Page 38

I didn’t like that tone of voice, that coy sense of thinking he knew me well. Uncomfortably so.

“So, you’re trying to send some guild members on a research trip to what? Go look at the Clifftombs? I’m sure you know as well as I do that nothing is there.”

His head was bent to seem like he was looking at the map, but the look he shot me from under his brow again was admonishing this time. “Oh, I think we both know that is a lie.”

Shit.

I took a step back toward the door, and Nebold shot straight up from the chair, far more quickly than a man of his advanced age should. The man was practically hobbling and wheezing the last time I saw him, hardly able to stand on his own feet without the staff like he was now.

“Where do you think you’re going?” His voice was smoother, less strained than before. Both his palms were planted on the desk and he leaned over it as if about to leap over the damn thing. “You know you cannot ignore a mission assigned by your guildmaster, don’t you, Haron?”

“Well, you’re going to have a hard time enforcing that. Technically, I'm not a member of your guild anymore.” I leveled my own glare at him. My arms had unfolded themselves and hung at my sides to give the image of casual ease, when reallyevery muscle in my body was coiling to spring at the first sign of movement from him. “And if you know anything about the Clifftombs, you know it’s warded to the gods. Whatever treasure or scrolls you think are in there, it doesn’t matter since no one alive can take them down.”

Nebold hummed absently, still watching me like a trebegnon about to pounce. “Again, I think we both know that’s a lie.”

It was time to get the fuck out of here. This was not the Nebold Briton I was familiar with or wanted anything to do with. I turned just slightly to reach for the door handle when something flew just past my face and embedded itself in the wall behind me. Immediately I dropped to the floor and rolled behind one of the chairs as more projectiles flew through the air, and with a grunt I lifted the heavy furniture to toss over the desk where Nebold last was. A spat curse was shortly followed by the chair, shattering to splinters in midair. The distraction was just enough to allow me to pull the hunting knife strapped at the small of my back.

There wasn’t enough darkness in the room to be able to blend into it fully, but with a quickly murmured spell I was at least able to flit through the shadows along the edge of the room toward the hallway. That was, until the desk that was previously on the other side of the room tumbled to slam against the sturdy doors, effectively blocking them from being opened.

“Shit!” I cursed loudly and spun to face my aggressor.

A brutal grin spread across his wrinkled face, twisting it into an expression I'd never seen before on him. “Always making things difficult, aren’t you, Haron?”

This was less than the ideal situation, but with a madman trapped in the room with me and a literal crypt beneath the guild, I really only had one option to get out now. The dead kept in the catacombs beneath called to me, their voices starting in low murmurs and growing louder and more excited at the prospect of being set free. The thought of Nebold having bodiesburied beneath the building was vile, and the implications were even worse; I knew the practice had started during his fifty-odd years of leadership. Obviously, the threat of the guild unleashing a horde of undead stored in the basement would ward off most, if not all, scrutiny from the royals. He obviously banked heavily on the superstition surrounding necromancy that every guild member could animate the dead.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I asked through gritted teeth.

The imposter raised his thin shoulders, that creepy smile still on his face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But soon, it won’t matter!”

With a strained yell, he lifted both hands and threw them at me, blasting me with a violent gust of air. The force of it threw me to the back wall, slamming my back painfully against the wood panels before I slid to the floor. For the moment, I would let him think I was knocked out. The churning of graves and toppling of coffins in the catacombs beneath our feet from my silent summoning had already begun. Creaking bones and the clanking of metal knocking against itself was faint at first, barely reaching the top of the staircase leading to the catacombs.

The screams began a few moments later.

Frantic shuffling and wailing echoed down the hall had my attacker’s head snapping to the door in concern, accented by the clambering of the undead rising up from the catacombs in droves. Their ire and malice at being locked beneath the guild would bear fruit tonight, and I would be enjoying the wine made from it.

“What the—” he began, as the chaotic noises coming from the hall drew closer to the study, when suddenly the doors bowed inward far enough to shove the heavy desk a good foot from them.

I took that opportunity to hop back on my feet and throw my own blast of magic in an attempt to get him further from my escape. The wooden double doors rattled violently on their hinges, this time snapping to pieces. I turned to welcome the merry band of dead I’d risen from the guild’s catacombs and came face-to-face with the last corpse I ever expected to see in the pack.

Nebold Briton. Eyes a cloudy blue, face sunken in with exaggerated wrinkles of decaying skin, and mouth gaping open in the loose, vacant way of the dead. He shuffled in with the rest of the pack of revenants slowly filling the study and clogging the air with the pungent smell of death, his withered hand gripping onto his staff holding therealWiran ruby. Its pale red light cast a ghastly glow across his unnaturally pale skin.

If this was the real Nebold, who the hell was…

I hardly had a chance to finish my thought when something slammed into my side, knocking me down before I could turn to face the only other living person in the room. The side of my head cracked against the stone floor, hard enough to make my vision swirl. Fake Nebold sat on my back where he was perched and rained down his fists wherever he could get a hit in.

With a pained grunt, I pulled one arm above my head to gain enough leverage to roll over and knock my attacker off-balance. It gave me just enough time to focus and control the walking dead to grab for the imposter. Hands half-covered in skin, some entirely exposed to the bone, clawed at his clothes to drag him away from me long enough to get my bearings. He toppled to the side, stunned long enough for me to plant a brutal kick to his side and send him crashing into the legs of the shambling dead.

I stood shakily, favoring the left side of my skull that hit the floor, with my vision still slightly blurred. A massive cyclone of water sprouted from the center of the writhing mass of bones and knocked them back, almost sweeping me off my feet againas a shin-high wave traveled across the floor to the room’s edges. It drained out into the hall quickly, but it gave the asshole just enough time to make it over to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows and shatter it with the jab of an elbow. If he got out into the streets, he would be impossible to track down.

“Get the fuck back here!” I stumbled after him, disoriented and weaving through the bodies scattered around the study. “Someone stop him. That’s not Nebold!”

Guild members edged through the doorway from the hall, eyes wide with fear and confusion at the scene. “Where is the Guildmaster?”

I jabbed my finger at the small hill of bodies knocked down with the imposter’s magic. “He’s dead.” Leaning out the window, my head swung left and right to see if the man was in sight. “Fuck!”

The window was close to the mouth of the alleyway running alongside the guild hall. The imposter had already slipped into the crowd and likely changed his appearance. My fists trembled on the window ledge, and I gritted my teeth hard enough to crack a molar. In my current condition, it was hard to manipulate my magic to its full capabilities, and because of that, the fake Nebold had gotten away. Resurrecting the whole catacombs was foolish, but if I hadn’t, we may not have realized the real Nebold was dead.

By the time I got my anger under control and turned to face the frightened witnesses, a whole crowd had shown up in the broken doorway to see what had transpired. Seeing them all just standing there, gawking at the bodies scattered over the floor and everything soaked with unexplainable water, just had my temper flaring again. I refocused my magic to animate the revenants again, causing their bones to rattle and make the guild members scream as one.