Shield Knight Read online

  Tamlin frowned. “You know, for someone who doesn’t have children herself, that’s very shrewd.”

  “Shrewd is merely the polite way to call someone devious.”

  Tamara returned, a contented smile on her face. Marriage and motherhood suited her, I thought. Of course, she had spent most of her life not knowing who she really was or why she could use magic, but now she had Tamlin and the baby and her duties as Master of the Order of the Arcanii to keep her centered.

  “Will you be staying long?” said Tamara. “I think Calem and Kalussa are returning from Trojas in a few days, and they would like to see you.”

  “For a few days,” I said. The whole reason Calem and Kalussa were alive and married was because of me (with a little help from the Guardian Morigna, though I did all the actual work, I should mention) so I felt a sort of maternal fondness for them. But when you’re my age, everyone seems young. Except for cousin Third. “Then I think…”

  Zuredek hurried into the courtyard, and one of the Anathgrimm followed, a grim warrior in steel armor and a mask of black bone. The saurtyri seemed terrified of the Anathgrimm, which probably goes to show that they have good instincts. This particular Anathgrimm warrior was named Hhazakar, and he was the centurion in charge of the Anathgrimm who had accompanied me to Owyllain.

  “What’s wrong?” I said.

  “The steel ingots,” growled Hhazakar. “They have been stolen.”

  ***

  Chapter 3: Rats

  I set out for the warehouse at once, and to my mild surprise, Tamlin and Tamara insisted on accompanying me.

  At least, they insisted once they heard how the ingots had been stolen.

  “Someone tunneled into the warehouse?” I said.

  Hhazakar nodded, his face furious behind his bone mask. “They dug right through the floor, my lady. Beyond was a tunnel of brick, followed by a gallery of white stone. We thought it best to summon you before we pursued the thieves.”

  Tamlin and Tamara shared a look, faces grim.

  “The muridachs,” said Tamlin.

  “Muridachs?” I said. “You have muridachs beneath Aenesium?”

  You don’t know what muridachs are? Ah, that’s right, they’re rare in Andomhaim.

  They’re basically ratmen. They’re one of the kindreds the dark elves summoned as their slaves and soldiers. Good engineers, decent soldiers, but treacherous. They’ll also eat anything, including each other, if they’re hungry enough. The Sovereign dominated the muridach cities of the Deeps in Owyllain and used them as part of his armies. If any of his vassals grew rebellious, he’d let the muridachs swarm over them. That’s how he kept control of the jastaani for so long. Since so many of the jastaani died at Cathair Animus, I suspect the muridachs and the jastaani are locked in battle right now. Then again, most of the muridachs died at Cathair Caedyn, so perhaps both the jastaani and muridachs are too exhausted to fight each other.

  But I’m rambling again. Back to the story.

  “Aye,” said Tamlin. “They find their way into the ruins of Cathair Valwyn. We keep sealing the entrances to the Deeps in Cathair Valwyn, but the muridachs dig new tunnels and raid the city.” He looked at Tamara. “If the muridachs have dug another tunnel into Aenesium, they might be planning for a larger attack. We need to respond to this at once.”

  “I have to look at our warehouse,” I said.

  “We’ll come with you,” said Tamlin.

  I thought about arguing but decided against it. Tamlin was a skilled swordsman and a moderately powerful Arcanius Knight, and it didn’t look like the two years of relative peace had taken the edge off his skills. The brutal training he had undergone in Urd Maelwyn as a gladiator had ensured that. And Tamara was the single most powerful human wielder of elemental magic I had ever encountered. In some areas, she was more powerful than Calliande Arban, though she didn’t have the mantle of the Keeper or the Well of Tarlion to augment her spells.

  “Very well,” I said. Though it wasn’t as if I could have stopped them. Aenesium wasn’t my city, and I didn’t have any authority to command them. “Get what you need, and we’ll go hunt down some muridachs.”

  “Just like the old days,” said Tamlin.

  Tamara shuddered. “I just hope there aren’t as many muridachs as we faced at Cathair Caedyn.”

  “Even the muridachs cannot breed that fast,” I said.

  They prepared in short order, telling Michael and Zuredek to watch over Aegeus while they were gone. Tamlin had golden elven armor he had taken from the ruins of Cathair Selenias near Kalimnos, plates of overlapping metal that hung to his knees. He had once carried the Sword of Earth, but that had shattered in Cathair Animus, so now he had one of the new steel swords that Kothlaric Pendragon had gifted to his Companion knights. Tamara didn’t wear armor, but put on trousers, boots, a tunic, and a long brown coat of scutian leather that was common garb for herdsmen and farmers near the southern portions of Owyllain. Tamara also had a golden staff that she had taken from Cathair Selenias. It had once belonged to the gray elven noble Lord Amruthyr and let her focus her magic to a considerable degree.

  How considerable? She could conjure elemental fire hot enough to reduce a muridach to a charred skeleton.

  “Let’s go,” said Tamlin, and I gestured to Hhazakar.

  We set out into the dusty streets of Aenesium. The sun was going down over the ocean to the west, and the heat of the day was fading, though the streets still radiated accumulated warmth. We passed the Agora of Connmar and the vast stone maze of the Palace of the High Kings, and the streets descended towards the harbor and the docks. Anathgrimm warriors stood outside one of the warehouses, swords in hand. The doors to the warehouse hung open, and the warehouse itself was empty.

  A large hole about twelve feet wide had been dug through the bricks of the floor, and beyond the hole, I saw a tunnel descending into darkness.

  “Report!” said Hhazakar to his warriors. “Have any muridachs issued forth?”

  “None of the ratmen have shown themselves,” said one of the Anathgrimm. He sounded disappointed. Queen Mara’s warriors love fighting more than anything else. “We have remained on guard here, as commanded.”

  “How many ratmen?” murmured Tamlin. He crossed into the warehouse, squatted, and picked up a long strand of muridach fur. I could smell the faint, lingering aura of their musk, a sort of unpleasant mixture of rancid grease and rotting flesh.

  “There were a thousand pounds of steel ingots in here,” I said, “so several dozen at the very least.” I turned to Hhazakar. “Centurion, I want you and your warriors to remain on guard here. My friends and I are going to descend and pursue the muridachs.”

  Hhazakar looked dubious. “By yourselves, my lady?”

  I grinned. “Tamlin is an Arcanius Knight, and Tamara is the Master of the Arcanii. And I have a trick or two. We will manage.” I looked at Tamlin and Tamara. “Ready?”

  They nodded, and we climbed down the tunnel and into the gloom.

  ***

  Chapter 4: Nest

  A short time later, we entered the silent ruins of Cathair Avamyr.

  Cintarra has the Shadow Ways beneath it, the maze of tunnels and galleries built by the elves and the dwarves and the dvargir and the orcs and the humans over the centuries. Aenesium is similar. Fifteen thousand years ago, a gray elven city called Cathair Valwyn stood there. The Sovereign destroyed the city and razed it to the ground, but the underground galleries and tunnels remained. When Connmar Pendragon and his fleet arrived, they built Aenesium, the first of the Nine Cities of Owyllain, and the former site of Cathair Valwyn. Between the harbor and the mouth of the River Morwynial, it’s a good place for a city. Unfortunately for the men of Owyllain, the ruins of Cathair Valwyn open into the Deeps, so creatures from the Deeps can sometimes find their way into Aenesium. The High Kings seal up one entrance, have peace for a while, and then the muridachs or the dvargir find another way inside.

  It looked like the pattern was repeating i
tself.

  We walked through a high gallery of white stone. The ceiling was arched, and pale crystals set into the apex of the arches gave off faint lights. Bas-reliefs covered the walls, showing the gray elves sailing to Owyllain and building their mighty civilization. It all looked very hopeful and triumphant, but none of the reliefs showed what happened next when the Sovereign and his vassals followed the gray elves and ground their kingdoms into the dust one by one.

  “I’ve been here before,” murmured Tamlin, his sword in hand. The steel glinted in the light from the crystals.

  “We have,” said Tamara. “Just a few weeks ago, the last time the muridachs broke into the city.”

  Tamlin shook his head. “No. This specific corridor. It was before we met. I mean, before I met you again in Kalimnos. The first day Ridmark and Calliande came to Aenesium, after the battle at Castra Chaeldon. Some abscondamni attacked the city, and we traced them here. We fought Qazaldhar for the first time. We didn’t know that Rypheus planned to betray us, that Khurazalin had corrupted him…”

  He fell silent, lost in the dark memories.

  “Khurazalin was good at corruption,” I said. “Didn’t do him much good in the end, though.”

  We followed the trail the muridachs had left. It was fairly simple. The muridachs can move in utter silence when they wish, but they have a bad habit of shedding, and black hairs are easy to spot on a floor of white stone. The corridor ended in a large hall that had the look of a throne room, with a dais at one end, balconies overlooking the floor. The trail of muridach fur led across the hall to another archway. Beyond the archway was a broad flight of shallow stone stairs that sank deeper into the earth.

  “They went that way,” I said, perhaps unnecessarily.

  “That leads down to another hall,” said Tamlin. “There was a muridach camp there a few years ago. Ridmark and Calliande frightened them into withdrawing, but they were more scared of the abscondamni than they were of us.”

  “They won’t scare easily,” I said. “Not when there are a thousand pounds of steel ingots at stake. That’s more valuable than gold in Owyllain.” I thought it over. “Wait here for a moment. I’m going to have a look ahead.”

  I drew on the power in my blood and spun an illusion, making myself look like a muridach warrior. The muridachs stand about five to five and a half feet tall, with human-shaped bodies. They have human-like hands, albeit with claws, and their bodies are covered with fur. Their heads look rat-like (complete with giant, chisel-like teeth that can punch through armor with a single bite), and they have thick, hairless tails. I had spent enough time around muridachs to make myself look exactly like one.

  Tamara shuddered. “That’s uncanny.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” I said. My power also transformed my voice into the deep rasp of a muridach warrior.

  “You don’t smell as bad, though,” said Tamara. Which might be a problem. Muridachs have much better noses than humans.

  I shrugged. “I don’t want to get close enough for them to smell me. Just to have a look around. Be right back.”

  I hurried forward and descended the stairs, moving in silence. After about fifty yards, the stairs took a turn to the left, and I stopped at the corner and peered around them. The stairs ended in another large hall, and I saw a muridach camp. Close to fifty or sixty muridach warriors milled around, many of them bearing heavy leather sacks, and I saw the glint of the steel ingots in the sacks. They had indeed stolen the steel from the warehouse, and if they made it back to one of their cities in the Deeps, they would sell the metal for a stupendous profit. Or they would get killed and the ingots stolen on the way. In the wild tunnels of the Deeps, that much steel could cause a war.

  I eased back up the stairs, thinking, and dropped the illusion as I returned to the throne room. I didn’t want Tamara to mistake me for a muridach and blast me with one of her lightning bolts.

  “You found them,” said Tamlin.

  “Aye,” I said. “About sixty, I think, maybe a little more. They’re getting organized, probably to leave Cathair Valwyn and head back into the Deeps. If we’re going to stop them, we have to do it soon.”

  Tamara looked doubtful. “Sixty muridachs is a bit much, even for the three of us.”

  “They’re all bunched up together,” I said. “If you conjure a curtain of sleeping mist, we can probably…”

  Tamlin took a swift step back, raising his sword.

  I turned and spotted what had caught his attention.

  The hall was silent and deserted, but a section of the wall at the base of the pillars was starting to ripple. It looked like the way the air ripples over the hot ground on a summer’s day.

  Except there was no sunlight down here, and the air was cool.

  Which meant that the rippling was the telltale sign of an urvaalg using its camouflage ability.

  Tamara hissed a curse, leveled her golden staff, and cast a spell. Fire surged up the length of the staff, and a sphere of flame shot from its end and hurtled across the hall. It struck the distortion, and the urvaalg became visible, snarling as it was wreathed in flames. Urvaalgs are tough and hardy, as you know well, but Tamara’s magic was powerful enough to kill it with a single strike. The urvaalg fell dead to the floor, smoke rising from the crater that Tamara’s spell had burned into its flank.

  But the rest of the ripples vanished, and five more urvaalgs appeared.

  Someone like the Shield Knight or the Keeper can mow through five urvaalgs without much difficulty. But Ridmark is a Swordbearer, and Calliande has the magic of the Well of Tarlion and the mantle of the Keeper. Facing urvaalgs is a bit harder for the rest of us. But we had advantages. All three of us were wizards, though Tamara was the strongest with magic by far. Tamlin’s steel sword couldn’t wound an urvaalg, but his spells would. And I carried a sword of dark elven steel and a dwarven-forged axe, both of which could kill an urvaalg.

  Tamlin attacked first, moving faster than even I could manage. He cast a spell and leaped, and his magic of elemental air carried him into the air like a stone hurled from a catapult. Lightning flared to life around his sword as he landed, and he plunged the blade into the nearest urvaalg. A blade of steel would do little against an urvaalg, but the lightning drove into the urvaalg’s flesh with a snarling crackle. The urvaalg reared back, screaming, and I cast a spell of my own. I hurled a spike of ice the size of my forearm, and it punched into the throat of another urvaalg. The creature thrashed and fell to the floor, claws scrabbling against the stonework.

  I sprinted forward, sword in my right hand, axe in my right, and Tamara hurled another spell. Again, she flung a sphere of flame that immolated an urvaalg. I know you’ve gone up against urvaalgs before, Moriah, so you know they stink. But the smell they make when they’re on fire…it’s much, much worse.

  But on the plus side, that smell means they’re dead and not likely to bite your head off.

  The remaining two urvaalgs closed around Tamlin, but he stayed ahead of them. His skill with the magic of elemental air meant he could move very fast in short bursts, so fast that even I could not keep track of him. I sprang behind the nearest urvaalg and brought my dwarven axe down. Urvaalg bone is thick and tough, but dwarven steel is tougher, and the axe had been enspelled by maybe the greatest dwarven stonescribe to ever live, so the blade found the creature’s brain.

  The urvaalg thrashed once and went down.

  The second one snapped at Tamlin, and he jumped back and cast a spell. Arcs of lightning burst from his fingers and curled around the urvaalg, and the creature reared back, loosing its metallic howl of pain and rage. I started to raise my axe to take it in the head, but Tamara hit it with another blast of magical fire.

  The urvaalg fell dead to the ground, smoldering.

  Silence fell over the hall, save for the crackling hiss of the fires dancing over the dead urvaalgs.

  And a distant, deeper rumble.

  We might have killed all six of the urvaalgs, but there were other c
reatures nearby.

  ***

  Chapter 5: Let’s You And Him Fight

  “God and the saints,” said Tamlin, his sword held in guard as he turned in a circle. “An urvaalg pack loose in the ruins of Cathair Avamyr. Just as well we came here. God knows how many people the urvaalgs might have killed if they had gotten into the city.”

  “And just as well only the three of us came,” said Tamara. Wisps of smoke rose from the golden metal of her staff. “Your Anathgrimm are the most ferocious soldiers I have ever seen, but they don’t have any magic. They couldn’t stand against an urvaalg pack.”

  “Which would not stop them from trying,” I said, shaking the slime of urvaalg blood from my axe’s head. “I wouldn’t want to go back to Nightmane Forest and tell Queen Mara that fifty of her warriors had gotten their fondest wish and died gloriously in battle.”

  “The muridachs are bound to have heard the fight,” said Tamlin. “Sound carries a long way down here. I don’t think we’ll be able to surprise them.”

  Another rumbling growl came from somewhere. It’s hard to find the source of sound in an underground maze, but I concentrated, and I thought it was coming from another archway beneath the left-hand balcony.

  “I think we have a bigger problem,” I said.

  “Like whatever is controlling the urvaalgs?” said Tamlin.

  I know that packs of urvaalgs sometimes turn up in the Shadow Ways beneath Cintarra. But in the lower levels of the Deeps or the wilderness, sometimes other creatures can take control of urvaalgs packs. The dark elves created the urvaalgs to be dominated, and on occasion, other creatures of dark magic can control them.

  “Wait here,” I said. “I want to have a quick look down that passage.”

  Tamlin frowned. “You shouldn’t go alone.”