a girl stood with her back to him. Long dark hair spilled around her shoulders in tangled and dripping wet knots. Her frame, sapling thin, stood out easily beneath the wet traveling cloak she wore. In front of her stood the doorway and the trap he had just sprung. It’s pale light, deadly as bone cancer, slowly turned from white to angry red. At least he no longer felt sick. Instead, he sensed contempt and an overweening desire to dominate pouring out of it.

He knew that what he saw was not the door, but the person responsible for it. Around him, indistinct and vague shapes acted out horrible scenes of lust, brutality, and death. They flickered from one event to another.

The blurred lines of a man carefully wound the ends of a rope round and round into a noose, which he slipped over his neck and then leapt into darkness . . .

Flicker.

A shape holding an axe aloft brought it down over a misty form on a bed. Niam winced. He knew what lay within the bed. A woman and a child wept uncontrollably . . .

Flicker.

Two men stood facing one another, their arms outstretched as terrible forces unleashed between them snaked out toward one another and met. A blinding eruption followed . . .

Flicker.

The wavy, ephemeral form of a boy sat in an empty room, laughing as he suffocated a cat writhing helplessly where it had been bound . . .

Flicker.

Something fell through the night sky, tumbling, twisting, and burning, in the throes of fatal agony. The heat and radiance ignited the surrounding forest as it came, a contrail of smoke glowing ember-red stretched behind it for miles. As the thing fell over the horizon, a blinding light split the night in half . . .

Flicker.

A broken and misshapen form shambled through the charred mass of blackened tree trunks. Its furtive movement reminded Niam of the way a dying bug hitched and jerked. It was searching for something as it died. At last, the creature found an open fissure in the ground. With one last spasm, it slipped into the darkness and dissolved, as if pouring itself into the earth . . .

Flicker

The girl still stood in the darkness before Niam. His throat constricted painfully when he opened his mouth, but he asked the question he knew he had to ask—the one that mattered the most to him, despite everything that had happened and everything he had seen. “Sarah. Is it really you I see in these dreams?” His sister turned to face him. Not even death had removed her beauty, though she looked wan and drained. Tear tracks streaked down her face. She looked as if she wanted to say something to him, but when she opened her mouth, Maerillus’s worried voice came out instead.

Niam struggled to rouse himself. “Wake up, Niam,” Maerillus said again. His voice was a mixture of concern and urgency. Then, Niam heard him say, “I think he’s coming around.”

“Good,” Davin said with relief. “Do you still have any water?”

Niam croaked out, “Too thirsty for water.”

Maerillus let out an exasperated sound and shoved his water bottle to Niam. “Always have to joke.”

“We’re through the door,” he said, still a bit weak, but growing stronger every second that passed.

“I don’t think anyone heard us,” Davin answered.

“That was a trap,” Niam said slowly, picking himself up. They waited while he shook his arms and legs, testing himself to be sure everything worked properly. “I saw it,” he told them quietly. “I saw what Kreeth did with the power he uses. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.” And then, in a lower voice, he told them, “This place is stained. Everything that has happened here has left its own mark.”

Davin nodded his head. “We need to put that away for later. It looks like we may have our proof.” Davin indicated down into the room.

Niam felt a bit unsteady as he turned to see for himself what he had struggled so hard to find. They occupied an alcove overlooking a large basement beneath the far corner of the manor. Old white plaster covered the walls like makeup on a corpse. Water stains smeared the walls, and splotches of mold dotted the entirety of the room. Roughly hewn rock showed through where the mildewed skin of plaster had long ago fallen away. Unlike bone, the rock beneath was dark and uneven.

On the far wall, two narrow windows allowed the morning sun enough room to eek trough. Tall shelves stood like skeletal portrudences grafted onto the sheeted plaster veneer beneath them, and across the top row of shelves an irregular line of crates or boxes blocked much of what little light passed into the room.

Maerillus descended the steps and located a lamp, which he lit using one of the striking sticks Lord Joachim had introduced from the continent. To Niam, they were almost like magic. All Maerillus had to do was rub one briskly against a rough surface and they ignited of their own accord. Using the lamp, Maerillus moved quickly about the perimeter of the room, locating and lighting more lamps until the room held enough light to make everything out in detail.

A large circle deeply engraved into the stone dominated the basement floor. Niam’s head ached just looking at it. A pale radiance emanated from its grooves as if a sickly and diseased light poured up from the earth the way blood oozed from a shallow cut. In the center of the circle sat an altar, and on the alter rested a hodgepodge of unrelated and random items—several combs, a child’s doll, necklaces and rings, locks of hair. Each item glowed with a faintly malignant aura of its own. And as Niam stood there for a moment and studied it, the word substance was more than a mere description. He realized that something’s very essence was leaking into the room, and it made his stomach hurt.

“Hey guys,” Niam called out as quietly as he could. “Don’t get too close to that circle on the floor. I think it’s connected to something really bad.”

“Can you do something about it?”

Niam took a few tentative steps closer. While the circle certainly had similarities to the door, he made out no writing or symbols. All he knew for certain was that the energy given off by the circle somehow connected the individual objects on the altar in some way.

He grimaced. His stomach felt heavy, as if something rotten and crawling with maggots in the center of his gut had just burst. Niam looked back at Davin and felt lightheaded. “I’m not sure how this works, and I think it’d be a bad idea if I got any closer to it.”

Davin looked disappointed. He studied the objects on the altar and chewed his lip thoughtfully. “Maybe one of us can get something from it. Surely Kine would be able to sense Kreeth’s sorcery. If it doesn’t make us feel what you feel, maybe we won’t be affected.”

Niam shook his head emphatically. “I have no idea what is going to happen to all the energy that thing is carrying. The door had a set amount of energy. That killing force within it is still there. I just made it so that it wouldn’t flow. At least that’s what I think I did. The circle has the same kind of energy, but it seems to have a constant flow working through it.”

Davin looked impressed. “I wish I could do that.”

Niam looked at him crossly. “No you don’t.”

Maerillus was listening from the other side of the room as he pilfered trough a crate stuffed with what looked like fresh linens. He asked incredulously, “You mean you still might have gotten yourself and us killed?”

Niam said, “I’m just kind of learning as I go.”

Davin sighed. “Well . . . if we cannot grab anything from that alter, we’ve got to bring something to Kine.”

Niam skirted the edge of the sorcerous circle as Maerillus grew curious. “Hey, there’s something strange leaking out of the wall beneath the window,” he said.

Niam made his way around to Maerillus. High up on the wall, behind the shelves, a strip of plaster seemed to buckling in. A portion of it pressed against the wood of the shelves, which supported the wall’s facing and kept it from collapsing completely. The first three shelves held heavy chests. Had it not been for their weight, they would have toppled over long ago.

“Kreeth doesn’t believe in taking care of anything, does he?” Maerillus said distastefully.

Davin asked, “What do you think that is, Niam?”

Maerillus followed this up with, “Is it anything—you know—sorcerous?”

Niam leaned in for a better look. Where the wall had crumpled in, between cracks, a thick, viscous, amber fluid oozed.

Maerillus wrinkled his lip as he stuck his head beside Niam’s.

“It’s not anything magical, no,” Niam told him. His voice trailed off into uncertainty as he said, “Hmmm . . . the stuff looks familiar.”

Maerillus poked a loose section of wall and cocked his head to the side. “Do you hear that?”

Niam looked around and noticed Davin doing the same. Their eyes met, and Davin shrugged his shoulders. “No,” Niam said.

Maerillus continued to poke at the wall. “I’m seriously hearing something strange.”

“Don’t poke at it like a fool,” Niam said.

Maerillus’s voice became incredulous. “You’re telling me not to poke at something?”

“I’m just saying.”

Maerillus reached up above his head and began wiggling a crate filled with rope spools. “Maybe if I move one of these crates we can get a better look.”

Suddenly an angry buzzing filled the air. Niam’s eyes shot open and he lunged forward to stop Maerillus. “Get back,” he gasped.

Maerillus let go of the box and sprung back as if the thing had bitten him. He rounded on Niam angrily and snapped, “I thought you said this wasn’t anything harmful!”

Niam held the box in place, not daring to move for a few moments to be sure that the peeling section of wall stayed put.

“What’s he doing?” Davin asked. His voice was filled with quiet alarm.

Maerillus shushed him. “I think he’s doing what he did with the door.”

Niam just reached his hand out, drew some of the amber fluid onto the tip of his finger, and stuck it in his mouth.

“Maerillus hissed. “Are you insane!?”

Niam grinned. “Honey,” he said innocently. “Bees make a hive just about anywhere they can,” Niam told them. “Bug’s father is always pulling hives out of walls and attics. These found a crevice and their hive’s filling a void between the walls.” Niam arched his eyebrow. “Problem is we can’t take the hive with us. If they were magical bees . . .”

“Don’t even go there,” Davin said. “I don’t even want to think about it.”

Maerillus and Davin continued to check the room, and Niam became seized by a thought. If it hadn’t been for Kreeth, Corey would still be alive and Bug wouldn’t be at home, a devastated wreck. He looked around the room and became angry with himself for joking with Davin and Maerillus about the bees when he should have been more useful—at least for Bug and his brother and sister. He became even angrier, livid even. His lip quivered. He refused to cry. Not here. Not in this man’s home. Crying was a luxury. One he didn’t have.

Before moving to help his friends, almost without thinking, Niam pulled a length of rope from one of the boxes. He then unsheathed his knide and cut it. Then he searched around quickly for the right box, and began tying the rope to one near the weakest section of the wall. A hand seized his wrist, and Niam pulled away.

“What are you doing?”

“Poking a hive,” Niam said. “Leaving a surprise for Kreeth next time he tries to move one of these lighter boxes.” If Kreeth moved a box, he would pull enough rope to unleash several thousand angry bees on himself.

“Niam,” Davin said firmly, “stop and think about what you’re doing.”

“Setting a trap of my own,” he mouthed.

“We have to find the evidence we need, and we’ll get all the justice we want.”

Niam stopped, held his head down, and realized his lip still quivered, only this time it was because of uncontrollable anger raging through him. “Fine,” he said, throwing the loose end of rope between two boxes where it wouldn’t be seen.

“People like Kreeth always seem to get away with the terrible things they do,” Niam said bitterly. “Who are we kidding? Even if we get some evidence on Kreeth, he will get away. Salb did, and Kreeth’s a thousand times smarter then Salb will ever be.”

Davin said emphatically, “Yes. We will get him.”

Niam moved around the room and stopped when he came to a small chest set on a table in a nook beneath the stairs. Arcane writing inscribed on its surface glowed faintly. He continued to stare at it until the writing began to flow into threads of power. The lines were intricately woven around the entirety of the box, but the most intense radiance given off emanated from the lines wound around the latch.

“I’ve found something,” Niam said. “This is trapped, but we can move it.”

“How can you be sure?” Davin looked the thing over as if it were a poisonous animal.

“This writing here . . . it’s really more like lines of energy. What you see on the body of the box is what holds the energy. This writing here,” Niam told him, indicating with his hand where the lid met the chest body, “is what releases the energy built up within the box.”

“So we cannot open it?” Davin asked.

“No. But Jolan Kine might be able to.”

“Wait a minute,” Maerillus interjected. “What if this thing goes off like those boxes at the Vandin camp?”

Niam frowned as he studied the chest. Standing this close to it made him feel extremely uncomfortable. “This is different. On the boxes that exploded, the script flowed and moved as if it were alive somehow. This is more like something that has been stuck in place to serve a purpose. Plus the characters are different.”

Without giving warning, Niam took the chest in his arms and hefted it up. “It’s heavy and it’s making me sick, but I don’t think it’s going to kill us unless we try opening it.”

Maerillus fearfully stepped back. “Think that was funny do you?” He asked hotly.

“I’m just saying,” Niam said.

Beside them, Davin said, “I think it’s time to go now.”

As they began walking up the stairs, Niam said, “Guys. I think Kreeth knows someone got through his door. Maybe we ought to find a different way out of here instead of going through the woods again.”

“Oh really? Now he tells us,” Maerillus said. “And just how should we do that? Fly?”

“Let’s just get out of here,” Davin said. “We’ll work on sprouting wings outside. Maerillus, see if you can go ahead of us and scout a way out.”

When Maerillus returned, he held a finger over his lips, “The servants are unloading the cart out back.” Carefully he opened the door that took them back into the hallway. Just before they made it to the foyer, the temperature of the air dropped, and Niam shivered. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and a sense of malice clouded into the room like a thick fog.

“Hey guys,” he urgently whispered. “I think there’s going to be trouble.”

Before Davin was able to turn and see what the problem was, a sudden racket erupted. All down the entire length of the hallway, heavy picture frames began rattling and shaking violently.

“What the—”

A flicker of motion caught Niam’s eye, and he jerked his head back just in time to avoid a large painting as it hurtled toward his head. The frame struck the wall behind him and shattered into splinters. Maerillus cursed as one careened toward him. He wasn’t quick enough and the painting clipped him on the shoulder. Davin hissed, “Run!” The three of them charged into the spacious room still bathed in somber red hues from the stained glass windows. The armored suits began shaking and clacking ominously. From upstairs a shrill voice started screaming incoherent obscenities.

“Through the old dining room!” Davin said.

Niam turned toward the door and experienced a moment of panic. He was sure the door would be locked. A chair by the wall suddenly streaked out toward them, its legs making a low hiss as it slid across the floor.

“Look out!” Niam cried out and dodged out of its way. He shot a glance back to see if the thing careened into either of his friends. Maerillus danced to the side, almost tripping and sprawling across the floor. Without bothering to move, Davin kicked the thing hard, breaking an armrest and sending the chair spinning across the floor on its back.

Niam made it to the door and cringed as he reached out to try the knob, more sure than ever that it wouldn’t open. To his surprise, the door released as he pulled the latch, and the three of them sprinted into the dining room and closed the door just as alarmed voices from the back of the manor could be heard approaching rapidly.

Niam ran to the window and opened it. “Hand this too me when I’m out,” he said, pushing the box into Davin’s hands.

As Niam launched through the window, he landed on the grass and rolled.

Niam quickly reached up and took the box as Maerillus half dropped it into his outstretched hands. Maerillus then came through. When he landed, he cried out and went over on his right side. Above them, the loud report of the window slamming shut made Niam look up quickly. Before he had time to wonder how his friend would make it out, Davin broke the glass and dove through the frame before it had a chance to catch him as his body sailed clear of the frame. Davin landed in a clean roll as gracefully as any carnival performer. Had this been any other time, Niam might have clapped.

Instead, Niam hurried to Maerillus, who struggled to get up, but his ankle would not bear his weight. Niam slipped his arm underneath Maerillus’s to support him, and Davin looked around wildly to see if anyone had seen them yet. “This way!” he said quickly.

When Maerillus saw where Davin was headed, he demanded, “Have you lost your bloody mind?”

“I’ve got an idea,” Davin shot back.

Maerillus winced in pain beside Niam. “You better.”

Niam could tell that Maerillus might have broken his ankle. To make matters worse, instead of taking them away from the house, Davin was leading them around to the back of the manor. They came to the corner, and Niam saw why. The servants’ carriage sat unattended by the kitchen entrance. Maerillus gasped every time his injured foot hit the ground.

Niam couldn’t help but smile. “We’ll be out of here soon,” he panted breathlessly to his hurt friend. “Everyone is inside looking for us.” They made it to the cart, and Niam said to Davin, “I have an idea. We’ll lie down in the back. Pull your hood up and drive.”

Davin nodded his head and helped Maerillus onto the open tail of the cart. To Maerillus Niam said, “I know you’re in pain, but can you make us both hard to see?”

Maerillus’s eyes were pinched tight in pain. “I think so,” he managed.

Niam hunkered down as Davin grabbed the whip and gave it a crack above the horses’ heads. Reluctantly, the animals launched forward into a reluctant trot. Two cracks, and the animals broke into a fast canter. Davin angled around the manor and drove the horses over the lawn. Behind them, someone began shouting angrily. Davin did not look back. He kept a steady hand on the reins as they cut a path across the grass toward the road taking them out of there.