Veilspeaker (Pharim War Book 2) (16 page)

“There are probably men armed with bows on the walls,”
Osmund said. “They don’t want us to fly over them again.”

“They’re warded against illusions too,” a woman said.

Jez turned to her, but before he could say anything,
her wrinkled face smoothed and her silver hair became jet black. Her clothes
flickered to violet for a second but returned to brown homespun after a moment.

“Villia,” Jez said, remembering at the last minute to
keep his voice down. “What are you doing here?”

“Trying to get out of the city,” she said. “Do you
have any ideas?”

“We weren’t really planning on doing that,” Jez said.
“What happened to you? Why did you run?”

She narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been cast out of the
keep, the king is your enemy, and there is a demon general of the abyss loose
somewhere in the city. I was nearly killed fighting a battle I had no business
fighting. Of course I’m going to run. What I’m wondering is why you’re not
running.”

“There’s a demon general loose somewhere in the city,”
Jez said in a level voice.

Villia let out a breath. She waved for them to follow
and led them away from the crowded streets and into an alley.

“You’re just a mortal,” she said. “No one could expect
you to stand up to Maries.”

“No one expected me to stand up to Marrowit either,”
Jez pointed out. “We could use your help.”

Villia laughed. “Help? You need more help than
anything I can give. Call Sariel if you want. See what help he can give.”

Jez scowled, but his expressions softened. “Can I do
that?”

She shook her head. “Not even you can summon a pharim
high lord.”

“What about another Shadowguard?” Osmund asked.

Jez turned to him. “What?”

“Another Shadowguard. You guarded Marrowit. Shouldn’t
there be some other Shadowguard to watch over Maries?”

Jez looked at Villia and raised an eyebrow. “I don’t
know. Is there?”

Villia looked at him for several seconds. Then, her
face twisted in anger. “By the seven, why didn’t we think of that before? A
demon as powerful as Maries would have to have a Shadowguard set to watch over
him. They should’ve showed up the moment anyone tried to free him. I don’t know
why they didn’t.”

“Shadowguard can be bound,” Jez pointed out. “Did
Lina’s book say anything about doing that?”

Villia shook her head. “It was all about demons, not
pharim. Perhaps whoever that book belonged to had other resources.”

“What you mean whoever the book belonged to? It was
Lina’s.”

Villia shook her head. “No, it wasn’t.”

Jez stared at her. “Of course it was. We found it in
her room. The summoning circle was burned into her floor.”

“I know that,” Villia said, “but it wasn’t her.”

“Who else would it be?”

“I’m not sure, but I found her wandering the streets
in a half daze. She’s terrified of the demons and of the guards. She’s doing
everything she can to leave the city.”

“She probably has you fooled too.” Jez practically
spat the words out. “She’s managed that with just about everyone.”

Villia snorted. “Deceiving someone like you is easy.
You have no talent for lies and misdirection. It’s not such a simple matter to
fool a Veilspeaker.”

“But you’re not a Veilspeaker.”

“I’m close enough. Believe me, she wasn’t lying. In
any case, once I got the chance, I examined her more closely. She has great
ability in shadow magic and a fair amount in secrets, but she doesn’t have the
ability to summon anything more than a minor imp. Even that would be a
stretch.”

“But if it wasn’t her, then who?”

“I have no idea,” Villia said. “Would you like to talk
to her?”

“You know where she is?”

“Of course. I’ve been protecting her ever since I left
the keep.”

Villia led them down another dark
alley, though this one made the first one seem like a paradise. The emptiness
felt odd after the overcrowded city streets. A man slept in a corner on a pile
of rags. He stirred as they approached but didn’t get up. The place reeked of
cheap ale and unwashed flesh, and Jez resisted the urge to hold his nose.
Villia reached for a wall, and her hand passed right through it. A short gasp
escaped Jez’s throat. Villia pulled, and a door appeared seemingly out of
nowhere. She glanced at them and stepped through the wall. Jez and Osmund
exchanged glances.

“I’ll go first,” Osmund said.

He stepped forward and gingerly put his hand on the
spot Villia had walked through. His finger sank in, and he nodded. He moved
forward, ducking slightly, and disappeared. Immediately, he cried out, and Jez
reached for his power. The crystal sword flickered into existence, but it only
lasted a second before disappearing.

“Sorry,” Osmund said. “The ceiling is lower than I
expected. I hit my head. It’s safe. You can come in.”

“Don’t do that,” Jez said before following through the
illusionary wall.

The room on the other side was barely big enough to be
called such. The floor was nothing more than padded dirt, and black spots of
mold grew on the walls. Lina sat huddled in one corner. Her dress had once been
a fine gown of purple silk, but was now covered in dirt, and the fabric was
torn in several places. More than one spot had dried blood crusted on it. The
illusion covering her scar was gone. Her face looked plain, and he realized
he’d never seen her without her face decorated in powders. She was staring at
Osmund, but seemed to lack the strength to be afraid. Her eyes, red from
crying, flickered to Jez and then to Villia.

“Have you brought them to kill me?”

“I brought them to help you.”

“Help her,” Osmund’s voice boomed in the small room.
“She had me thrown out of the Academy. She put me on trial. She wanted to have
me beaten or worse. She deserves whatever she gets.”

“Consider your words carefully.” There was the
slightest hint of echo in Villia’s voice, making it sound more ominous. “Do you
really think she deserves to be hunted like an animal by demons and men alike?”

Some of the anger drained from Osmund’s face, but he
didn’t respond. Villia looked at Jez who shook his head.

“Even if I believed she didn’t summon the demon, we
can’t help her leave the city. There’s too much we have to do here.”

“What you want to do here will only get you killed,”
Villia said. “At least by helping this girl, you can do some good. Isn’t that
what you want?”

“I can’t leave a powerful demon in control of the King
of Ashtar.”

“You can’t do anything to stop him,” Villia said. “You
don’t even know where he is.”

“He has to be back in the keep,” Jez said. “There are
no other demons in the city except for maybe at the gates, and that wasn’t
nearly strong enough to be Maries.”

“You want to get back into the keep?” Osmund asked.
“That place we almost killed ourselves getting out of?”

“I know, but there’s nowhere else Maries could be. We
have to find a way back in.”

“Can you save my father?” Lina asked. Jez looked at
her. Her voice had been strong and had caught him by surprise. She met his gaze
with steel in her eyes. “If you can rescue him, I’ll help you.”

Osmund snorted. “What do you think you can do to help
us?”

“Why do you think my father and I were hiding in the
dungeon? We certainly weren’t going to lock ourselves up. There’s a secret
passage in the lower level of the dungeon that leads out.”

“You can get us in?”

She sat up straight and returned his glare. For a
second, she exuded the pride and haughtiness that he’d come to expect from all
nobles, but then the light in her eyes faded, and she slumped her shoulders.
“If you promise to help my father.”

Jez glanced at Osmund. “It’s not that simple. We all
thought it was you that was summoning the demons. If it wasn’t, it has to be
your father.”

“It was not my father,” Lina said. “It was the king.”

Jez and Osmund exchanged glances. “What?”

“He could’ve gotten into my room. No one would stop
him from going anywhere he pleases in the keep.”

“It does make sense, in an odd sort of way,” Villia
said. “If he summoned the wrong demon, it might have been able to control him.
It would explain why he got so unreasonably angry when Lina got away.”

“But can we be sure it’s not Varin?”

“For all his flaws,” Villia said, “I don’t think Varin
would allow this to happen to his daughter.”

Jez considered for a second, trying to find a flaw in
the logic. There were a couple, but none that measured up to the single
unavoidable truth. He had no choice.

“Fine,” Jez said. “Show me the way inside.”

“A graveyard?” Jez asked as Lina led them through
the iron gate near the Creator’s shrine.

They were near the northern edge of town. The
graveyard took up an entire city block and was relatively empty. Lina led them
between a row of markers and shrugged.

“It doesn’t do much good to have a secret passage if
everyone can see you coming in and out of it.”

“Fine,” Jez said. “Let’s just get through here as fast
as we can. This place makes my skin crawl.”

She turned and raised an eyebrow. She wore a half
smile on her face “You study binding.”

“And?”

“You deal with monsters and demons every day, and a
graveyard bothers you so much?”

“She does have a point,” Osmund said.

Jez glared at him but addressed Lina. “You’re telling
me it doesn’t bother you?”

She rolled her eyes. “I don’t like it, but I also
don’t like riding in a stuffy coach. I’ll do them both though, and I won’t
complain about it.”

“Maybe you should just lead the way and not talk so
much.”

Lina snorted. “I would’ve thought Dusan would teach
you better manners.”

He narrowed his eyes. “He was too busy summoning
demons.”

“That really happened, then? I mean I’d heard what
everyone said, but there’s been no official word on what Dusan was doing other
than dealing with forces best left alone.” She grinned. “You know, the typical
ambiguous statement from the crown when they don’t want to confirm something.”

Jez’s mouth snapped shut, and he looked away. He
needed to get a handle on himself, especially if he was distracted enough to
let something like that slip. Lina cocked her head but didn’t say anything
else. She continued walking through the graveyard, finally coming to a stop in
front of a large marble building. The flaming sword of the kings of Ashtar had
been carved over the door.

“What is this?” Jez asked.

“The kings and queens of Ashtar are entombed here,”
Villia said. “If there’s a secret passage into the keep, it makes sense that it
would be here.”

Lina nodded. “My father found it when he was a child
at court.” She looked away from Jez. “He was hiding from other children who
made fun of him for being the son of someone raised to nobility rather than
born into it.”

Osmond started to say something, but Jez waved him
off. Nothing good would come from bickering right now. Lina, seeming to sense
this, moved forward. The metal bars of the door had been painted white, and
Lina pulled it open. It squeaked so loudly that Jez thought it must’ve been
heard a mile away. He looked around, half expecting the noise to draw guards or
demons to them, but no one came. Lina stepped onto stairs going down. A thick
carpet of dust covered them, but Jez could see the footsteps she had left in
the dust when she’d gotten out. As Lina descended, she lifted a hand and a ball
of light appeared.

The chamber below was basically a long hall. Alcoves
lined the walls and statues stood atop stone crypts. A crown had been carved onto
the head of each. The stones near the entrance were old and dust had been
ground into the rocks, but as they moved farther away, the slabs in the alcoves
became cleaner, the edges harder. About halfway down the hall, Lina stopped in
front of the statue of a woman who almost seemed to look down at her and scoff.

“Queen Meeshan,” Lina said. “Her ship was lost at sea
four hundred years ago. Her body was never recovered.” She started running her
fingers over the wall and pressed in several places. “There has to be a release
here somewhere.”

“What do you mean? I thought you came through here?”

“I was leaving, not entering. The release for the door
on the other side was easy to find. There should be one on this side too.”

She had moved further along the wall and pressed a
lighter stone for several seconds, but nothing happened. Jez walked up to her
and put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped and looked back at him. He did his
best to suppress a smile, but judging by the scowl on her face, he hadn’t
succeeded.

“We don’t need to do that,” Jez said. “Just show me
where the door is.”

She looked confused for a second before pointing the
wall at the back of the alcove. Jez rested his hand on it and closed his eyes.
It was different from the rest of the alcove. Magic had been woven into the
stones themselves forming a web that stopped it from being moved. He tried to
lift the door, but though the wards were older than the ones surrounding Lina’s
quarters, these were far more powerful, and they seemed not to have suffered
the ravages of age. He drew back.

“Wow, that’s impressive.”

Villia walked up next to him and placed her hand on
the wall. After a second, she nodded. “This is pharim work.”

“Why would a pharim ward this place?”

“To protect the rightful ruler,” Villia said.

Jez shook his head. “I can’t open the door, at least
not directly. Lina, where was the release on the other side?”

“About three feet off the ground. There’s a stone that
stands out from the others. I had to pull it down.”

Jez nodded and closed his eyes again. This time, his
touch was lighter and he wove his power through the strands of the ward. They
pulsed when he got too close, and more than once, he pulled back. After nearly
ten minutes, he found the release Villia had mentioned. He was sweating as he tugged
the stone down. There was a click and the wall before him groaned and slid up.
As the door moved, the wards brushed against his presence. He shouted, and
there was a flash of light. He was thrown several feet back, but Osmund
summoned wind to cushion his fall. By the time he got back to his feet, the
door stood open. Everyone was staring at him.