The Dreaming Hunt (44 page)

That brought all sound in the room to a screeching standstill. He felt the weight of dozens of stares upon him. The lizardmen were not used to compliments from humans, apparently. The rustlings and murmurs resumed, and Raina breathed to him, “Nicely done.”

The lizardmen insisted on feeding them before they continued on their way, and a meal consisting of tasty fish and genuinely disgusting stewed seaweed was served to them. He noticed that Sha'Li moved off at one point to speak quietly with the old bronze lizardman. When she came back, she was carefully tucking what looked like a thin bronze plate into her pouch, although it was more oval in shape than round.

At length, the feast concluded, farewells were exchanged, and the lizardmen led them back to the wide tunnel they'd been traversing before. Rynn gestured for the party to reverse its marching order, leaving Will and Sha'Li to go last, which made sense if they were headed into the Merr-controlled portion of the cliff.

Before too much longer, the stairs ended in another vaulted chamber. But this one was more conventional in shape with large pillars to support the ceiling. The space was partially filled with huge, wheeled carts of ore, apparently waiting for transport. Trash littered the floor—bits of armor and broken arrows as if this had been the site of recent battle. It was lit from a large opening to the outside. The roar of angry surf and the smell of the sea were very close.

“Where are the merchants and shippers?” Eben muttered as they trod across the space. “Who looks after this storehouse?”

“Know that one, do I,” Sha'Li replied eagerly from the back of the pack.

The others turned to stare at her. “Do tell,” Raina declared.

“A Merr tribe the bay controls. Tiburon Merr,” she added in disgust. The name meant nothing to Will, but given the way Sha'Li said it, he gathered they were a particularly distasteful flavor of the water-dwelling species, at least in the mind of a lizardman. The two races were forever at each other's throats, squabbling over water territories and generally snarling at one another. Will supposed that, at the end of the day, they were no more combative than humans were over control of land territories.

Raina piped up. “Why did those lizardmen react so strongly to seeing you, Sha'Li? Are you some sort of nobility within your kind?”

Will stared at the human girl and then at the lizardman girl. Now that she mentioned it, those lizardmen had reacted with something akin to awe when they'd spied her. And to be invited into the very space the lizardmen had kicked the miners out of?

Sha'Li snorted. “Elder or chieftain I am not.”

They headed over toward the seaside exit to the warehouse. A stone ledge, perhaps ten feet above the waterline, ended in stone steps that led down to a huge, floating wooden pier that bobbed alarmingly on the surface of the water. Will mentally cringed at the idea of stepping out onto that heaving wooden structure.

Raina spoke up. “If Merr control the bay, then it will be from them we must hire a boat. Perhaps you should hang back a bit, Sha'Li, until we have secured passage.”

“But information have I that helpful may be.”

Everyone turned to look at her.

“The entire bay, by Occyron the Six-Gilled is ruled. Clan chief of Tiburon Merr is he. Control most of the coastlines of Dupree do the Tiburon. Purchase passage from them you must. Lovers of the Kothite Empire they are not.”

Raina nodded. “That is, indeed, helpful. Since Rosana and I prominently display our affiliation with the Heart, which is both Imperial and has no presence among the Merr, we are probably not the best choice to speak to these Merr. What little I know of the Merr is that they are generally a warlike people who revere strength and combat prowess. I worry that they will perceive Will and Eben as too young to be worthy of respect. Rynn, it looks like you get to negotiate on behalf of the group. And act fierce.”

He replied dryly, “What makes you think I am not fierce in truth?”

Good point. From what little Will had seen from his beleaguered position in the fight, Rynn had fought well against the elemental hounds, particularly given that he'd fought with just his fists and feet.

The paxan removed his filigree circlet, exposing his third eye. Will repressed a shudder at the sight of that perceptive, observant eye so wildly out of place on Rynn's forehead. It did add to his overall menace, though.

Seasick already, Will watched Rynn pick his way down the wet stone steps to a large bell covered with a bright green patina. The paxan lifted a hammer hanging on a chain beside the bell and gave it a hefty whack. A loud gong rang out across the water. Will suspected, though, that the main sound was carried away underwater by the metal pole the bell was mounted upon.

“Now what?” Raina asked.

Rynn, who had bounded back up the steps and retreated with the rest of them to the relative cover from the rain inside the cave warehouse, shrugged. “Now we wait.”

 

CHAPTER

22

Gabrielle watched Regalo pace the confines of the sitting room in their chambers at court. He looked as restless as a caged dire lion and as cranky as one. Not that she blamed him. It was not every day that the Emperor approached her husband to suggest that he might be torn out of his family's ancestral home in Haraland and sent to a violent, dangerous outpost in the hinterlands to serve as the first king of Dupree. Apparently, Maximillian was toying with the idea of turning the colony into a full-blown kingdom.

She had no idea whether the Emperor was serious or not. One could never tell with him. She did know he made a common practice of stirring up trouble by pitting his kings against one another in petty political struggles as a means of keeping them bickering among themselves. She supposed that, in Maximillian's mind, it was better to have his kings divided and at one another's throats rather than unified and at
his
throat.

It was a chaos the Eight were happy to help perpetuate. She'd already received a few rumors in scrawled notes signed only with the number eight suggesting that she share the contents with whomever she thought might be most interested. Which was a euphemism for her spreading the rumor to whomever would react most strongly and create the most strife among the peers of the realm.

“What did you say to Maximillian?” she asked.

“I told him it would be my honor to serve him in whatever capacity he should have need of me.”

“You do not mean it, do you?” she demanded.

Her husband stared at her in surprise. “Of course I mean it. He is my Emperor, and I am his loyal servitor.”

She checked her impatience. One of the traits she loved best in Regalo was his unshakable honor. Just because she despised the Emperor he was so loyal to, it did not mean she should or could hate her husband.

She was a terrible wife. He gave every part of himself to serving his people and his Emperor, and she worked behind his back to undermine him and everything he stood for. She did not deserve him, and she definitely did not deserve his love. She should walk away from the Eight. Recommit herself to serving Maximillian and Koth—

But the moment the thought occurred to her, revulsion for everything the Empire stood for rushed through her in a hot, acid flood. She could not, in good conscience, ignore a chance to make the world a better place for her children. In his heart of hearts, surely Regalo worked toward the same end. It had been his idea to send both of their children to a fae court to foster, in fact. One could not get too much farther away from the Kothite Empire than a royal court on another plane altogether.

If only Regalo knew there was another way besides Koth. Did she dare mention it to him? Talissar had been specific and adamant that she tell no one.
Especially not her husband
.

Curious, she asked Regalo, “Do you believe Maximillian will actually take Haraland away from you and send you to Haelos?”

He shrugged. “No idea. What do you think?”

“I think it is a ploy. Imagine all the jockeying for position and under-the-table promises of titles and rank that will fly in anticipation of someone becoming supreme ruler of a brand-new kingdom. I'll bet that, at this very moment, Maximillian is hinting at the exact same offer to every other king in the council that he made to you.”

“That is a bet I would not take.”

The tension across her shoulders eased fractionally. She was just starting to have some real responsibility within the Eight. The last thing she needed was to be sent halfway across the world to the edge of nowhere. “Then we are safe?” she asked in a small voice.

“We are never safe, Gabrielle. It is not in the nature of our positions as king and queen of a prosperous and powerful nation nor is it in the nature of the Kothite Empire for any citizen to be safe.”

She was surprised by the observation. Sometimes she forgot that, although her husband was completely loyal to Maximillian, he was not blind to his liege's flaws. Little did Regalo know just how unsafe they and theirs were. If Maximillian ever found out about her connection to the Eight, all of Haraland would be made into a smoking hole by his beloved Emperor.

“Do you have plans this evening, my dear?”

“I am going to start packing for my trip to visit Sasha in the Heartland. I've never been there before.”

“Nor have I. I hear it is an extraordinary place.”

“Come with me,” she said impulsively. Maybe if he were not at court, Maximillian would choose some other poor soul to be the first king of a hypothetical northern kingdom.

“I thank you for the invitation, but I am needed here. This legislative session of the Council of Kings has weeks left yet before it ends. I cannot possibly leave before then. And, with the imposition of the new Imperial Army quotas, I do not expect this session to end even close to on time.”

She rolled her eyes. The endless bureaucratic wrangling among the kings made her want to tear her hair out. How Regalo put up with all of it, she could not fathom.

“Go on without me and visit your friend. Some time with Sasha will help take your mind off all the goings on here in the Imperial Seat.”

If only
.

“I will miss you, my dearest husband.”

“And I you, my love.”

*   *   *

Eben's nerves jangled as the wait for the Merr to respond to the bell stretched on interminably. He'd existed in an agony of impatience for the past several months, frantic to find his sister and Kendrick, who was more of a brother to him than mere best friend. But the past few days with elemental hounds out there somewhere behind them, tracking him, closing in on him, had been nigh unbearable. He felt their fetid breath on the back of his neck every time the party stopped to eat or rest. Even now, he felt their relentless pursuit drawing inexorably nigh.

He paced the small chamber of the cave, flexing his shoulders in an unsuccessful attempt to relieve the tension in them. He counted a total of eight tunnels opening into the cave. To the untrained eye, they would probably look identical. But with his natural affinity for stone, subtle nuances in the character of the rock, how it was carved, and how it bore the stress of the mountain's weight made each opening as distinctive to him as the fingers on his hands.

Maybe it was because he was staring right at the tunnels when they came, or maybe it was his hypersensitized nerves firing a warning at him, or maybe it was just luck that he heard the scrabbling of nails on stone and then the growls.

“The hounds!” he shouted, yanking out his sword. “They've found us!”

Chaos ensued as his friends scrambled for weapons just as three great elemental hounds burst into the chamber, barking and snapping viciously. The noise echoed through the cave until nothing anyone yelled was comprehensible.

The first hound was on him, leaping at him on its hind legs, snarling in his face. He staggered back under the weight of the beast, slashing at the hound's belly with his sword but hampered by how close the creature was to him. He managed a shallow slice across the beast's midsection that made it yelp and leap back momentarily. But then it gathered itself again to leap.

A fast-moving blur jumped in front of him, catching the hound's thick body in midair, redirecting the attack past Eben. Man and hound crashed to the floor beside him. Rynn glanced up at him grimly for an instant before the paxan's entire attention shifted back to the great beast now attempting to rip his face off.

Eben grabbed the hound's spiked collar, ignoring the needle-like pain piercing his palm as he dragged at the beast. Stars, the animal was heavy. It twisted and turned violently, driving the sharpened spikes farther into his hand, attempting to free itself while it continued its efforts to savage Rynn.

The paxan gave a great shove and managed to roll out from under the beast as a huge force slammed into Eben from behind. He staggered and went to his knees before recovering himself. Another hound had his belt and was shaking him from side to side like a rag doll and not like the big, muscular man he was.

Raina shouted something from close by, and a flash of magic exploded. His belt released abruptly.

The first hound attacked Rynn again, but this time, the fight looked like a standoff. The beast had one of Rynn's crystal gauntleted forearms in its mouth and was doing its best to toss the paxan aside while Rynn used his free hand to pummel the side of the dog's massive head.

Eben looked around frantically for other hounds. Will held off one with his staff, the weapon a blur of motion as he defended himself. Rosana danced around behind Will, trying to get a clean shot to throw some sort of magic at the creature.

Her hand lit up, and she shouted something about cursing the creature with sloth. All of a sudden, the hound attacking Will moved in slow motion. The effect only lasted a few seconds, though, before the beast resumed attacking in a blur of yellow-furred fury.