The Shadow Sorceress Read online

  THE SHADOW SORCERESS

  Ink Mage SideQuest No. 2

  Victor Gischler

  This is a work of fiction. Nothing within has any connection with actual people, places, or things. Not even close.

  Copyright Victor Gischler 2019.

  All rights reserved.

  www.VictorGischlerAuthor.com

  Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com

  THE SHADOW SORCERESS

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Epilogue

  About The Author

  CHAPTER ONE

  The troubadour had been down on his luck when I’d met him at the little tavern on the way to Tul Agnon, and I didn’t even haggle when he sold me his second lute to cover his bar tab.

  I surprised myself with how easily I picked it up again. After a few nights practicing around a campfire with only Lill as my audience, I plucked up the nerve – so to speak – to play in front of a crowd at an inn where we’d taken rooms on the edge of the Poet’s Quarter (I wasn’t quite confident enough to try my skills in the Musician’s Quarter) where an appreciative audience occasionally refilled my wine goblet or tossed a copper into my hat.

  Not that I needed the money. I was swimming in gold thanks to recent successful adventures, and my efforts with the lute were merely to pass the time. Lill had told me she needed to find the right sort of spellcaster with skill enough to put the lightning bolt tattoos on her ankles. Lill’s last words had been, “Wait here.”

  That had been three weeks ago.

  I strummed the final chord of The Bawdy Baron, and my eyes shifted to the inn’s front door as it opened, random patrons wandering in and out of the cold.

  “She’s not coming back, you know?”

  I turned my head to see the barmaid Glenna grinning at me. She had an enticing gap between her two front teeth, copper red hair, and clear skin with a pink hue. Short and curvy.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Who’s not coming back?”

  She laughed. “Don’t pretend. You’re woman.”

  “Lill’s not my woman,” I said. “We’re more like … business associates.”

  But Glenna was right. I’d been looking for her, and each day that passed, I suspected with more certainty I wouldn’t see her again. How long I intended to live in the inn’s best suite, playing songs and swilling wine every night, still remained to be seen. At some point, I’d need a new plan.

  “She’s not the only woman in the world, Templeton.” Glenna winked at me and then carried away a tray of empty tankards.

  I strummed an easy, aimless tune and thought about the possibilities of Glenna. She’d been good company as I waited for Lill’s return and had made her availability clear without quite being wanton.

  Maybe I was kidding myself. I’d disabused myself of the notion there would be any repeat of the one time Lill and I had been intimate, but I rather thought our temporary partnership had grown into a very real friendship. She had personal business which was taking her back north to her home in the Glacial Wastes. I lacked direction at the time and decided to accompany her – at least part way. She seemed to enjoy my company.

  I was now forced to revaluate our association.

  I played for a while without singing, providing a soothing backdrop to the various hushed conversations around the common room. The crowd at this Poet’s Quarter inn was an odd mix: young students fortunate enough to have some of daddy’s silver to spend, scholars from the university with squinting eyes and gray beards, and various merchants and shopkeepers who sold to both – all reasonably friendly and well behaved, not like a soldier or sailor’s tavern or some aggressive bawdy house crowd. I hadn’t seen a fight or any severe sort of misbehavior since walking thought the front door three weeks ago.

  It was starting to get a bit dull actually.

  I looked up and realized time had passed without my noticing. Many of the tables were now empty, and the embers in the stone fireplace had burned low. I hadn’t touched my wine.

  I finished the song I was playing and stood, slinging the lute across my back. I checked my hat. I’d earned three coppers. I climbed the stairs to my suite. My plan was simple. Go to bed and put off any important decisions until morning, but over breakfast I would need to determine just exactly what I intended to do. I couldn’t clunk around the Poet’s Quarter forever.

  The journey north to Tul Agnon had offered inns of lesser quality and, all too often, sleeping on the hard ground in the open, and with winter now arrived with all its ferocity, such nights were a bitter test of my stamina. Being from the Glacial Wastes, Lill seemed to take no notice.

  I’d noticed enough for the both of us.

  So while I’d begun to find my present accommodations boring, I certainly still found them comfortable – perhaps one of the reasons I was so slow to move on. There was a cozy sitting room, a bedroom with a large and very soft bed, and a bathing chamber with a wooden tub. On numerous occasions I’d had servants march up the stairs in a bucket brigade to fill it with hot water and passed a relaxing hour or so in a good soak.

  I noticed someone had recently built a fire in the small fireplace. The service here really was excellent. I’d miss that when I packed up and headed out for …

  Well, I could think about that over breakfast.

  A knock at the door. A fleeting thought that Lill had returned, but no. The knock was too tentative. Lill would hammer the door with a fist or, more likely, simply walk in without knocking at all.

  I opened the door.

  Glenna.

  Her eyes came up to mine, a quick and impish smile on her lips. “I thought tonight might be the night.”

  And so it was. I stepped aside. She entered, and I closed the door again.

  She untied something behind her and then hooked a thumb into the low V of her neckline, sliding the dress off her shoulder. It fell to the floor. She was pale and freckled all over, and I could not have been more delighted. She stepped into me, and in the next instant, my hands were full of her. She reached down, filling her hands also, head tilted up, and my lips met hers.

  The door slammed open with a crash and Lill rushed inside like some blinding white angel erupting from the darkness of the hallway, her fur collared cloak flapping behind her.

  Glenna screamed, arms moving to cover herself as she backed into a corner.

  Unsure what I should say, I defaulted to an old favorite. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

  “I don’t care,” Lill said. “We have to leave. Now.”

  I blinked. “Care to explain?”

  “If you’d like that explanation to be the last thing you hear before your gruesome death,” Lill said.

  “You can tell me later.” I looked around the suite. All of my fine clothing, much of it purchased recently with my newfound wealth, was scattered about the place. I wasn’t the most organized person.

  As if reading my mind, she said, “No time to pack. Go out that window. It faces the stables behind the inn.”

  The urgency in her voice spurred me into action. I had time to grab only one personal item, and I would later reflect why I’d snatched up the lute instead of my rapier, but that would be later. I threw the window shutters open wide and stuck one leg out, preparing to make a hasty exit.

  It occurred to me I no longer heard Glenna screaming. I glanced back over my shoulder. She still huddled in the corner, arms crossed over her breasts. She no longer seemed afraid but watched our exit with raw curiosity.

  I cleared my throat and offered her an embarrassed look. “Uh … sorry
about all this.”

  “Just go.” Lill pushed me. Hard.

  I tumbled through the window and landed on the roof of the inn’s wraparound porch. I slid, one hand grasping for purchase among the roof tiles, the other clinging to the lute, and then a moment later it seemed I was floating in midair.

  It didn’t seem that way for long. I hit cobblestone and felt the wind go out of me.

  The lute, at least, was safe.

  Lill landed easily next to me graceful as a cat. She grabbed a fistful of my tunic and hauled me to my feet. In the next moment, I was being dragged across the courtyard toward the inn’s stable.

  “No, I’m fine,” I said. “Thanks for asking.”

  “If you’re fine, then you don’t need to waste time talking about it.” She kept pulling me along until we stood before the double wooden doors of the stable.

  Even if Lill were not an ink mage, she would be a formidable woman, as tall as I was, broad shoulders, lithe, and taut muscles in her arms and legs. A striking woman with bright clear skin white as snow. A shock of short platinum hair.

  I realized I hadn’t before seen her dressed as she was now. A heavy, long-sleeved woolen shirt of dark blue, a vest of chain mail over the shirt. Blue leggings of the same material tucked into knee-high, soft leather boots. Thick leather bracers. Iron thigh plates and shin guards. I’d never seen her in any kind of armor before, and that she thought she might need it worried me. The fur collared cloak was the same dark blue as the rest of her outfit. I shivered, reminded I’d fled without my own cloak.

  The dark stains on her clothing and chain mail may or may not have been dried blood.

  Lill had definitely been up to something. I knew better than to ask. At least not right now. She was in a hurry.

  “I’ll saddle the horses,” she told me. “Stay here and keep watch.”

  “If we’re in a hurry, I can help saddle—”

  “Stay. Watch.”

  “What am I watching for?”

  “Anything.”

  It was still early, and a lit oil lantern hung on a hook next to the stable entrance. Lill took it and went inside. I stood in the sudden darkness and the eerie silence, the cold penetrating my light clothing. Dark clouds drifted across the moon. Dingy orange light spilled from the inn’s rear windows, now the courtyard’s only illumination.

  Slowly, it began to snow, fat flakes floating sideways on a steady, cold breeze.

  I drew in a deep breath and blew it out in a sigh. “Shit.”

  I stood a moment, the sounds of Lill saddling the horses muffled and hurried did little to disturb the bleak silence of the courtyard. I watched, having no clue what I was watching for.

  A second later, I blinked. Was that movement, something along the ground? I looked again. Some black liquid trickled between the cobblestones, coming toward me, as if someone somewhere had kicked over a rain barrel, dark water rushing along the cracks. But it wasn’t water.

  I looked again. Was that smoke oozing between the cobblestones, hugging the ground as it snaked toward me? No, not smoke. Shadows.

  The shadows flowed one into another, joining into a mass. My eyes darted back and forth across the courtyard, and I saw two more of the masses taking shape. I opened my mouth to shout a warning but froze, my mind trying to wrap itself around what I was seeing.

  The shadows oozed into one another, rose up from the cobblestones, taking shape. Lanky bodies, long legs, snouts, ears pointed. The shadowy creatures looked like great dogs molded from the night itself, both solid and ephemeral at the same time.

  The animals growled at me, a strange guttural hiss that echoed along the courtyard, and I found my voice.

  “Lill! There’s … uh … a problem out here.”

  Lill emerged from the stables, lantern in one hand, the reins of two saddled horses in the other. Her eyes widened at the sight of the shadow hounds. “They’re hers. Tracking me.”

  “Hers?” I asked. “Her who?”

  The shadow hounds howled, the mournful wail piercing the night.

  “Damn,” Lill said. “That will bring them.”

  “Them? Them who?”

  “Get on your horse.”

  She didn’t wait to see if I obeyed. Lill hurled the lantern. It landed among the dark hounds. The crack of glass. A fiery explosion, flaming oil spreading over the cobblestones. A shriek went up from the hounds. They dissolved like ashes tossed into the wind, the last remnants of them melting into the night.

  “Well, that wasn’t so difficult.” I settled into my saddle atop the gelding.

  “The hounds were only her trackers,” Lill told me, climbing onto her horse, a snow white stallion at least a hand taller than my mount.

  Five armored men rounded the far corner of the inn and entered the courtyard.

  “It’s those fellows you should be worried about,” Lill said.

  I preferred flesh and blood men over whatever those shadow beasts had been, but I could understand Lill’s concern. All five were hard-looking types with black armor under black cloaks, black fur on the shoulders now dotted with snow. The man in the lead had a mane of dark hair on top which flowed down his back, shaved on the sides. A pointed black beard but no moustache. A black patch over one eye, nose and cheekbones sharp enough to cut rope. He was bigger than the others and looked meaner, although I supposed anyone who looked like that might be taken for a bad man. He had a broadsword in one hand and a length of chain in the other that he began to twirl, the iron links making a cutting sound through the air.

  The rest drew their weapons as they approached, removing any doubt about their intentions.

  “Ride!” Lill spurred her horse.

  Toward them.

  I spat a curse and rode after her. I remembered I’d left the rapier in the room and gripped my lute like a club.

  The men closed on us before we could get the horses up to speed, and the man with eyepatch swung the chain. It wrapped around Lill’s wrist and the cross guard of her sword. A normal person with a normal person’s reflexes would have pulled back, jerking the chain tight. Then she might have lost her weapon or been pulled from the saddle.

  But Lill was an ink mage.

  The Prime tattoo along her spine gave her perfect awareness of her own body, perfect perception of the world around her. When tapped into the spirit – that well of strength inside herself – she became a perfect machine.

  So instead of jerking the chain tight, she assessed the situation in less time than it took a fly to beat its wings. Lill urged her horse toward the man, the chain going slack. With a flick of her wrist, the chain looped around the man’s neck, and Lill jerked it tight. The man’s good eye shot wide.

  I didn’t see what happened next. One of the other attackers came at me fast, bringing his blade in a downward swing. I brought up the lute to block. The blade hacked into it, and the instrument came apart in an explosion of splinters and twanging strings.

  “Bastard!” I kicked hard.

  The heel of my boot flattened his nose. I took great pleasure in the crunching sound of cartilage. The pleasure was cut short by the sight of more men advancing with swords held high.

  They were abruptly knocked back by Lill’s enormous white stallion as she galloped through. “Go! Ride!”

  I spurred my horse after her.

  I allowed myself a brief glance over my shoulder. The unscathed men helped the wounded to their feet, the one with the eyepatch pulling the chain from his throat, gasping for breath. I leaned low and rode fast after Lill.

  We rounded the inn, leaving the courtyard, the horses’ hooves chattering down the road to the city’s eastern gate. Bored guards watched us ride through, and in a few short minutes we’d cleared the outskirts. We reined in our horses atop the first rise we came to, pausing to look back down the narrow road to Tul Agnon. From here, I could see the Great Library rising dark and forbidding beyond the Poet’s Quarter and the rest of the city. From this vantage, all looked quiet. One might never have gu
essed we were just assaulted in the courtyard of a respectable inn.

  “There’s a village twenty miles ahead where the road crosses the river,” Lill said. “Too small for an inn. A farmer’s barn maybe.”

  “Better than nothing, I guess.” I was freezing and didn’t like the thought of a night out in the open. I searched my saddlebag until I found a horse blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders like a makeshift cloak. “I don’t suppose you’d care to share who that was trying to kill us.”

  “Her men.” She glanced down the road again as if afraid to see them coming.

  “Will they follow us that far?”

  “I don’t think so,” Lill said. “I sent word to my contact in Merridan that I was on my way.”

  “You have a contact in Merridan?”

  “No, but her spy network is everywhere,” Lill explained. “She’ll intercept the message and it will hopefully throw her off.”

  “And who,” I asked pointedly, “is she?”

  “The Shadow Sorceress.”

  So glad I asked. “That’s needlessly ominous. You couldn’t just say Sarah or somebody?”

  “You saw those things in the courtyard.”

  I remembered the hounds and felt a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold. Shadow Sorceress indeed. I had no desire to see anymore of her handiwork. “Why were her men after you?”

  “She thinks I stole something from her.”

  “Why would she think that?”

  “Because I stole something from her.”

  I groaned. “You vanish for three weeks, and then when you finally come back, you bring—”

  Abruptly, she stood in the saddle, looking past me and back down the road. I twisted in the saddle and looked. A line of mounted men emerged from the gates, some of them carrying torches. There were at least sixty of them. At this distance, it was impossible to see details.

  “Is that them?” I asked.

  She squinted. “I can’t be sure until they get closer, and I think I’d not like to be around if they get closer.”

  “What do we do?”

  She eased back into her saddle. “We ride. Fast.” She flicked the reins and the stallion took off.