The man's neck snapped satisfyingly as Charlan twisted his head sharply. She let his limp form fall from her hands. All about her soldiers and wights went about the delightful task of dispensing death.
Shafts of light came through the cracks in the floorboards above seemingly made solid from the motes that filled the basement. Great oak barrels of varying sizes occupied the corners and lined the walls, stacked atop each other. A typical tavern cellar. Far longer than it was wide, the room stretched past the beams from above and delved into the earth itself, its full dimensions masked by the lowlight.
Post-Waning architecture, how queer, Charlan thought. She grimaced as though tasting something foul, but still moved forward to continue her delicious task.
Though she may have been born some fourteen hundred years after the Waning had begun and had therefore grown up knowing the two starkly different styles, she still preferred the Pre-Waning edifices. Their seamlessness and congruency bespoke power and precision. The epitome of control. Post-Waning buildings, with their beams and boards, their plaster and pitches, their crooks and crannies, revealed and amplified imperfection. An utter lack of control.
Before the first mages had propagated the lie that only the select, the very elect as it were, could affect Works, cities, buildings, or any other structures had been Works, Greater and Lesser. The capital had been sculpted out of rock as individuals had willed their lifelight to reorganize their surroundings according to their desires. Most knew that places such as the capital or Hyrbn were old, but few but dedicated scholars or the mages themselves knew that those magnificent cities, so perfectly blended with their surroundings, had arisen millennia in the past.
Noble families such as the Domraes could afford to have a mage or a team of mages come and construct new structures. Those not of their station or circumstances had to make do with what resources they could, so they resorted to mortar and pegs and their paltry results.
Charlan dropped another dead man from her grip, having drained him dry of his lifelight. She had issued a general order to the wights who had accompanied her not to feed, but she as well as the other four had taken a sip here, a gulp there. In the frenzy of slaughter, neither she or any of the other Night Wights had very coherent thoughts as the ecstatic deed of death intoxicated their faculties as they went to their work with gleeful abandon. Surely, no harm would come from a little indulgence. One had to feed when one could.
Screams fled out from the gloom.
Night Wights had never marred the tranquility of the port city of Hana in all the four hundred years that they had terrorized the continent. Due to this seeming exemption, the residents had grown more than a little lax. They still took precautions to secure themselves, their livelihoods, and their families from wights, but nowhere near what other regions of Haimlant did. In the northwest, in the Forest Lord's domain of Haero, the rabble practically considered the observance of those customs and rituals nigh unto a religion. The failure of underlings and children in their adherence earned more than a severe look. The smugglers that the soldiers restrained and the wights decimated now learned the hard way why such strenuous precautions were necessary.
Searching out those concealed criminals in the obscure, yeast-soured air was not difficult. The wisest of the bunch had retreated as soon as the cry of night wight had arisen. Most now cowered behind barrels or crates, hoping to go unnoticed. Unfortunately for the smugglers, where human eyes failed, night wight eyes did not. That cavernous section, open to Charlan's eyes despite the lighting, stretched barely a dozen paces beyond the upper room's limits. Even if she closed her eyes, her mindeye clearly made out each person's lifelight, trembling like flames in the wind.
Much too easy, Charlan thought.
She tore down one of the aisles that the stacked goods formed. From the darkness, two bolts twanged from crossbows a second apart. As they hissed passed her person, Charlan pirouetted and snatched the projectiles out of the air as casually as one would take the next step in a dance. Coming out of her spin, aided by the added momentum, she launched the shafts back at the shooters. One cracked into a crate just in front of one. The other took a woman square in the forehead. Her eyes rolled up into her head and she fell without a whimper, her crossbow clattering from her grip. Her companion tossed aside his own crossbow to rip a behemoth of a knife from its sheath. Its tip wavered unsteadily in the air before him.
Charlan gave the man a toothy grin.
He cried out, shrinking back, before he turned his weapon on himself. He crumpled to the floor next to his companion, his knife stuck in his heart.
Charlan blinked and then slapped her leg. Spoiled sport!
A flicker in her mindeye in the aisle over drew her to the very back wall in a silent dash. She hurdled over a barrel, her feet landing as light as an autumnal leaf. Her next victim was just in front of her completely unaware.
A quavering smuggler crouched behind a stack of boxes, his back to her. Three indiscernible steps brought Charlan within arm's length of the man. His bright lifelight shot through with cold yellow streaks scintillating tastily. But she paused.
This was the sixth raid in which she and her wights had participated. After that first raid, Master Elwith had insisted that other such operations were needed to prove Charlan's trustworthiness. The sovereigns had readily agreed.
Charlan's face snarled at the thought. Her nose crinkled as the man's linen shirt exhaled its musky odor at her.
This operation represented the sixth raid executed with the assistance of General Biligrim's squad. Of the other five, one had been on night wights. The other four had dealt with criminals of various persuasions. Grifters, smugglers, gangs, and assassins constituted the majority of groups they had gone after. Belittling wardens' work. Far beneath her.
Her hand struck out, caving in the man's skull. She strode forward and approached her next victim from behind. He, like his now dead compatriot, crouched behind cargo. A short sword trembled in his hand.
How could that pathetic corps of law keepers even think to compare themselves to the Warden? Charlan questioned.
They could not even begin to measure up. The Warden, that powerful hybrid of man and beast, stood apart from that organization's paltry efforts as the sun from a candle. Once she found Lady Kyla and recovered what she knew she had, the wardens would know how feeble they were compared to their namesake.
Her next victim screeched as she grabbed him by his thick, course belt. His voice reached unmanly heights as she threw him back out into the lighter portion of the basement. He landed on his shoulder with a satisfying crunch. His limp form lay still, but a faint moan trickled from his lips. Charlan pictured Master Elwith in the man's place. Crumpled. Broken. As he was roughly secured by two of the soldiers, she ran the tip of her tongue over her teeth savoring both the image and the thought.
"Lady Telias?" called General Biligrim's sturdy baritone voice. He stood on the steps on the far side of the room.
Without hesitation, Charlan exploded in his direction, the many obstacles in her path not slowing her progress as she flipped and dove and somersaulted over and through and around them. She arrived at his side in seconds. The general did not flinch. By now he had grown accustomed to her inhuman abilities.
"Reports indicate that all the smugglers have either been apprehended or killed," said the general. "Hailun and two others of your numbers had swept the area and have assured us that none remain free. Master Elwith has asked that you join him at your earliest possible convenience." He stood awaiting her reply, one leg perched on a higher step as though he were ready to dash back out again to relay her response.
"Come, general," Charlan said, her eyebrows cocked in comical inquiry. "You and I both know that's not how he couched the question. Now, is it?"
A huff of air came from his mouth as it turned up at the edges, softening his face. His eyes had shut and remained closed as he thought.
Good, thought Charlan. She wanted the general comfortable around her.
The General's eyes inched back open. A faint shake of his head accompanied his gaze. "No. I believe his exact words were 'I need to speak with Lady Telias now. Make sure she doesn't dawdle.' Or something or other."
"Well, we mustn't keep the good Magus waiting." Charlan began to ascend the stairs. She turned back after she had gone past the general. "Must we?"
A reluctant smile pulled at the general's lips before Charlan turned from him and bounded over the remaining dozen or so steps in a single leap.
Her accompanying night wights had torn the hidden door at the top of the narrow stairway from its hinges when they had forced the smugglers into retreat. It remained embedded in the wall where they had tossed it, some twenty paces across the room. The top floor held a well maintained pub. All of its surfaces polished so many times over the years they seemed to produce their own luminance. What little light there was came from hanging lanterns and a few candles scattered about the room.
Her strides carried her quickly through the pub's mangled space. Chairs and tables were scattered in every direction. Some broken into splinters. Others simply maimed. But all surroundings in a general state of disarray. A breeze flowed through the broken front windows and thinned the smell of stale beer and vomit bloated sawdust.
In the initial wave the soldiers had breached the pub pushing any who offered resistance away from the windows, downing some with their air-bows, laying others out with a cuff or blow from a truncheon. The smugglers had retaliated with crossbow bolts and seaxes. They had wounded two soldiers.
Charlan stepped out over the pubs main threshold. A fresh, clean night settled its cool breath on her milky skin. Neither Mona or Mani had risen yet. Manu peeked dimly above the horizon. Charlan inclined her head toward her. Straightening, she spun away.
Master Elwith could be watching, she scolded.
The pub's front, the two large lead-laced windows and its crippled door, appeared as a person wailing. This broken visage, as it were, quivered with a failing lifelight. Its broken outlets whimpered as the wind caught its now ragged edges. The soldiers had shattered the windows from the inside and when the casement had burst, they had yelled out the invitation to enter to Charlan and her wights, then the true destruction had happened.
Footsteps, arrogantly solid, trumped up behind her. Several sets of less pronounced steps scuttled along with them.
"Admiring your handy work, Lady Telias?" asked Master Elwith.
Charlan sculpted her face into a smile. She relaxed her shoulders before she executed a crisp about-face.
"Come now, Elwith, surely our level of acquaintance and its duration would allow for some familiarity to creep into our address, don't you think?"
He blinked. He drew one brow lower but otherwise did not react.
There is no cracking this one, is there? observed Charlan. Not that it would save him if I could.
"It seems as though the operation was a success," said Master Elwith. "No one died at least. Don't you agree Lady Telias?"
Charlan sighed. "Yes. I would say that this endeavor has once again highlighted the fact that those of my party can work in tandem with human forces quite seamlessly."
He nodded. His acolytes parted as he turned to go.
Charlan scoffed. "That's it?! That's all you wanted to talk to me about? My assessment of the situation? When have you ever wanted my assessment of a situation or especially these absolutely ridiculous tests that you have devised with the crown?"
Her words and argument had built, not in volume but in intensity. She barbed each of her words to snag Master Elwith's attention back to her. It worked.
His acolytes, faces aghast, swiveled their attention between their master's reddening face and Charlan's defiantly set jaw.
"Lady Telias," said Master Elwith. He squared his body to hers. "My king is looking for allies. For four hundred years the people of Haimlant have cowered behind doors and pathetic shutters hoping some ghoul in the night wouldn't burst in on them and deny them entrance into the Grand Palaces beyond. You have rendered us a great assistance over the past few weeks by ridding the kingdom of some of its most persistent and pernicious criminal elements and even reducing the nightling population by over a dozen of their numbers. Do not undo the goodwill you have garnered with this little indiscriminate display of childishness."
Childishness, thought Charlan, hackles raising. The day she was born Master Elwith hadn't even been a flash of lust in his ancient ancestor's loins. One action on her part would have rendered his family tree lifeless, blighted even, and him nothing but an annoying imagining.
"Childishness?" asked Charlan. "You summon me like I am one of your sycophants and then you dismiss me with as much delicacy as you would give one of your whores when you're done with her. How should I act?"
The acolytes' eyes grew large in the torchlight and a gasp went up from any who heard.
Master Elwith's face betrayed nothing. His lifelight roared red with crimson flares, but he kept it in tight control in spite of his mood.
Truly impressive, conceded Charlan to herself albeit begrudgingly.
"You're quite wrong, Lady Telias," said Master Elwith, face rigid, hands clenched. "I dismiss you as I would my dogs. My whores I at least pay."
"And have we not merited some payment for services rendered? Or are we to be always kicked about as a mutt inconveniently underfoot?"
Soldiers began to shuffle out from the pub, some of them dragging the surviving smugglers, who were quickly thrown into a caged wagon. The other wights mingled with them. Silence. None of the soldiers or acolytes dared breathe. The wights betrayed nothing in their faces. They observed with a cold detachment.
Master Elwith's eyes roved up and down Mistress Charlan's entire person. Charlan was sure his mindeye also examined her with equal intensity—nothing but a vacuous hole in existence where she stood, ever gaping, a constant pull on the lifelight around it.
"And what payment would you have of either me or my sovereigns?" asked the high mage.
"You know very well what it is we ask in return for our services. Land. A place where we can live without fear of discrimination or constant suspicion."
Master Elwith flicked his nose with a thumb. "You talk of fear and constant suspicion? Who do you have to truly fear? It takes nigh unto an army to face but a handful of your kind. There isn't a single man alive who would dare challenge you except the most foolhardy. I'll tell you, and to your face to show you at least one man alive isn't terrified of you and your ilk, what I am suspicious of. The moment you have the Animal Kingdom's land, the moment you are recognized as a nation apart, you will begin to propagate by whatever foul means you use and bring more of your wretched race into this world, and then you will be the end of us all."
He really is far more perceptive than I give him credit for, mused Charlan.
In truth, the night wights had already settled in the former Animal Kingdom's lands, that scrap of Haimlant south the Fang Line mountains and west of the Serpent's Tongue river. Even after hundreds of years, as Master Elwith had stated, few dared to venture into its boundaries. Fur trappers, heady with the promises of wealth, sometimes ventured into that dark, wooded peninsula. Those that did return never lived a normal life thereafter. They told stories of monstrous wolves and shadowy wraiths that lurked behind every tree, of great cities made entirely of trees and vines, trained into impossible and unnatural shapes. Some claimed the shades of the Great Wolves haunted those climes. Others simply thought it absolute nonsense that talking beasts had existed at all. Charlan preferred it to remain that way. She let them think the Great Wolves and their legacy, the Warden, simply existed in the realms of fantasy.
"I killed my own kind for you and your sovereigns," said Charlan, her voice low, her eyes downcast. "I slaughtered them simply to prove that not all of us are the monsters that so many believe us to be. And not just on one occasion. Oh, no. You have asked me to kill my kin twice just to satisfy your sick ideals of loyalty."
"And I will continue to ask it of you until I am satisfied."
"Satisfied?" asked Charlan, her mouth agape with mock inquiry. "Or until all of us are dead or at such a low number you feel confident that your soldiers and mages can finish the job? Or do you still want to use us as your personal enforcers, on display so that every criminal will fear to even set foot out into the night? Why do we even maintain this ridiculous façade? There is no treaty between my people and the kingdom. We're being led along until we no longer have a use. If that is the case, I should just take my people and leave. Who's going to stop us? Enjoy your time fighting the Queen of the Night on your own."
She made to leave and her wights followed suit.
General Biligrim dashed to Master Elwith's side, his feet squishing in the mud made from a burst barrel thrown out onto the street. He kept his voice low, but Charlan easily made out his whispered words.
"Master Elwith, you and I both know that our sovereigns wish for this to work. Are you trying to drive her away? She has done everything you have asked and then some. What more would you have her do to prove herself?"
Charlan covered a grin with her hand. Loyalty, general? I might just keep you around, perhaps give you the ultimate reward, for your gallant behavior.
Master Elwith grabbed the General's arm, drawing him closer to hush their conversation even further. His lifelight roiled within him.
"General, you forget yourself. If you will remember, the sovereigns charged me with determining whether these things can be trusted at all."
"Yes, but did they insist you taint your assessment with so much bias," Biligrim growled back.
"Watch yourself, general," – Master Elwith's hand tightened – "I have the sovereigns' ears. I could have you more than demoted. I could see to it that you are thrown out of the service entirely and that the rest of your life will be filled with hardship and devastating poverty. How can you even think to support these abominations over your own species?"
Mistress Charlan stood with her group clustered together. Demure as sheep, though each harbored a wolf within. She could smell the rank anger that now scented both men's sweat, their voices were both heavy with its heady contamination. General Biligrim's whisper practically gurgled with it.
"You're not the only one to have lost someone to a bloody nightling," hissed the general. "You pompous clod! Lady Telias and her followers have submitted themselves again and again to your diatribes, your foul, insolent, dare I say, petulant moods. They have fulfilled all that was required of them. Why do you insist on treating them as enemies when we should be accepting them as allies, allies who want exactly the same thing we do? Let go of your hate for one minute and realize that this may be our one chance to rid ourselves of all the wighties once and for all."
Master Elwith's face tightened. His jaw flared outward as he clenched his teeth. His acolytes moved away from his person, sensing his lifelight broiling within his tight mental grip. The very air seemed to warp around him.
A massive wall of air launched General Biligrim back into two of his men. The trio collapsed to the ground, a tangle of limbs. Others of his squad leveled their air-bows at the trembling mage, priming their weapons. Master Elwith raised his hands palms out pointed to either side of himself. White, angry light bubbled from his palms. Those soldiers aiming at him flinched back.
Pure, unadulterated lifelight! thought Mistress Charlan, astounded. I greatly underestimated this man.
"Lower your weapons!" barked out Biligrim, regaining his feet. "I said lower your weapons. That is an order!"
Hesitantly, his men obeyed. The various clicks indicated they had reset their weapon's safeties.
Master Elwith stood in the midst of soldier and wight alike, a wide circle had formed around him. His shoulders rose and fell with each shuddery breath. Eyes closed, his eyelids trembled. The rest was still. That piercing light dimmed into nothingness as his arms lowered back to his sides, quaking as they went.
"General Biligrim," said the mage. "You will escort Lady Telias and her people back to our ship, immediately. Do you understand?"
He paused.
"Yes, sir," said the general, his words clipped. He moved to go and the indicated followed suit.
"And general," said Master Elwith. His words made Biligrim pause in his step, as his men moved past him. "I will not be telling the sovereigns about your blatant display of insubordination. Don't let it happen again."
Though Master Elwith could not see it, the general gave a stiff nod.
The company moved off leaving Master Elwith unmoved from his spot.
Dissension in the ranks, Charlan practically purred. Now that will be useful.
Though they had left him behind them, Charlan observed Master Elwith in her mindeye and examined his blistering lifelight, raging like a fiery tornado.
She had had no idea that someone close to him had fallen prey to a wight. She would definitely be investigating that.
An explosion rent the night. Human and wight alike, staggered forward as its force rushed over them. A massive plume of fire and smoke burst into the night's sky behind them, mushrooming out into an infernal cloud. The scorching heat tightened Charlan's exposed skin.
So much for the pub, she thought with a sniff.
With the raid that had happened early no one would dare enter it for fear of facing a night wight. All that she needed to do was replace the door into the secret cellar and she would have had a wonderful safe house.
No matter, she thought. It was a small price to pay for what she had learned tonight. All that was needed now was a little push and Master Elwith would go over the edge properly.
They had paused briefly to watch that fiery spurt ascend into the air. It had dissipated and now only the sound to be heard was the blaze's crackling teeth, devouring what remained. They marched on.
Charlan practically skipped, a tune hummed in her throat and buzzed on her lips.
I think this calls for a celebration.
*DON'T FORGET TO VOTE*