Chapter List

enesh swallowed, desperately trying to keep his teeth from chattering. He watched her breath freeze and float to the ground. The cloth of her cowl resembled a rotted burial shroud: dusty and threadbare. A shadow obscured all but her chin.

“I was inventing poisons four hundred years before your grandfather learned to walk.” Reina spoke as if impatiently lecturing a lesser being. Kenesh didn’t notice the shadowy tendrils seeping into the dock around her feet. The wood planks first lost their color, and then rotted to a scorched, mangled ash.

The Vicereine turned her back on the assassin and dropped the useless pieces of his knife. “Do you know what it feels like to have a part of your body die while still attached to living flesh?” By now Reina was standing in a huge expanding slough of foulness.

Several of the tendrils rose from the swirling edges of the pestilence surrounding Reina’s feet and coiled back, growing eyes and fangs. Kenesh noticed and desperately tried to push his way up the wall with his hands. One by one the viper’s heads struck his left foot. The very real sharpness of otherworldly fangs pierced his boots, skin and leg.

Kenesh felt as if every nerve in his body was being drained through the sole of his left boot. A cold, burrowing agony invaded the entire left side of his body. Pain exploded from every joint as his collapsing weight forced his frozen bones to bend at unnatural angles.

He slammed against the blackened wood of the dock and made an inhuman sound that nearly burst the inside of his throat. Rivulets of icy sweat scraped his face, chest and arms. He banged the back of his head against the corner of the warehose as his body convulsed, leaving the wood smashed and frozen blood caked across the back of his head. Within moments, all that was left of his left foot was a putrified weight attached to a limb so infected that the very thought of moving it made his nerves boil over with pain.

“Now you know.”

Kenesh panted as he failed to regain his balance. He rolled against the door, the cruel cold sweat tormenting his parched tongue with a salty tang.

“Who sent you?” Reina asked. Kenesh did not answer. He could scarcely breathe.

“Answer me, or I will infect every limb of your being with dessication that will see two harvests before death releases you from it.” The Vicereine stood resolute, her staff looming over the platform. No light remained. Kenesh drew a choked breath that covered his teeth with rime.

Reina reached down and picked up a small medallion from the dock.

“The Escator Merchants Guild?” Reina said. Her glowing red eyes narrowed as she examined it. “What plan did you hatch with those overfed hyenas? Did you expect to waylay me with your robber’s club like some sweeper of porches?” Reina turned the medallion over. “Pity. I was in a fine mood before all this, too. I had a nice meal this evening. They served me cornbread.”

She glanced back to Kenesh. “I like cornbread, don’t you?”

Kenesh sputtered and inhaled reflexively.

“Do you wish to be free of this curse?”

Kenesh attempted to nod his head, but instead his shoulders convulsed. His face was frostbitten almost to the point of paralysis.

“You will return to whichever of those fattened vermin drank enough courage to hire you and inform them the Vicereine sends her regards.” Reina turned the medallion over in her hand as she lowered her voice to a menacing tone. “You will also inform them the blood of the next assassin sent after me will be used to boil their skulls.”

Reina turned towards the end of the dock.

“You have one hour.”

Kenesh’s next cough rattled alarmingly and with immense trembling effort he rasped a response.

“But it is two days ride.”

Slithering fingers of black vapor climbed the back of Reina’s robes, crossing over each other and thickening as they crawled upwards. They gathered at her shoulder and formed the shape of a perched black bird. The mangy fowl solidified just before the Vicereine offered a piece of dried plum, which it devoured hungrily before shivering its feathers.

Reina dropped the medallion on the dock.

“You have one hour.”

Continue to Chapter Eleven

Chapter List

uch tableware is expensive. I’m sure you understand. My glasses are my business, you see. Perhaps we can come to an agreement? Business is hit or miss these days. I have just the thing here. You’ll be right as rain.”

Reina waited for the multitude of words to subside, much as she might wait for the last glops of sludge to fall from an empty well bucket. Enken’s nose wrinkled as he wondered how anyone could hear the man over the sound of his moustache.

The proprietor held up a short, wide glass as if for auction. “My price for my finest glassware is one copper monarch.”

Unfortunately for the proprietor, naming a price in the presence of Reina of Kulnas was like dangling a canary before a starving alley cat. She approached negotiations like a mongoose. The outcome was never in question. Only the speed and direction of the decisive strike.

The end of the Vicereine’s staff punched the wooden floor of the tavern, making a hollow sound. The very moment those between the door and the proprietor realized she was coming their way, spilled drinks and at least one overturned chair marked their escape.

As Reina slowly walked from the door to the bar, the patrons gave her considerable deference. Her robes scathed the floor. The sound was both unpleasant and ominous. She used her staff as a mountain climber might use a pick.

As hard as he tried, the proprietor still couldn’t see more than Reina’s chin until she reached the bar and raised her head slightly.

“I am not in the habit of paying for simple reagents. Perhaps I can conjure what I need.”

The proprietor’s skin began to crawl.

“Now to the best of my recollection, conjuring a fine drinking glass is a rather complex spell. It requires a living component.”

Reina’s voice lingered over her words, as if she were savoring her advantage. Her eyes met his.

“To complete my work I will require five human teeth.”

The proprietor slammed the base of the glass down on the bar and held on to it as if he were trying to recover from a wave of nausea. A nervous tick was causing his right eye to flutter, and his upper lip curled involuntarily. He pulled his hand away as Reina reached for the glass.

Enken looked over the Vicereine’s shoulder, then moved a chair to make room next to her.

“I will be quick about my business,” she said, taking the glass in her pale hand. His eyes rose, and a fresh wave of sickness overcame him as looked into the face of the jawless skull atop Reina’s staff.

The Vicereine examined the glass carefully, then turned slowly to one side and tossed it lightly into the air. Several people in the room jumped at the shattering sound. The proprietor closed his eyes and muttered to himself.

Reina’s eyes focused on the shards scattered around her feet. She identified the largest piece of glass on the floor, then brought the full measure of her powers to bear, gathering the flickering light from the room and altering it. She reached beyond the physical realm with her mind and one by one, she adjusted each dim beam of light to pass through the broken shards of glass and reveal what was beyond her sight.

The glass shards darkened, and clouds passed through them. Reina was looking down on an ocean at night, with each shard showing a different region of the water. Enken frowned, and then his eyes widened in recognition. A three-masted wooden ship.

“They are underway,” Enken said.

Reina’s mind reached deeper into the darkness, and the ocean faded. When her vision re-focused, she could see six people standing on the deck of the ship. One held a colorful jeweled Lantern. It’s light glowed through the broken glass and brightened the wooden floor of the tavern.

“If we do not reach the Gray Coral Strand in time to greet them, they will not survive,” Reina said quietly.

The Vicereine reached into her coin purse and drew an object from it carefully. She placed a crown-emblazoned silver coin on the bar. A month’s wages for a tavern keeper.

“My apologies for the mess.”

The patrons watched with a combination of dread and curiosity as the dusty-robed woman made her way back to the door and waited for Enken to hold it open. The proprietor finally exhaled as the last of her robes passed the edge of the doorjamb. Enken followed her outside.

Nobody spoke.

Continue to Chapter Seven