Assassin from Abyss

Chapter 85: Safe Passages

Corvyn walked toward Kei who was standing near Team Umba High cleric’s mushed dead body .

The walk was wrong. Not badly — a hitch in it, a slight overcorrection at each step, the way a man moves when the ground is not where his feet expect it to be. As if it were the first time he had walked on solid earth.

Kei watched him cross the distance.

" What happened to your legs ? " he asked. " You are walking like that. "

Corvyn’s eyes came to him, and for the briefest instant something sat behind them — a guarded thing, held still, deciding — and then it was gone behind a smile.

" Nothing , nothing ,I had hurt them in combat practice. Back at Caedis. " The smile easy now, settled. " A whole night lying folded in a fissure and they have gone numb. It passes. As the feeling comes back it will pass. "

He moved past Kei to the body.

He crouched at the flattened ruin of the Umbra High Cleric, and he worked the bracelet free of the flesh that had closed over it, and he put it into his necro bead with the unbothered economy of a man handling something he understood. " That is why I told you not to touch it , " he said. " He warded it. Anyone but him lays a hand on it, the ward seals it. Force it open and it destroys itself. " He straightened. " It goes to Arch Cleric Tattershade. He will know what to make of it, and he will see the First Cleric is told what happened here last night. " He looked at the brightening canopy. " We should move while there is light. "

" Yes — let us move fast and follow Rapax and Doctor. " Asp’s voice. " See what they are about. "

She and Tula had reached the forest floor, down from their mutual fissure, and stood at the foot of the bleed bark.

Corvyn turned to them, and the patience came off him in a single clean motion.

" Are you out of your mind. " Flat. " We return to the temple. We do not chase after Arch Cleric Doctor and Rapax. Did you forget what went after them? The Red Widow went after them. They are grandmasters. They will manage, or they will run, and either way our being there is weight they have to carry. We return. Now. "

Asp listened to what Corvyn send , it made sense but somehow her spirit naga instinct told her that it was too rash a decision . So , she contemplated over it .

It was Tula who spoke — Tula, who mostly did not. " Asp. He is right. We cannot do anything in a fight like that. And the arch clerics are together against the Red Apostle. Together they win it, or together they get away. "

" Arch Cleric Rapax told us to wait here. " Asp’s jaw set. " He said he would come back. "

" He said it for our safety. " Corvyn again, before Tula could answer. " If we reach the temple alive, the First Cleric sends word to Rapax, and Rapax will not mind it. You have my word on that. "

And that settled Asp. The set went out of her jaw. She nodded.

" You go , " Kei said. " I have something to do. "

The three of them looked at him.

" What ?" Corvyn’s voice flattened again. " What business do you have that you cannot return to? The mission is done. Rapax has the evidence of the missing body. We are finished here. We go. "

" No , " Kei said. " I have other business. I am not leaving yet. "

" Have you lost your mind? " The voice climbed, an anger entering it. " What business in the Cruentus Heart is worth more than the temple? Are you leaving the temple? Are you dropping out? Say it. "

Kei held the poker face and said nothing. freeweɓnovel.cѳm

" Kei. " Asp, quiet. " Are you going to look for Rada? "

Kei looked at her and did not answer, and the not-answering was the answer.

" What — have you lost it as well? " Corvyn rounded on the silence. " You think Rada is alive, after what the high cleric told us? You heard what happened to Vaelor. Eaten to the ankles by two viletails. Two. Rada was taken by three. And you think she is still breathing somewhere up there? "

The anger moved in Kei, a small clean tinge of it, and he kept it off his face.

" If you are going for Rada , " Asp said suddenly, " I am going with you. But I need you to say it. "

Corvyn turned on her. " You too. You have lost it too. Even if she lives — you think shadow novices pull her out of wherever three viletails put her? This is foolishness. We go back to the temple. I know a way, a safe way, a fast one. We reach the temple, we tell the First Cleric, and the temple sends its own to take her back. If you want Rada saved — that is the way she is saved. "

Asp and Tula weighed it.

" Then go , " Kei said. " Take your fast way. Alone you travel faster than any of us. Tell the First Cleric about Rada. I will look for her. Asp and Tula can wait in the fissures — "

" The fissures — " The word came out of Corvyn ahead of the rest of him. " No. No — not there. Not again. "

It hung a beat too long.

Then he gathered it back, and the reasonable man returned over the top of whatever had spoken. " I cannot leave you all out here alone. With the seniors gone you are mine to answer for. That is why I am warning you — for your own good, because I know the risks of this place better than any of you. But if you are set on finding Rada, I will not let you go to it alone. " He looked at Asp, at Tula. " The two of you stay. " frёeweɓηovel.coɱ

" No. " Asp, flat as he had been. " Rada was our responsibility too. "

Tula nodded.

And Tula, nodding, felt the small inward surprise return — the one that had risen when Kei first said he would go for Rada — and with it a Tenebris afternoon at the Umbral Archive, a conversation between herself and Seraphine and Rada, the thing Seraphine had said and laughed about and Rada had not denied. She kept her face still. But inwardly she thought that Seraphine might have had the right of it that day.

Corvyn looked at the three of them, helpless, a man overruled.

" Fine. " He let it out slow. " We look for her. But if it turns past what we can hold, we disengage and we go, and we go by my routes — I know the safe passages through here, the fast ones, the ones that put us back at the temple clean. " He turned to Asp. " Lead. Show us where you last saw her. "

Asp nodded, and went toward the northeast — the corner the team had come from the night before, Umbra spilling out of the dark with the Red Widow behind them. Asp at the front. Tula behind her. Kei after Tula. And Corvyn at the rear.

As they took the northeast edge of the glade, Corvyn looked back.

Up, to the bleed bark. To one fissure in particular, high in the joined trunk — the one he had come down from.

He smiled. A small thing, private, meant for no one.

Then he followed the team into the trees.

---

The glade emptied again.

It kept its wreckage — the fallen trunks, the torn branches, the green blood gone dark, the small crushed bodies, the place where a man had been pressed into the ground. And it kept its fissures, the high hollows in the joined bleed bark that had held two teams through a night of the worst the Heart could send, the sanctuary now a row of empty dark mouths in the bark, deserted.

Empty.

All but one.

For if someone who had climbed to that one fissure, the one Corvyn had looked back at, and put his head inside it, would have found it was not empty at all. There was a pool of blood in it, dark and still and deeper than the shallow stone should have allowed, holding the light wrong.

And if looked into the pool would have found a reflection that did not belong to him.

Corvyn was in it.

The real one. Down in the blood, behind the surface, his mouth open and working, his hands flat against the underside of the reflection and pushing — shouting, the sound of it not reaching the air, his face the face of someone who had been screaming for a long time and had understood, somewhere in the middle of it, that no one was coming to hear. He pushed against the surface and the surface held. He could not come out.

Above him, far below the canopy and moving away, the thing , the bloodwater fetch, that wore Corvyn’s face walked northeast with the shadow novices he had been left to keep, and knew exactly where the safe passages led.