Blades Of Illusion: Crown Service #2 Read online

  From the moment Sara had relayed that story to her mother, she had resolved with vigor that she would never again refer to him in her head as a monster for the facial features he couldn’t control and the arm and leg that lay useless by his side. When she had thought to speak to her father about the matter afterward, he had made sure to educate her on the realities of the world and that there were people far more monstrous out there, both physically and mentally, than the man she fondly referred to as Sir.

  Staring into Ezekiel’s brown and spectacled eyes, she smiled at the memory, because despite the deadly situation, it made her remember a time when paralyzed features didn’t mean a bleak outcome was inevitably coming for them.

  Ezekiel, however, wasn’t feeling so optimistic. The right side of his mouth, the only side he could use, was turned down in a frown. “I’m slowing you down.”

  Sara snapped out of her reverie.

  He spoke in a slur, as he couldn’t move the lips on the left side either. In fact, the entire left side of his body lay still and droopy, as if his body had been painted out and the artist had smeared the left just before he had finished his work. She couldn’t even see his left eye as the eyelid above had flickered down into a half-closed position.

  “You’re not slowing me down,” she replied tersely.

  He glared.

  She raised an eyebrow as she kept her right arm wrapped securely around his waist and jerked her chin towards their compatriots in front of them. A long line stretched as far as she could see of mercenaries walking, carrying, and dragging fallen warriors. Warriors affected by the damned creatures’ venom but not dead yet.

  The mercenaries’ guild had a motto that she knew, or at least she thought she knew, they took very seriously. Never leave a man behind.

  Ha, Sara thought to herself wryly, I wonder if the captain ever got that memo. Division Three certainly deserted the other divisions of their guard fast enough.

  Outwardly, she said, “Look around you. No one’s getting anywhere too fast. Now shut your trap and put your right foot forward, and then put it forward again.”

  He stared at her.

  “And I’ll handle your left.”

  He gave a small laugh. “Do I have a choice?”

  “No,” she said flatly as she jerked him closer so that his paralyzed left side once more aligned seamlessly with her right and she could force his left leg to lift alongside the movements of her right leg.

  It had been twenty minutes since the lizard had taken a bite out of him and they realized the dire straits that were coming. One of the only two healers still alive had confirmed with a tired look that the venom was one they had no chance of fighting. It had taken seven dead mercenaries within a four-hour period before the healers had tersely admitted that they couldn’t combat the invasive poison traveling through their patients’ bodies with their powers, nor could they provide an herbal remedy to ease the process and halt it from spreading. Sara had remembered one healer laughing bitterly as she said, “We might be able to concoct an antivenom if you catch one of the blasted creatures. Alive.”

  Another leader in the guard, her patient actually, had looked up at that healer with bloodshot eyes from where he sat up on his elbows and looked at his paralyzed legs that were decaying before his very eyes. “Do you not think we’ve tried? Staying alive is an issue, much less capturing the blasted thing.” Then he had chuckled and laid down on his pallet to die. “Might, she says. Might my ass.”

  Sara had quickly walked past him. Not because she was unsympathetic to his agony, but because the morose attitude about their ability to combat the creatures was one she knew was widespread. Hell, the bite not only paralyzed you—while piercing armor—but eventually it caused your muscles to putrefy at an accelerated rate.

  “I wonder why?” Ezekiel had said next to her. That had been a short hour before he had received his bite.

  “Why what?” Sara had muttered absentmindedly.

  “Why the putrefaction? We’re already paralyzed and waiting for them to come for us.”

  Sara had been cleaning her weapons as they walked. All the mud and wet was wreaking havoc on her leather and blades. There was nothing to be done for it but continue to shine them and move on.

  “The smell,” she had said.

  Ezekiel had prodded her. “And?”

  Sara had sighed and turned her head to look at him with an irritated gaze. When she saw the eager eyes of an intellectual just wanting one more tidbit of information, she snapped her blade back into its sheath with a click and said, “The smell of the rotting bodies probably leads them to their prey.”

  “Oh,” Ezekiel had said thoughtfully.

  “Yes, oh,” she had said flatly. It was a horrible way to die. Well...more horrible than suffocating to death. In most cases, those who were bitten had lost control of their lungs and suffocated shortly after. A few horribly unlucky souls, though, had become fully paralyzed while still taking in breath. Those ones were left to starve or wait for the creature put them out of their misery. Sara and the survivors didn’t wait to find out which.

  “They’re supposed to lay there like victims,” Sara had said, “But if there’s anything true about a band of mercenaries, it’s that they’re no victims.”

  Ezekiel had looked at her uncomprehending until she glanced back at the fallen leader and so did he—only to see a healer swiftly lean over and cut the man’s throat. He had been too far gone to save or drag through the swamp for aid. So they had done the only thing they could—given him a merciful death.

  Ezekiel had shuddered and paled. “Promise me something, Sara.”

  She had looked over at him.

  “Promise me you won’t leave me to die, nor slit my throat like a carcass before the slaughter.”

  Sara had frowned as she switched to polishing her long blade. “That was an honorable death. More honorable than being eaten alive.”

  Ezekiel’s desperate gaze had caught her own. “Promise me.”

  Sara had narrowed her eyes. “Think you’re too good for an honest death?”

  He had wet his lips nervously. “I think there’s much left for me to do in this world.”

  Sara had chuckled and her gaze had swept over dead and dying bodies all around them. They had briefly stopped on a semi-dry mound in the swamp to care for their wounded. “Don’t we all?”

  Ezekiel’s gaze had stayed determined.

  “Fine,” she grouched, “But I want a promise in return.”

  He nodded.

  “A clean death. Don’t drag me half a mile, don’t let my insides putrefy, and don’t let me die face down in the mud while a creature straddles my back for a bite.”

  Solemnly, he had said, “It’s agreed then. You’ll save my life.”

  “And you’ll take mine.” They’d ended that conversation with a brief handshake. Ezekiel had then gone back to one of the five books he’d managed to snatch out of compartment chest before mercenaries had pushed it into quicksand—over his loud and furious protests—in order to form a bridge for them to pass. Sara had wondered why he’d bothered carrying them into a swamp with all the wet mildew that would make short work of his pages but Ezekiel had looked over at her with a disdainful sniff and simply said, “Magic can preserve all things and these need to be preserved.”

  Now as Sara looked over at Ezekiel, she gave his waist a slight squeeze. She doubted he even felt it. It made no matter. She would keep her promise. Even now when the yellow ichor leaked from Ezekiel’s left upper thigh. When he had begun to falter in his steps, Sara had done the only thing she could think of. She had grabbed some supple branches from the swamp interior as well as thick hanging vines, which the damned bog had plenty of, and bound his left leg to her right with sailor’s knots. That way when his mobility started to fade, Ezekiel could keep going.

  She was actually grateful the venom had affected him differently than the others. If he had lost all mobility in the legs too quickly and she couldn’t get someon
e else to help, she had been prepared to tap into her battle magic and lift his weight with her own strength, but with his ability to hobble with her help, she only had to use all of her physical strength and endurance to get them by.

  As they walked forward, Sara knew that eventually her natural strength would come to a limit. Before it did, she would rid herself of her armor before she left Ezekiel to die. What came next would be up to her compatriots.

  “Forty minutes,” grunted Ezekiel as they hopped and walked along the way.

  Sweat beaded on her brow, her right side felt like it was going numb from the strain, and she was damned hungry for some of that elephant meat. It was long gone by now, but it was sign of the desperate time that she actually desired its return. But she couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop. Because stopping meant death.

  “What?” she muttered.

  “Forty minutes until I die,” he wheezed.

  “Do you have a death wish?” she snarled. “Because if you do, I’ll cut your throat right now and make your dreams come true. Don’t tempt me, Ezekiel. Now stop your babbling and keep walking.”

  Privately, she knew she was just lashing out. A promise was a promise. If he had made her swear to cut his throat, she would have done so long ago as well. But he had made her swear to save his life, so she was doing that. The light-hearted attempts at banter—or dark melancholia, she couldn’t decide what his constant muttering about time said about his mental state—came from the hallucinatory properties of the venom that were setting in. So she didn’t blame him for babbling.

  Too much.

  Other stricken victims had asked for their children, for their wives, for their damned dogs and for a good pint of ale before they died. Only this idiot curator babbled about death.

  Chapter 8

  “This march has to end,” Sara muttered five minutes later as she saw another soldier drop—dead on his feet.

  As she watched rain patter down on his leather jerkin to slide in rivulets to the muddy swamp, she almost sighed. She didn’t have to kick him for a response to know he no longer inhabited the plane of the living. His still flesh, and the fact that no one would voluntarily lay face-deep in mud only to choke to death on it, told her that.

  “We can’t keep going on like this,” admitted Ezekiel slowly through the right side of his mouth.

  “Not enough food, not enough water, and over half the division dead,” agreed Sara with a weary sigh. For once in her life, she wasn’t sure what was next. Would they make it out alive, or die here in this swamp like some forgotten troop out of legend?

  Sara said, “I honestly thought I’d at least make it to the battlefield before I died.”

  Ezekiel chuckled. “We don’t always get what we want, do we?”

  Sara raised a tired hand to bat away some of the mosquitoes swarming near her face, to no effect. “Cheeky buggers. I’ll be dead soon, anyway,” she told them. “Can’t you wait until then?”

  A new man appeared beside her slogging through the mud. As he passed her by, he turned and laughed as he said, “Nah. They want the blood while it’s fresh and still running in your veins. Can’t get hot blood if you’re dead.”

  She chuckled as she glanced over....and up. He was at least a foot and half taller than her with long legs to match, but his pace was as slow as her own. She could see why, with the weight he carried more than doubling his own. He had a man slung over his shoulders like a sack of grain. He was carrying a full-grown mercenary, and the man was barely moving. The only time his legs flopped was when the man carrying him stumbled around a particularly thick mud pool.

  “Is he dead?” she asked quietly.

  “No,” grunted the man carrying his fallen comrade.

  She frowned. He looked dead. You didn’t pass out in this swamp like dead weight. You died.

  “Are you sure?” she asked gently. Gently for her, that was. Pretty insistently for total stranger.

  “No,” he replied.

  “Do you want me to check?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?” coughed Ezekiel.

  The man hesitated before his next step. “Because he’s my brother, and as long as I don’t check, I know he’s alive. I’d rather he be alive and on my shoulders than dead and rotting.”

  Sara was quiet for a moment. There was nothing she could say. It made perfect and imperfect sense. As long as the man believed his brother was alive, then to him, he was alive. The moment he checked and confirmed, he could be dead.

  She sighed. Logic kicked in. The man had a greater chance of staying alive and defending himself if he wasn’t using both hands to hold his brother’s immobile form atop his shoulders.

  As she turned to do something she was really bad at—coax him to check his brother’s pulse anyway and deal with the emotional consequences—she heard something approaching from above. Like the whirl of wings more numerous than anything she had before encountered. Besides, the sound was coming too fast. Much too fast.

  “Hear...that?” Ezekiel asked, his breath coming out in a wheeze. It was getting harder for him to talk and breathe simultaneously. Sara knew the paralysis was spreading to the right side of his body and his throat. She also knew that before he fully succumbed to the paralysis and eventually died from asphyxiation, it would be a slow and harsh descent while his brain tried to cope with the lack of oxygen by slowly shutting down until he fell unconscious. It wouldn’t be painful so much as excruciating to know what was happening and be unable to do anything about it. Before his last few minutes of life, Ezekiel could also expect the muscles in his throat to restrict so tightly that the pathway of air to his lungs would be cut off. Sara knew from experience what it would feel like. That is, she knew what it felt like to slowly suffocate. The spotty vision. The gasping breaths. The darkness just at the edge of your mind, coming forward like a cloak of shadows as you fell back into its grasp.

  It had been unintentional for her. It was a part of her training. Sara thought it would be similar to her time in the training grounds when a particularly overzealous sparring partner had pulled her into a grappling hold. He had outweighed her by sixty pounds and it had been hand-to-hand combat. When he had grabbed her from behind while wrapping his arms around her throat in a bruising hold, nothing she had been able to do could force him to loosen his grip. Not kicking him in the shins and knees with all of her might. Not slamming her fists down on his muscled arms or clawing at his wrists. Nothing forced him to release her. As it had dawned on her that she was losing this fight and dark spots began to grow in her vision, she had looked to her left. Her father stood there with a thunderous expression on his face and his own muscled arms folded in front of him.

  Her last thought before she lost consciousness was ‘Father, save me.’

  When she woke several hours later, she had looked straight up into her father’s disapproving face. He had said one thing, “Rest. You’re going to need it.”

  Her throat feeling like a living bruise, Sara had slipped back into slumber with the touch of a healer’s hand. The next morning, her father had taken her out to the training fields and drilled her again and again with a practice dummy about what she had done wrong. The most important lesson, though, hadn’t been what fighting tactics she should have used to break her training partner’s hold. Instead, the lesson that he wanted drilled into her mind was that she shouldn’t have tried to rely on anyone else to save her life.

  “Faith like that, kitling, will get you killed,” her father had said tautly.

  “But father...” Sara remembered protesting.

  He had cut her off before she could finish the sentence.

  “But nothing. Rely on your strengths, know your weaknesses, and do what you have to do. But do not think that I, or anyone else, will be coming to save you.”

  Sara had nodded obediently, though it hadn’t soaked in right away. Later, when she was on the training field, again and again and her father had stood back with a troubled face but unwavering stance as he wa
tched her take a beating from bigger and faster soldiers, mages and non-magic people alike. Around the third or fourth fight, she had transitioned. Transitioned from a girl trainee to a young woman warrior who knew one thing—that she couldn’t rely on her father to save her. That in battle she must save herself. He was her protector, her mentor and her father, but he would not always be there. That is what he wanted her to learn. Independence. She first needed to be able to depend on herself before she leaned on others. So she had.

  Now, glancing over at Ezekiel, Sara knew that all of those techniques she had learned—how to break a grapple hold, how to disable an attacker, how to break a windpipe, and how to keep from being put in such a compromising position in the first place—would be useless here. Because Ezekiel’s opponent was a poison he couldn’t fight, one that spread inside him like an insidious fog. The encroaching paralysis would leave him unconscious and perfectly helpless, as it had done to so many others. Then the razor-billed dragon would strike. Or that was its plan. Sara had a plan of her own, and it involved shoving her sword up the predator’s throat as far as she could reach before she let it or, as she suspected, its pack of hunters, claim her friend.

  She pushed those thoughts from her mind. Ezekiel was currently breathing, even if it was labored. Right now, they had something else coming for them from the sky, and they would deal with it, come what may. Sara tilted her head up with a frown and listened hard, trying to figure out what it was. Another threat? It was too loud and too high up to be another one of the venomous land dragons or a leopard. She watched with still and wary eyes as the tree branches above them began to snap back and forth with alarming velocity. The rain’s steady downpour, however, was unaffected which told her that whatever this was, it was elemental in nature and certainly not coming from the sky’s atmosphere. No, it was below the heavens and above the land, and strong enough to make winds of its own that disturbed the branches as they swayed back and forth.