Wraith's Point: Ranger's Codex Episode 4 by Ed Knight

Author:Ed Knight [Knight, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

July the ?

I do not not know how the Uldimiri decide what is ‘today’ and what it ‘tomorrow’, but when Qoro awoke me the next day with a shake, all was as dark and dusky as when I had fallen into bed. A slit of a window allowed a shaft of the city’s umber-ish light to fall across the room, and in this glow he stood, still as a pillar of stone. His thin arms were folded across his chest, looking for all the world like a demon out of nightmare somehow escaped into the waking realm. He looked far darker and more substantial than ever before. If in Efrin he’d resembled a tall skinny sorcerer in a trailing cloak, now he was more like The Archonite himself: towering, bulky, and built of shadow as solid as stone.

“There are better ways to wake a man,” I said, swinging myself off the bed. I was still in the clothes I had worn across the bloody Nothings. To my displeasure, I noticed the light splatter of cavestride blood had left them threadbare and hole-y. And my orc-bitten arm remained useless as legs on a fish.

“I do not know those ways,” said Qoro.

“Right. You only deal with elves and fellow shadows.”

“We shadows sleep.”

“You call it that, at least.”

“I do not know what else to call it.”

Perhaps as a result of my soul being mucked with, I felt my usual morning mood stoked to something more sinister by Qoro’s typically opaque manner of explaining things to me. I found myself almost shouting:

“Tell me something you do know, then: is The Archonite going to kill me this morning? His stiff old surgeon already half did me in yesterday. Can’t feel my arm, and can’t properly think…it’s like—,”

“It is like you have been split up into pieces? Yes, that is what happened. Do not fear, Sir Ranger. The Archonite has done things far more miraculous than this. You will be healed.”

I stared at him a long time. Though I could not hope to read him like a man, I thought by now I would detect something, if he meant to deceive me. Some dishonest swirl in his shadows, or a sinister dimming of the eyes. But I saw nothing of the sort.

“Let’s get it done, then,” I said finally.

“Do not be alarmed by the place of healing.”

This time, I did shout. The words spewed out of me like ash from a volcano:

“What in all the hells could possibly alarm me now? I’ve just had my soul split into pieces by a demon with a poem for a name, ridden a dead bat across a desert, and been called ‘my lad’ by an ancient sorcerer king made of tree and bug bits. I’m well past a bit of shock now, Qoro, if that wasn’t obvious.”

“That is good. You are ready,” Qoro said quietly, and offered nothing else. Together we hurried from my room to a huge, circular window in the corridor, where the bat perched and stared out across the city, a furry gargoyle with eyes of cinder.

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