The Tales of the Wanderer Volume One: A Book of Underrealm (The Underrealm Volumes 4) Garrett Robinson (poetry books to read TXT) 📖

And she wished she had the stones, but mayhap it was better this way. This way, she did not have to break her vow to Rogan.

She would let it go. Mag and I were all that mattered, in the end.

Whirling, she climbed the stairs and left the house.

Pantu waited a very, very long time, likely longer than he needed to, until he was sure she was gone.

When her footsteps had long since faded away, and the creak of the house’s front door was a near memory, he emerged. He pushed open the door of the cabinet and uncurled himself from the cramped space within.

He stood now in the underground chamber. The massive cauldron sat before him, and sunlight glinted through the floorboards high above.

Still shaking with fear and drenched with sweat, he nevertheless looked behind him at the cabinet with a little smile. He might not be a fast runner, and certainly he was no fighter. And as he had learned just that morning, he was awful at trailing a mark without being spotted. But hiding? Yes, Pantu was very good at hiding. It was, mayhap, the only thing he was good at. Certainly his father would have said it was the only thing he was good for, dark take the man.

Pantu still did not know how the day had gone so wrong. But now the Shades were dead, and the only one left—Kaita—seemed to be hunting him.

I wonder, these many years later, if he thought of going into town and finding Mag and me and telling us what had transpired. We would have helped him, of course, the poor fool. But whether he wanted to or not, he did not do it.

Instead, he went to the cabinet—the one Kaita had searched.

Then he moved around the side of it, reaching into the gap between the cabinet and the wall, where he had stuffed a small pile of packets wrapped in brown cloth.

The Shades had not known that Pantu knew about the black stones. Indeed, they did not know he knew about this chamber. The same skill that made Pantu so good at hiding was the same reason he was an expert at being ignored. He had discovered long ago that he could go almost anywhere, so long as he did not try to hide it, and everyone around him would simply ignore his presence. In truth, it was what he had tried that morning with Mag and me. Only Mag’s heightened sense of danger had discovered him and led to all the rest of the day’s madness.

And so, lurking in the background and keeping to the shadows, Pantu had learned much of the Shades’ doings. He had seen the ritual they performed with the cauldron of black liquid. And he thought he knew what they were doing.

He pulled one of the packets open to reveal a small pile of black, almost translucent crystals. Magestones. Simply owning them was one of the highest crimes listed by the King’s law. Using them was even worse. Eaten by a wizard, they granted a terrible power—but, too, they ate away at the mind, creating a hunger that overpowered all reason.

Magestones had given Xain the power to save my life in the Greatrocks. Magestones had driven him mad to the point that he almost killed me.

But Pantu knew none of this. He knew only that the Shades burned the magestones in a fire under the cauldron—and he thought he knew why. The Shades had been secretive about their motives, of course, but Pantu had made several guesses, helped by the papers the Shades left strewn about their shelves and desks. Pantu had never learned to read, but the papers also bore many sketches of vampires.

A vampire plagued Lan Shui. The Shades were performing a ritual that had something to do with it. It stood to reason, in his mind, that they were trying to drive it off, using some magic that was beyond the King’s law.

Therefore, Pantu now drew five magestones from the packet. He stuffed the rest back in the cabinet they had come from, leaving the door unlocked.

The Shades had only ever used two at a time, added to the fire once every two days. But Pantu was tired of that. He was tired of hearing about attack after attack, townsfolk and those beyond the walls slaughtered in the night. Entire families devoured by a beast that no one had lived to speak of.

Five stones. Five stones would drive it away for certain.

Taking the stones in his hand, he crept beneath the cauldron. The fire still burned there, black as night, its flames somehow draining light from the room, rather than bestowing it. Pantu cast the stones into the fire. It swelled, licking at the bottom of the cauldron.

The evil energy in the house swelled. Pantu clutched at his chest, feeling for a moment that he could not breathe. The feeling passed, and he backed away from the cauldron on hands and knees, shaking.

There. That sensation would spread, now. The vampire, frightening as it was, could not withstand such a ward.

Or so Pantu thought. But then, he had never seen what the Shades had put into the cauldron that they heated with their darkfire.

His work done, Pantu left the underground chamber as fast as he could.

In a dejected frame of mind, Mag and I returned to our inn and went to our room. With Mag’s help, I bandaged the cut on my arm. It was not so deep as I had feared, though it still stung when we put a healing poultice on it. Once we were finished, we changed out of our bloody clothes and into fresh ones. Mag threw herself on her back atop her bed, while I sat in our one chair, in the corner of the room.

“A vampire,” I said. “Now I understand the fear in the eyes of these people.”

“And Yue’s words make sense,” said Mag.