Stalking Darkness

launched the orbs of power that burned against his palms.

32
L OSS
    T he moon had passed its zenith by the time Seregil came back to Blue Fish Street. It had been a pointless day overall. With the Beggar Law in force, most of his more valuable contacts had fled or gone to ground. Those that he had managed to track down had no fresh information on Plenimaran movements in the city. If the enemy was in town, he was keeping a low profile.
    Weary as Seregil was, however, the sight of the unlit lanterns in front of the inn brought him up short. A tingle of presentiment prickled the hairs on his neck and arms. Ducking quickly into a shadowed doorway across the street, he scrutinized the courtyard for a moment, then drew his sword and crept cautiously across to the front door.
    It was slightly ajar.
    Leaving it untouched, he crept around to discover the back door open as well. He pushed it wide with the tip of his blade, tensed for attack, but there was no sound from inside.
    An unlucky door filled his nostrils as he entered the kitchen; the stale, flat smells of a cold hearth and lamps left to gutter out on their own. Taking out a lightstone, he saw nothing out of place, except for Rhiri’s pallet, which was missing from its place near the hearth.
    On the second floor the signs were more ominous. Thryis and her family were not in their rooms and only Cilla’s bed appeared to have been slept in; the linens were thrown hastily back, and the coverlet hung awry over the side. Next to the bed, an overturned chair lay in the shattered remains of a washbasin.
    A grim heaviness settled in the pit of Seregil’s stomach as he moved on to the guest rooms at the front of the inn. Only one had been occupied. The unlucky carter and his son lay dead in their beds, smothered with the bolsters.
    The hidden panel leading to the stairs up to his rooms appeared untampered with, from the outside but opening it, he found that the warding glyph at the base of the stairs had been tripped. There were spots of blood on the lower steps, and several were smeared where more than one person had stepped in them before they’d dried. The glyphs farther up were simply gone. Still gripping his sword in his right hand, he drew his poniard with his left hand and mounted the stairs.
    The doors at the top of the stairs stood open, showing darkness beyond. If there was anyone lurking in the disused storage room, it was best to find out now while there was still a chance of easy retreat. Fishing a lightstone from a pouch at his belt, he tossed it into the room. The stone skittered noisily across the floor, illuminating the few crates and boxes scattered there. No one jumped out to attack, but the floor told a tale it didn’t take Micum Cavish to read; people had been in and out of his rooms, quite a number of them. Some had been dragged and some had been bleeding.
    The final warding glymph on the door to the sitting room was gone, too. Taking a deep breath, Seregil flattened himself against the wall next to the door frame and slowly turned the handle.
    A band of eerie, shifting light spilled across the floor at his feet, and with it came a horrendous slaughterhouse stench. Weapons clutched at the ready, he stepped inside. Even with all the warning he’d had, his first glimpse of what lay beyond struck like a blow.
    Several lamps had been left burning, and pale, unnatural flames danced on the empty hearth. Someone had turned the couch to face the door, and on it four headless bodies sat as if waiting for him to return.
    He knew who they were even before he looked past them to the heads lined up on the cluttered mantelpiece. The strange light cast their features into tortured relief: Thryis, Diomis, Cilla, and Rhiri seemed to look with dull incomprehension toward their owncorpses, which some monstrous wit had arranged in attitudes of repose. Diomis leaned against his mother, one arm draped over her bloody shoulders. Cilla sat next to him, slumped against the remains of Rhiri.
    There was blood everywhere. It hung in congealed ribbons from the mantelpiece and pooled on the hearthstones below. It had dried in scabrous crusts on the pitiful bodies. There were great sticky smears and handprints on walls.
    There had been a struggle. The dining table had been knocked sideways, spilling a sheaf of parchment onto an already blood-soaked carpet. The writing desk was overturned in a litter of quills and parchment, and the shelves to the left of it had been pulled