Arc 5: Chapter 17: Laertes

    “Emma, behind you!”

    My warning came too late. I’d known it would, and was already moving. But without my axe...

    Emma had managed to get one foot under her, though it was clear the wolves had hurt her bad. She brought up her sword, but it was a distraction. Her other hand flexed, and three shrikespears screamed up from the melting bodies scattered around her.

    All three went into the Count, punching through his ribs before emerging from his back with sickening squelching sounds. I heard him grunt, a very human noise, and he stopped.

    Emma bared her teeth in a feral expression I couldn’t call a smile, then swiped her blade sharply from left to right in a flourish, right through the Count’s jugular.

    The hulking form slumped, a tongue of viscous blood seeping down from the wound below his chin. I saw him better then, though most of his features remained caught in some unnatural darkness, giving only telltale signs of what he looked like. He was inhumanly tall, over seven feet, and might have been even taller considering his dramatically hunched posture. He wore some kind of rich enshrouding robe or coat lined in fur, giving him a broad, shapeless figure.

    His eyes were milky and pale, and those I could see clearly. Further, by the way they shifted down to Emma even after his throat had been sliced, I knew he wasn’t dead.

    “Hendry!” I barked. “Your sword!”

    Hendry had moved forward to help Emma, but her own pikes blocked his way. Most of them had disintegrated, but some remained. His gaze flinched in my direction. He hesitated a moment, then tossed his sword through the air.

    I tracked its motion as it tumbled end over end, reached out, and caught it by the handle. I stepped forward to save my apprentice.

    And—

    I hold a gilded sword in my hand, sheathed in black blood. Pale fingers grasp it, while more reach for my face to stroke the fresh wounds there.

    “Ah... my heart.”

    I try to let go of the sword, but my hand won’t obey me. It feels stiff, numb. Everything feels numb.

    “I didn’t... I didn’t mean to—”

    She’s breaking apart, her face cracking like dry clay. Her eyes crinkle with pain, or sorrow.

    “We could have lived in a dream.”

    Back in the manor, a ringing clatter filled the air. I’d dropped the sword.

    Count Laertes’s left hand shot out. The appendage was long, spindly, with ragged nails like claws. It seemed to move independently of his body, writhing and bending in mantis motions even as the rest of him remained slumped and still on Emma’s pikes.

    He grabbed Emma by the neck, lifting her. She fought savagely, kicking and tearing at his hand with her nails. When she swiped at him with her sword, his other hand emerged from his cloak to grab her by the wrist.

    He squeezed, and Emma let out a choked cry.

    Pushing away my trance, I moved forward. The Count’s voice rang out, coming from his own lips now rather than from some intangible space.

    “Do not move, or I shall tear her in half.”

    I stopped. Hendry, having been just behind me, did the same.

    It took a moment to catch my breath. “Let her go.”

    Instead, the Count leaned down to inspect Emma. As I’d suspected at first, he stood with a dramatic hunch that did very little to mute his unnatural height. By the way he held a grown woman up as though she weighed no more than a doll, I suspected he was very strong.

    “Do my eyes deceive me?”

    His voice was deep, almost guttural, not unlike the Lord Steward’s baritones. Unlike the melodious tones of the Steward, however, Laertes had a guttural growl, his words drifting through droning inflections.

    “A daughter of House Carreon, here before me in the flesh... ah, where have you hid all this time, little shrike?”

    The Count’s ghostly eyes drew very close to Emma’s neck. She’d stopped struggling. She didn’t even seem to be breathing anymore.

    “You look just like her. For a moment, I thought dear Astraea herself stood before me.”

    “Hurt her,” I snarled, “and I will burn you to your bones.”

    Golden fire flared up my right arm in an almost unconscious surge of power. I hadn’t felt this angry, or this scared, in a long time.

    The Count’s milky eyes drifted lazily up to me. “You wield that holy fire like a bludgeon. Are you a knight, or a barbarian brute? There is far more to a sorcerous duel than simply hurling one Art after another at your foe.”

    He sighed, as though I’d greatly disappointed him.

    “Where is Catrin?” I demanded. She hadn’t reappeared with the Count.

    “Hm?” He seemed distracted, his eyes going back to Emma. “Ah, the Child of Ergoth. She is lost in the shadows. I will pluck her out when I am ready. She is very close to blooming, the little grave bud.”

    I didn’t know what that meant, and had no patience for poeticism just then. “Let them go. Whatever you want from me, we can discuss it.”

    Like Catrin.

    “You are a vampire,” I said aloud.

    “I am Magi,” Count Laertes rumbled. “And I will be treated with respect in my hall, Alder Knight, or you shall be cast from it. We are far from any paths your kind has tread.”

    He paused, letting those words linger, then spoke in a calmer voice. “The Keeper believed I could assist you, hm? With what?”

    After the terror of the battle I’d just been forced to fight, it took me a moment to circle my thoughts back to my original purpose. “There is a hidden faction at work in Garihelm, one that’s allied to an Abgru?dai demon known as Yith Golonac. I believe it’s still in the city, and the Keeper believed you could help me track it down.”

    “Yith...” Laertes turned, so the yellow light beyond the windows silhouetted him. “That is a name I know. One of Reynard’s thralls.”

    “The Vykes have bound it now,” I said. “With the help of a petty sorcerer, one whose dead now. They’re planning something, and I need to banish the demon. I can’t do that if I can’t find him.”

    For more than a minute, Laertes didn’t answer. I kept my silence, not willing to prod this dangerous, probably unstable being. Even still, my impatience nearly got the better of me.

    Finally, Laertes spoke. “I shall consider how I might help you, and what I shall ask in return. For now...”

    He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture and started to move toward the stairs. “You shall be my guests, you and your companions. Tend to your injuries and rest.”

    I took a step forward. “I don’t have time for—”

    Laertes spun, looming tall and terrible in a sudden display of rage. “YOU SHALL WAIT.”

    He calmed just as suddenly. “Your young fellows are wounded and tired. Besides...”

    He chuckled as he turned again. “You should collect your graveflower. She is calling for you.”

    Catrin. “Where is she?” I demanded.

    “Wandering the upper halls,” Laertes told me. “She found her way out of my labyrinth rather quickly... clever bud. It took something from her, though.”

    He’d trapped her in some Art. The bastard.

    Laertes didn’t go up the stairs, instead moving to the elaborate altar of the enormous pipe organ. He paused there, reaching his clawed fingers out without touching it.

    Ignoring him for the time, I walked over to Emma. Hendry knelt at her side already. Her leggings had been shredded below the knee, along with much of the flesh beneath. After inspecting it, I didn’t think any tendons were cut or bones broken, but it looked bad.

    Hendry was injured too, but not nearly as much as he should have been. He bled from his arms and shoulders, and his legs, but all the injuries looked superficial. I remembered how he’d killed one of the wolves with a punch, the sound it had made, and his display of almost superhuman strength.

    I’d ask him about it later.

    Emma looked furious. “The Keeper betrayed us!”

    “I’m not so sure,” I said quietly. “We’ll find out if we survive the night.”

    Hendry’s face blanched. “I don’t want to stay here a night.”

    “Neither do I,” I admitted. “But I came here for a reason. Besides...”

    I glanced at the towering back of the undead wizard. “I’m not prepared to provoke him further. I don’t think I can beat him.”

    Emma scowled, her anger overcoming the pain she must have been feeling. Then again, she’d always been a tough girl. “He had to take me and Catrin hostage. I think he’s scared of you.”

    I considered it a moment. “Maybe. But even if I could smite him, I’d probably lose one or all of you in the attempt. I’m not prepared for that.”

    Hendry blinked. I think I’d taken him off guard with that statement. Then again, he only knew me as the sorcerer vagabond who’d stolen away with his betrothed, killed a bunch of priests, and threatened him. I’d almost forgotten about that bit.

    Emma just scoffed, though she didn’t argue further. She looked very pale, and I knew she was in a lot of pain.

    “Help her up,” I told Hendry. I took one of her arms, and the Hunting boy took the other. I thought she’d snap both our heads off, but she endured it with gritted teeth.

    I looked at Karog, who remained near the hallway he’d emerged from. “Why are you serving him?” I asked in a hard voice. “Didn’t you learn your lesson with the Vykes?”

    My anger rolled off the ogre’s massive shoulders. “You should see to your people, elf friend. Our conversation can wait.”

    His voice changed, becoming less dismissive. “You should go find the leech. I have been inside the Count’s labyrinth. It is... ungentle.”

    Those words chilled me. Before I could respond, the pipe organ gave off a single mournful note. We all looked to the Count.

    Laertes’s voice followed the key he’d played, just as deep. “There will be rooms on the second level. They will have supplies to treat your injuries, food, fire to warm you. You shall rest tonight... and in the morning we will discuss how we may be of use to one another.”