The Wolf's Bounty Page 17

  “What about Fuki?”

  “Fuki doesn’t steal. He may be a heartless coward and a corrupt overlord, but one thing he isn’t is a thief. If he by some distant chance happened to find that vehicle, he would go out of his way to make sure I got it back. He knows very well I could destroy him if he didn’t.”

  She hurried to walk at his side. “Yeah, what was that about? What did you mean when you said you would take drastic measures? What do you have on him?”

  Bishop shot her a wicked grin. “He doesn’t know it, but I developed a secret potion that, when injected under the skin, makes Britlis unpalatable to Endavors. No one knows I have it, but if I chose to deploy it, all this would vanish in a matter of hours.”

  He surprised Raleigh so much she almost stopped in her tracks. “If he doesn’t know you have it, why is he so afraid of what you could do?”

  Bishop quickened his stride. “They all know. Not only the Tax, but everyone around here knows what I’m capable of. They know I’ll stop at nothing to get what I want. If they don’t toe the line, I can bring them to their knees. I’ve done it enough times I only have to threaten to make them do what I want.”

  He moved so fast Raleigh found it easy to fall behind him. She didn’t say so, but she could believe every word he said. He was ruthless in the pursuit of his objective. He would do whatever it took to hunt his bounty and finish the job. Raleigh thanked heaven she worked with him and didn’t have to face him as an enemy.

  All he had to do was size up a situation and find its weakness. If the Endavors no longer found the Britlis a tasty treat at the end of the day, Fuki and the other Tax could kiss all their mining profits good-bye. Bishop only had to wave that threat in Fuki’s face to pry his most sensitive information out of him.

  Chapter 25

  Bishop was right. He hadn’t walked more than ten minutes down the black tunnel than he angled off into a side passage where no light entered. Raleigh trailed behind him, not knowing where they were headed. Only her hands on the walls and his footsteps ahead told her she was still going the right direction.

  All at once, Bishop stopped in front of her. “This is it.”

  She strained her eyes in the dark. “How can you tell?”

  He fumbled for her hand in the blackness and laid her fingertips on the cold, damp rock. “Do you feel that?”

  Her fingertips detected a tiny pocket gouged out of the solid granite wall. “What is it?”

  “It’s his door bell. I pressed that. He’ll be here in a second.”

  “Who?”

  Before she could answer, the rock wall cracked open, and a stream of glowing blue light slanted into the gloom. Bishop pushed Raleigh out of the way when the piece of wall hinged open.

  Raleigh found herself gazing into a low-ceilinged cave full of hewn wooden furniture. The blue light emanated from a shining orb hanging from the roof. Bishop had to stoop to get into the place, and Raleigh crouched in behind him before the door closed of its own volition.

  Except for the low ceiling, Raleigh couldn’t see much difference between this place and her own farm kitchen back home. Heavy wooden beams held up the roof, and grey slabs of dusty limestone paved the floor. Shelves full of herbs and spices and dried vegetables lined one wall, and a cheerful fire blazed in the huge stone fireplace opposite.

  Two chimney corners sat before the fire, and two long benches lined the hewn table in the center. Raleigh looked around. “What are we doing here?”

  “He’ll be along in a second. Just be patient.”

  “Who are you talking about? There’s no one here.”

  “He knows we’re here. He wouldn’t have opened the door for us if he didn’t.”

  Raleigh compressed her lips. “No one opened the door. We’re alone.”

  A high-pitched cackling laugh interrupted her. She spun around to see the oldest laenteglos she ever laid eyes on. Most laenteglos stood ten or fifteen feet tall if they were an inch. Their huge shoulders could smash any human to a pulp, and their powerful legs carried them over vast distances in the blink of an eye.

  Raleigh fought off marauding gangs of wild laenteglos on the farm. They never became domesticated. They plundered and pillaged wherever they could, and they hunted in packs which made them ten times more dangerous.

  Raleigh could never fight them as a group, so she developed a system of trapping them to keep them at bay. When she spotted their tracks in the forest, she laced her whole farm with a series of tripwires made of thin braided grass designed to break under the slightest pressure. She used these tripwires to divine exactly where and how they approached the farm.

  Then she built underground foxholes covered in leaves and debris. She shot isolated laenteglos one at a time. She used breakaway bolts in her crossbow. Instead of a sharp, piercing point, she made special bolts with blunt ends. She dipped the ends in the juices of a plant she knew. The bolts bounced off the laenteglos’ skin and left the juice behind. Most laenteglos never suspected they’d been hit.

  When the juice leeched into their skin, they would get tired and fall behind the pack. Their friends would move on, and the stricken laenteglos would sit down under a tree to rest. Raleigh would stalk up behind them and deliver the killing stroke, either with a real bolt from her crossbow or, more likely, with a swift side stroke to the neck with her curved blade.

  That was the way to get rid of laenteglos. When enough of them disappeared, the others got the message some slayer was after them. They chose easier targets somewhere far away from her farm.

  She recognized this being as laenteglos, but she never saw one so small and wizened and helpless before. He barely came up to her chest, and he hobbled bent over with great masses of white hair hanging down to his knees. He chuckled up at Raleigh, and the curved fangs jutting out of his mouth that made laenteglos so fearsome and dangerous in battle looked almost comic.

  The knobbed green skin turned pale with age until it shone almost white. He appeared to Raleigh like any ordinary old man, kindly, welcoming, and utterly harmless.

  Bishop stepped toward him and extended his hand. “It’s good to see you again, old friend. How are you faring in your retirement?”

  The creature giggled so merrily Raleigh had to laugh. No one could put this old thing side by side with his deadly relatives. “Old friend, am I? Hee hee hee!” He twinkled his eyes at Raleigh. “Listen to him!”

  Bishop beamed at him. “This is my good, old friend. This is Niui. He’s the smartest character on the block. If he can’t tell us what we want to know, no one can.”

  The old man wagged his finger in Bishop’s face. “I’m not the smartest by a mile, and you know it. You’re trying to flatter me in front of your lady friend.”

  Bishop laughed. “And one thing you must always be sure of around him. Never believe a word he says—about anything. He’s an inveterate liar if I ever met one.”

  Niui chortled louder than ever. “Who’s the liar? I’m a used-up old rag bag and you know it. Now say what you want and leave me alone because I was just about to have my dinner and I don’t feel like sharing it with half the neighborhood. If people found out I welcomed you here, I wouldn’t be able to fight them off with a stick.”

  Bishop grinned at the old creature, but he spoke to Raleigh instead. “And whatever you do, don’t believe that nonsense about him being a used-up old rag bag. That’s the biggest lie of them all. He was the most dangerous laenteglos in Hinterland when I was a boy, and he’s just as lethal now. He pretends he’s a retired old grandfather so no one will know what he’s really capable of.”

  Niui only laughed. He hobbled over to the fire and took down the tea kettle. He set it on a hook and swung it into the flames. “Now you’re making up stories, and since you won’t leave, I’ll just have to poison you and dump your bodies in the river. You leave me no choice.”

  “We won’t eat your dinner, Niui,” Bishop told him. “We only want your help with one of our cases.”

  “One of your cas
es!” Niui rolled his eyes to heaven. “Since when do you need help with one of your cases? A slayer like you doesn’t need help from the likes of me to battle whatever demons you’re after.”

  Bishop wiped the smile off his face. “I wouldn’t come to you for help to fight demons. I know what a used-up old rag bag you are, and I can fight them perfectly well on my own.”

  Niui howled to the rafters while he ambled around his kitchen. He sprinkled this and that from his many jars into a bowl, and when he collected what he wanted, he dumped it into the tea kettle. Raleigh watched in relief knowing Bishop didn’t intend to partake of that witch’s brew. She didn’t like the look of it.

  Bishop pulled out the sketch of the twen’s necklace and spread it on the table. “Take a look, grandfather. Tell me if you recognize any of these designs.”

  Niui gurgled under his breath walking over to the table. He peered down his nose at the drawing and nodded. “Yes, yes. All very interesting. A challenging case, isn’t it?”

  “Then you recognize them? Tell me what they mean.”

  Niui pointed to the polygon pattern in the center of the diagram. “You see this? This represents the Elixir of Life.”

  Bishop started upright. “The Elixir of Life! Do you mean like the Philosopher’s Stone?”

  Niui burst out laughing. “You know that’s just a myth. This is the real thing. It bestows eternal life on anyone who drinks it.” He glanced up at Bishop. “Where did you find this? Who is using this symbol?”

  Bishop pointed to the drawings of tools in the paper’s margins. “What about these? Do these mean anything to you?”

  “These are the ancient symbols of the craft guilds,” Niui replied. “Ten symbols, ten guilds. You see where the ten symbols sit between the points of the pattern? This means the ten guilds are working together to create the Elixir. They’ve come together.” He cocked his head, and the childish laughter died on his lips. His eyes glinted with a seriousness Raleigh would recognize anywhere. Bishop was right. He was deadly under his charming veneer. “I don’t know where you got this, but you better tread lightly. I would leave them alone if I were you.”

  “I can’t leave them alone,” Bishop told him. “I have a contract to locate a twen, a twen wearing these symbols around its neck. We found a tiny carved figurine made out of twen tusk, and it was wearing this symbol carved into its chest. Does that mean anything to you?”

  Niui bored Bishop with his beady black eyes, and his lips twitched on either side of his fangs. “The twen produces an oil in a special gland of its brain. Most people only know about the bile salt, but the oil is far more valuable. The oil is said to be one of the constituents of the Elixir of Life.”

  Bishop doubled forward. His hands slammed down on the table, and he let out a heavy breath. “My father!”

  Raleigh gasped. “What? What about him?”

  Bishop lurched upright. He snatched the paper off the table and crammed it into his pocket. “My father! My father mentioned this in his notebook, but I never understood it until now. He was hunting these people when he got killed. It’s all right there in the book. It’s been in front of my eyes for twenty years, and I never understood it.”

  Niui stood still by the fire. “You better be careful. These people have spent fortunes tracking down a twen to use in their Elixir. They won’t stop just because you’re hunting them.”

  Bishop lunged across the room. He grabbed Niui and planted a loud kiss on the old man’s forehead before he shoved him away and raced to the door.

  Niui made a big show of wiping the kiss off in disgust. “Hey! What are you doing? Are you trying to ruin my reputation?”

  Bishop called over his shoulder. “Thank you. I knew you would help us. I’ll leave you alone to your tea. Come on, Raleigh. We have to get back to the vehicle. We have to get to the market and track down the next piece of the puzzle.”

  He dashed through the door and into the dark. Raleigh blinked after him. Then she blinked at Niui. He gave her a benign smile and shook his head. “He’s crazy. You know that, don’t you? He’s cracked.” He bent over his fire and lifted the steaming kettle onto the hearth. “You’d do much better to stay here and have tea with me.”

  Raleigh couldn’t help but grin at him. “Thank you very much for inviting me, but I’m really starting to think I’m just as cracked as he is.”

  Niui smiled back, and the firelight sparkled on his fangs. “I’m sure you are, and do you know something? It’s a wonderful thing. He needs a woman as cracked as he is. That’s the one thing he really needs to make him sane.”

  Raleigh took a step toward him. He cast one quick glance at her breasts and pretended he hadn’t. “That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in weeks. Can I give you a kiss, too, Niui? A woman kissing you wouldn’t ruin your reputation, would it?”

  His smile stretched from ear to ear, and he blushed pale green. “No, it wouldn’t. In fact, I would have to tell all the young ones about it so they know I’m still just as much a man as they are.”

  She laughed and kissed him on the forehead. He didn’t try to wipe it off. He just blushed and went back to pouring his tea. “You better go catch him before he gets away from you.”

  Chapter 26

  Raleigh caught up with Bishop in the tunnel, but she didn’t say anything about their visit to Niui. He brooded in silence all the way back down the tunnel to the spot where they left the vehicle. Whatever Niui told him about the Elixir of Life meant a lot more to Bishop than it did to her. He understood it. He knew exactly where to go next to unravel this mystery.

  Halfway down the tunnel, he started muttering under his breath. “I should have known! I should have seen it. How could I be so blind?”

  She pressed forward to his side. “What did your father write about the Elixir of Life in his notebook?”

  “He didn’t write anything about the Elixir. He wrote about the ten guilds. He documented them converging and negotiating something. He suspected they were negotiating some kind of alliance, but no one would believe him. The guilds were always hostile to each other. They competed for work and for public recognition and funds. No one wanted to believe they could actually work together to accomplish something.”

  “But that was….what? It must have been over thirty or forty years ago,” Raleigh pointed out.

  “If they allied to create the Elixir of Life, they would have been working on it a lot longer than that. It could have taken them that long to find a smuggler willing to go after the twen. Whoever is doing this is in it for the long haul. They don’t care how long it takes. What’s thirty or forty years when weighed against eternal life?”

  Raleigh almost stopped. “You don’t actually believe that, do you?”

  “Whether I believe it isn’t important. They believe it. Whoever hired Soto to acquire the twen banked everything they’ve got on this project. No wonder he considered them dangerous.”

  “So what are we going to do now?” she asked. “Where can we go to find them?”

  “We’re going back to the market. Fuki doesn’t know where Soto is, so we’ll have to find someone else who does. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Soto will be scared enough to turn against them to save himself. One thing I know for certain.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have to stop them. Whoever they are, we have to stop them no matter what it takes.”

  “How can we stop them? If they started this project before you were born, they’ll keep it going long after you and I are dead. The guilds must have members all over the world. If we take down one part of it here, they’ll pick it up somewhere else.”

  Bishop spun around to face her. “Do you know what this means? Do you know what they’ll do if they get the Elixir of Life? They’ll take over. They’ll become a thousand times more powerful than the Tax or anyone else. They’ll turn Hinterland into a wasteland faster than the Tax ever could, and if Hinterland goes down, we’re next. Do you understand that? Once they take over Hinterlan
d, they’ll move up to the surface. There will be no force under the sun that will stop them from taking over the whole world.”

  Raleigh gasped, but he already turned on his heel and marched away. She hurried after him, but when she spotted the circle of light where the tunnel opened into Rolling Downs, something flicking beyond it made her slow down and almost stop.

  Bishop didn’t notice. He kept striding toward the light when a shadow crossed the opening. He pulled up short and scowled. Out of nowhere, he rushed at Raleigh and hustled her to the side of the tunnel. When she protested, he hissed through his teeth to silence her.

  A low, steady rumble echoed down the tunnel. Bishop listened, but when the shadow didn’t reappear, he shrugged his shoulders and reemerged to cross the last few paces to the vehicle. Just a few more steps, and they would fly away to freedom.

  No sooner had they got to the middle of the tunnel, but the black shape crossed the tunnel end, and this time, it stayed there. It blocked the light streaming in from outside. Raleigh squinted to catch sight of it when another shape appeared. It overlapped the first, and the two indistinct outlines wove together to obliterate the whole opening.

  Bishop muttered a curse, but at that moment, the rumble vibrated through the floor into Raleigh’s feet. Steady pounding drumbeats shook the tunnel. Bishop grabbed her shoulders and spun her around. He shoved her down the tunnel and yelled into her ears. “Endavors! Run!”

  Raleigh had no time to question. She wheeled the other way and took off as fast as her legs would go. Bishop pushed her from behind and bellowed in her ears. “Run! Faster!”

  “I’m running as fast as I can!” she shrieked.

  “They’re gaining!” he screamed.

  She pumped her legs until they burned. Her knees buckled and almost gave out, but still, she dashed down that tunnel for all she was worth. “What’s going on?”

  “Don’t you understand?” he screeched. “Fuki sent them after us.”

  “But why?”