Page 12 of The False Shaman (Claimed by the Red Hand #2)
ARCHIE
Never get attached.
It’s the cardinal rule of a working boy. Sure, you have your regulars. But the day always comes when they show up at the red lantern with coin in their pocket and a bulge in their pants…and they beckon you over…only to ask if there’s anyone new.
The bedboys who pout about it—or even throw a hissy fit—are the ones who guarantee they’ll never win back their old clientele. So the fact that there is no happily-ever-after for someone like me…well, I’ve learned to grin and bear it.
So what if I couldn’t hope to bed the hot young shaman? I’d prove myself useful in other ways. After all, it wasn’t as if I’d ever aspired to being a prostitute. It was just the hand I’d been dealt by fate.
As I slipped down the winding tunnel, I tried to imagine myself as something else. Something more. A confidante. An advisor.
And yet, all those imaginings somehow managed to culminate in me tugging open the ties on the shaman’s leathers and watching them slither to the floor. I’d always prided myself on having a good imagination. But this was one instance where I would be better off without it.
The sound of my footfalls changed as the passage opened out to a larger cavern, and my lantern beam was swallowed by the opening. Judging by the undisturbed grit beneath my soles, no one had come this way in a long time. Which would make it an ideal place to lick my wounds in peace….
Or maybe not. The chamber was good-sized, but cluttered, and hard to see by a single light. I opened my lantern and held it high, and shadows danced wildly.
It was a storeroom—or it had been, once. But the shelves were swathed in something I took for fabric, initially. Until I realized I was looking at sheaves of webbing and the collapsed shapes of cocoons. And that the grit crunching under my feet was made up of the crumbling shells of some kind of insect.
My initial instinct was to run. But it was obvious that whatever was once breeding here had long ago dried up. I found a shard of rock and used it to clear away some of the webbing. It was thicker than I expected, but brittle, too, and it parted with ease. Small carcasses filled the shelves in drifts. Spiders. Some normal-sized, some as big as my hand. Thankfully, all long-dead. But once I got beyond the creepy, eight-legged confetti, I saw the shelves had once held something other than bugs. Vessels of wood or clay or glass. It was like Taruut’s stash of tinctures and herbs, but enough to supply an army.
I uncorked a stoneware jar and tipped out a sifting of dust. Whatever army this storehouse might have served was long dead, and the shaman who’d amassed it was already moldering in the mysterious hidden crypt.
The herbs were useless, but that didn’t mean there was nothing here I could use. I dragged a brazier closer to the shelves. The wood inside was beyond desiccated, and when I coaxed flame into it from my lantern, it blazed to life with a startling crackle.
The light illuminated even more crunchy mounds of spider bodies—ew—but up above, on the highest shelf…was that a scroll case? Maybe there really was a map after all! Since the shelving was built for orcs, I couldn’t quite tell what I’d found from where I stood. But I’m not a bad climber, and if I cleared away enough of the spiders….
“Well—look who’s here.”
I jumped and whirled around, only to find Gorgul standing in one of the doorways with his hand resting on his spear. His footsteps must’ve been camouflaged by the crackling of the old wood! Still, there were even more guards behind him, and I should have heard them coming. I would have…if I hadn’t been so focused on the scrolls.
Gorgul handed off his lantern to an underling and strode into the chamber, making no attempt now to tread softly. His steps were punctuated by alarming crunches. “Weak little humans should take care in snooping around unfamiliar caves.” He picked up a skeletal carcass the size of a sea crab. “If this cave spider were still alive, she’d eat her way through your soft belly and pump you full of eggs. And you can see how eagerly they breed.”
He tossed the dried spider in my direction. I dodged, and it shattered against a dusty shelf.
“You’re not nearly as clever as you believe,” he went on, scanning the room. “What is it you think you’ve found? There’s nothing here anyone would care about. Nothing here but rot and ruin. Face it, human. There’s only one thing a whore like you can offer—and it’s nothing that would interest a shaman.”
I’d quit being ashamed of my profession years ago. And yet, somehow, the orc’s insult cut me to the bone. Probably because it came on the heels of me entertaining the notion that I could ingratiate myself to Droko. Because it hit me right where a sliver of hope had breached my heart.
I knew damn well that hope is for suckers. But it stung nonetheless.
The worst part was, that horrible guard could tell he’d gotten to me. A grin of smug satisfaction curled around his tusks as he basked in my humiliation. He’d be singing a different tune, though, once I brought that scroll to Droko.
His gaze followed mine and landed on the cracked leather case. Without so much as straining, he plucked it from the high shelf and my heart sank. Now he’d be the hero…and I’d be just another puny slave.
“There’s nothing here,” Gorgul repeated…and dropped the scroll case onto the flaming brazier.
The leather case might have protected it, once. But not now. Hungry flames chewed through the cracked leather sheath as I watched my one chance at impressing the new shaman go up in smoke.
Gorgul took a step in my direction. I’m sure he would’ve loved nothing more than to grab me by the hair and shove my face into the smoking coals.
The long knife hidden in my trousers weighed against my thigh, but it was obvious he’d spear me before I got close enough to use it. Still, my sense of self-preservation is finely honed, and before he could catch me, I’d grabbed my lantern and slipped through a crack between two shelves that was too narrow for him to follow.
“Go, little human,” he called after me. “Scatter like the vermin you are. You can’t hide forever. Eventually you’ll end up like the spiders. Dried up and dead.”
Not gonna lie…I may have broken into a nervous sweat. It turned out to be an asset for slipping through a particularly punishing gap. Gorgul wasn’t wrong. If I got lost in the stony labyrinth, there was only so long I could last without food or drink. But, who knows? Maybe, by that time, I would grow thin enough to shove myself through a gap that led to freedom.
Unfortunately, it was just as likely I’d only find myself wandering deeper into the earth. I squeezed out into yet another stony chamber, about as big around as the parlor of a fancy brothel. My sense of direction seemed fine back in Wildwood, where I never got lost, even when a new crop of lean-tos sprang up where mere days before, there’d been a road. But the caves, carved by the capriciousness of water, followed their own flowing paths that were nothing like the constructs of men.
And even worse…after a while, they all looked the same. Same rugged walls. Same threatening stalactites.
Same crescent-shaped gap.
I’d circled back around to the sword! I crammed through the gap and fumbled into the crevice where it was hidden, panicking momentarily as my grasp closed on thin air. But then my fingertips brushed the smooth pommel, and I swayed with relief as I drew out the sword.
I imagined that dumb oaf Gargle coming at me with a spear, only for it to shear right in half as I raised my glorious blade. That was supposing I was able to lift it in time—which, honestly, would be a stretch. But a guy can always dream.
Of course, it would be even more satisfying to cleave Gorgul in two like I’d sliced through the stone bier. But, setting aside that I didn’t have the strength…if I somehow did manage, the memory would undoubtedly haunt me for the rest of my days.
I dragged the sword from its hiding place and reacquainted myself with the shape of the hilt. My fantasies about becoming the shaman’s confidante were no better than the spider carcasses. Dust and ruin. If Droko let me serve him, it would never be as anything other than a slave. And Gorgul would make sure that my time in service was as short as possible. In other words…there was nothing for me here.
I had to go.
I shoved through to the chamber where the stumpy figures lay in petrified eternal rest—not because I thought they could help me, but because it was the last place I’d seen the sky. My eyes were accustomed to the low light of the lantern, but outside, it was daylight now. The light beaming through the shaft a dozen feet overhead made my eyes water, and I squinted as I adjusted to the brightness.
I didn’t know exactly where that shaft would lead, but the only sound filtering down was the rustle of wind through branches and the chatter of an annoyed bluejay. Not the sort of sounds you’d hear within the walls of an orcish village.
I pressed the tip of the sword into the cavern floor. There was resistance…. And then it pushed through as if the floor were clay, not stone. I might not be able to reach that shaft in the center of the ceiling without a grappling hook. But if I carved steps into the stone wall and reached the ceiling, maybe I could tunnel my own way out.
A circuit of the chamber revealed a craggy diagonal ridge that almost read as a stairway—if you looked at it just right and squinted hard enough. Parts of it were too narrow to even qualify as a toehold, and stretches of it were nearly vertical. But as I hacked off a shard of stone with my preternaturally sharp blade, I saw that with a bit of help, stairs could emerge.
It was slow work. I found a rhythm with the tool, getting a feel for the best angle to hold the blade and exactly how much stone I could hew away with a single stroke. But even as I got the hang of it, my shoulders began to ache and my arms trembled with fatigue.
By the time I could no longer lift the heavy sword, I’d carved all of three steps. Steep, narrow, precarious things barely the width of my foot.
Good thing I’d only need to use them once.
My stomach growled, and I stashed my sword in its niche to head for the kitchen before anyone wondered where I’d gone. Gorgul would probably think I’d been hiding from him, and that was fine by me. People tended to underestimate me. Might as well use it to my advantage.
The gnarly old cook at the brothel always shooed whores out of the kitchen so no one could take more than their fair share of the slop, so I was working by instinct alone. Even worse, I didn’t recognize most of the ingredients. At least, I thought I didn’t….
Until I unstoppered a jar of reddish seeds and inhaled their intoxicating spice…and recalled Taruut’s words.
The berry of the Rubyseed plant is a capricious thing. Harvest them too young, and they’ll pucker your mouth. Too old, and you’ll shit for days. But at their pinnacle of ripeness, the taste is so exquisite, clans have fought wars for a wagonload of the fruit.
The Rubyseed he’d shown me back then was on the ripe side—a cure for constipation. But the bottle in my hand was clearly of the war-starting variety.
Couldn’t care less if Droko likes my cooking , I told myself as I stewed some jerky and dried roots, and seasoned them with the rare spice. Just making myself seem useful so I don’t end up in the slave pits before I cut my way out of here.