by Rex Jameson
22
Memories of Visanth
The Visanthi prince Jandhar Rasalased wept onto the scales of his last and favorite dragon. Jahgo flapped erratically as they crossed the field toward Corinth. His son was mauled badly and bleeding from cuts along his wings. Jandhar worried about the wounds he couldn’t see. He could only imagine the damage that his daughter had done to Jahgo’s yellow belly, which had been so near to the tearing claws of his resurrected and vicious beta. He worried his last and favored son would not be long for this world.
Jahgo huffed and grunted with each powerful downdraft of his wings. His right wing seemed to work better than the left one, and the rider and mount tumbled in midair rolls multiple times. Jandhar managed to hold on thanks to a leather strap looped underneath the saddle and around his arm along the mount pommel.
“We’re OK,” Jandhar kept saying to Jahgo. “We’re almost back to the surgeons. Just a bit farther!”
As they passed over Corinth, he heard the rattling of armor and the clashing of weapons. In the waning light of dusk, he saw his men fighting with dark figures, man-sized but unnatural. He pushed Jahgo downward by the neck scales, and his wounded son obeyed, despite the pain. Jahgo shrieked—not like the excited squawks of the fallen green dragons Nintil, Zosa, and Venzin—but like a creature in its death throes.
As they descended fifty feet above the town of Corinth, the prince realized the dark figures had black wings and feathers. They looked like men, but they fought like beasts. He watched a feathered creature tear the throat out of a man, decapitate him, and howl into the sky.
“Our people are trying to get back home,” Jandhar said to Jahgo, “but it looks like Orcus has thrown some other horror at us. Our men need us—one last time. I know you’re hurt…”
Jahgo barked shortly and looked back at him.
“But I need you to burn these bad men for me,” Jandhar said. “One last time, and we’re going home.”
Jahgo’s wings flapped normally for the first time since the fight with Jasmine’s reanimated corpse. The black dragon swooped low and lit the main street from end-to-end, consuming both Visanthi men and the strange beasts in the black feathers.
Jandhar banked his dragon hard left and came around. He watched as his men discarded their flaming armor and ran south. Oddly, the creatures in the black feathers ditched their skins as well. In the light of the liquid fire, Jandhar saw that they were just Surdeli commoners dressed as birds. They were not undead.
“What in the—?”
Another mistake. Even worse, the men he was trying to protect were no longer his men. Their eyes glowed fiery green, like the undead his dragons had consumed in the fields. He looked toward the field and saw thousands of lit orbs approaching Corinth. He had not saved anyone. All of these men, the ones the feathered men were fighting, were undead.
“One more time, my son,” Jandhar said. “One last turn! I know it’s dark. Aim for the green fires.”
Jahgo flapped hard but in spasms. He opened his mouth fifty feet from the line of blinking orbs. They screamed like humans—like his men—as they burned. The dragon burned a fiery wall between Corinth and the field with the black bird etched into the ground.
The mindless undead walked into the line of fire, flailing their arms and rolling into the flaming pitch. Jandhar cursed at his powerlessness—at the overwhelming and absolute loss of his army and all of his plans of revenge.
He pulled hard on Jahgo’s neck, staring at the fires. In the glowing warmth, he saw Julian watching him from behind the wall of flame—just out of reach.
“You’ve done enough, my friend,” Jandhar whispered to his dragon, patting him on the side of the head. “This campaign is over. Let’s get back to the boats. We’re going home.”
Jandhar found the wagon train and surgeon tents on a hill a few leagues south of Corinth and just north of Dona. The officers and teamsters had lit fires and torches all around the encampment—foolishly advertising their whereabouts to anyone in the valleys and fields beyond. Jandhar cursed their arrogance, though he recognized that they likely mimicked their leadership. His own overconfidence and disregard for safety had gotten them into this mess in the first place.
Jahgo landed softly, but the moment his claws hit the earth, he leaned forward and folded his crippled left wing. Jandhar released the leather strap from his arm and rolled to the hard earth.
“Rest, my son,” Jandhar whispered to him. “Let me gather some things, and we’ll work our way back to the ships.”
The dragon cooed as he curled into a ball next to a horse post, a few dozen feet from the large royal tent that the teamsters raised for the prince. Jandhar entered the tent and found Etcher Woodroe sitting cross-legged on top of a makeshift bed on the floor. The old man’s eyes were closed, and he was humming something.
“You here to gloat?” Jandhar asked in disgust.
He walked over to a far table where a map had been unfurled. Black pikemen carved from onyx had been placed on the fields north of Corinth to represent his legion. 20 battalions of 500 each. They were of course wiped out now. If there was a piece still under his command left on the map, it was an accident or a stroke of luck. He knocked over the pieces like a child done with a game.
“They say you burned Bowersby,” Etcher said, “and Croft Keep.”
Jandhar rolled his eyes.
“Who is saying that?” Jandhar asked.
“The people of Surdel,” Etcher said. “You burn a town, and the news spreads like wildfire.”
“Not now,” Jandhar said dismissively, staring at the map.
In his mind’s eye, he saw the pikemen moving down the map toward Dona. Probably 6,000 men had been turned. Armored, well-trained, and completely under the control of Orcus. He had no idea how many of Orcus’ men he had burned, in addition to the 3,000 or more that he had killed of his own men.
“The demon lord has turned my men and my dragons,” Jandhar said. “We’re going to have to leave quickly. They’ll be here shortly. We must retreat back to Visanth and regroup.”
“Does he have dragons now?” Etcher asked.
“No,” Jandhar said. “I did what was necessary. We burned Nintil in the ocean. Venzin exploded… ”
He sighed and turned toward Etcher. The old man opened his eyes and looked at the prince intently.
“We burned Venzin as the scourge climbed atop him,” Jandhar said, wiping away a tear. “Zosa… the damned elves…”
“They say Zosa attacked Croft Keep,” Etcher said.
“You know how the greens get,” Jandhar explained. “They try so hard to make me proud—to outdo their brother and sister. Look, it doesn’t matter. They’re all dead… all except Jahgo. He’s… badly injured. He had to kill Jasmine after she turned. Turned my stomach to watch her burn…”
He hung his head at the thought of his white jewel and all of the rest of his adopted children.
Etcher nodded. He stared at the ground. “And Corinth?”
“What about Corinth?”
“We can see the fires from here,” Etcher said. “What wrong did they commit?”
“I thought they were beasts fighting my men,” Jandhar said in exasperation.
“In all those spy scrolls and histories that you read in Scythica,” Etcher said, “did they mention to you that the people of Corinth worship ravens? That they believe the bird gives them mystical powers? That they decorate their homes and doorways with black shapes and totems, hoping it will bring them luck and prosperity?”
Jandhar stomped his foot. “Who are you to question me about what happens in the heat of the battle?”
“You rushed into a war between undead, demons, and people, despite counsel to the contrary from everyone around you,” Etcher said. “I told you, from the beginning, what would happen if you came here looking for vengeance.”
“I couldn’t have known that the demon lord was real,” Jandhar said. “The undead. The Blood Lord.”
“Every horribl
e thing that kings and princes have ever done,” Etcher said, “has had some convenient excuse…”
“Says the storyteller to the warrior,” Jandhar complained before turning back toward his map. “Have you seen Talso? Maybe one of my other lieutenants? We’re going to need to pack up whatever we can.”
He traced a finger from their camp back to the ocean. His ships were anchored in the inlet. If they packed up immediately, they could make it.
“You came here with an army,” Etcher said, “and now you’re alone in a tent, on enemy soil, with an undead invasion that is stronger now than it has ever been—thanks to you. And now you’re going to leave these people to clean up your mess?”
“You’re seriously going to gloat right now?” Jandhar asked. “The world’s crashing down on us, and this is how you want us to spend our time together?”
Jandhar went back to studying his map. The boats weren’t too far away.
“Fetch Talso,” he commanded.
“Talso was leading one of those formations,” Etcher said. “Your lieutenants followed you into battle.”
Jandhar licked his lips and tried to absorb the full extent of his failure. “Right. Well, if we don’t want to make this worse, we’ll need to load up Jahgo and get him back home. The Blood Lord wants him—just like he wanted Jasmine. We can’t just stay here and wait for them to reach us. We need to load up the boats—”
“Do you remember what I told you when we first met?” Etcher asked.
Jandhar guffawed, laughing at the determination of the old man to teach him lessons. He tried to think of what the Crelloni rebel might be talking about but shook his head. He looked back at the storyteller briefly. Etcher still sat in a cross-legged stance. Docile. Relaxed. Unimposing. The prince reengaged the map.
“This is that important to you?” Jandhar asked in exasperation. “Fine! When I met you, you sat atop a dragon, sawing into its neck. You told me about the stitches—about how to correct what Sven had done. You told me that which was important to me. You gave me a glimpse of a world that could be—of a future that I had only dreamed of—of one that may still be possible. Just because I failed once, doesn’t mean I can’t come back again even stronger.”
“Some failures can’t be reversed,” Etcher said. “Do you really think that all those undead out there are going to just fall over and wait for you to come back in a few years with another dragon or two? And stop avoiding the question. That was not the most important thing I told you on the day we first met. I gave you a warning, and you disregarded it.”
Jandhar grimaced as he tried to remember the old man’s stories. The defeat was fresh, and he was irritated. But he had also learned hard lessons before—lessons that had to be taught when the iron was hot and the metal could still be molded. His father had instructed him in such ways with a switch and a firm hand. He knew there was a lesson here, and Etcher had always seemed a wise adviser—even perhaps wiser than his father. He knew now that he should have listened more.
He tried to remember what Etcher might have said, but of that moment in time, he could only think of the smell of the freshly killed dragon and the dry air of the western Dragongrounds. Instead of Etcher’s words, he remembered what his father had instructed him several years before that. Burn brightly. Be like the sun.
He heard Etcher rise and walk over to the map area.
“I don’t remember,” Jandhar admitted, “but when we get back on the Small Sea, I’ll listen to you, and you’ll help me remember. I swear. Look, we won’t need all the ships, but we’ll bring back as many as we can anyway. We’ll have to make more dragons. I’m not bringing pikemen back here. They’d just fuel Orcus’ army. I never want to see green fire ever again, but we could return and—”
He felt a warm hand against his neck, and then cold steel and a sharp pain. Warmth spread down his shoulder and back. Confusion turned to panic.
“What—?”
“What I told you was this…” Etcher said. “If you land on my shores again,” his voice grew younger, like a man in his twenties. “I will find you.”
Jandhar felt a strong hand holding him in place. He felt a second sharp pain in the other side of his neck. The sound of a rushing river filled his ears.
“And after I find you,” Etcher said. “I will watch you bleed out just like your father did.”
“No!” Jandhar screamed, turning to face his attacker, but Etcher backed away. His face was young now. Familiar. The same face that had hid behind a gold wig and fake breasts in his father’s harem.
“No army will stop me,” the man said. “No one around you will be safe. Look around you and know that I am death. Observe and learn, young one. For your life and the life of every member of the Rasalased family depends on it.”
“Theodore Crowe!” Jandhar spat through the blood pooling beneath his tongue. “I will not die like this!”
He stepped forward but lost his balance. His strength waned, and he fell to the floor. Blood splashed between his fingers. His blood. He lay in it just like his father had, but on the carpeted floor of a tent instead of on a bed in a harem.
“Etcher Woodroe is an anagram,” Theodore Crowe said. “I hid the truth right in front of you, but I gave you a second chance. That’s the problem with your family. You think you are above everyone else—smarter than everyone else. Your subjects are too dumb to govern themselves. Your enemies are too beneath you to even learn who and what they are. You never see the obvious. You never learn your lessons—not now, not a thousand years ago. I should have killed you when I first saw you in the Dragongrounds.”
“The Crelloni… will… pay!” Jandhar said, gasping as his organs began to shut down. “My brother…will… find…”
Theodore shook his head. He walked over to a nearby table and poured himself a glass of wine.
“You just… don’t… get it,” Theodore said, “I’m as Crelloni as you are, which is to say none at all. Besides, the Crelloni have already paid enough blood to your family. They’ve hidden from your ancestors behind a long line of sympathetic Visanthi people for a thousand years. I still can’t believe your family doesn’t know who they really are. The Crelloni are not men. My disguise looked nothing like them, but I knew you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. You’re too arrogant. The Crelloni are the last surviving dark elves of Visanth after your great-great-many-great grandfather’s pogrom. They crossed that desert to try to help stop the demon invasion of Surdel a thousand years ago. Queen Jayla of the dark elves made the call, and they answered. And your family made the situation even worse then, just as you’ve done now.”
Theodore downed the large glass of wine as Jandhar gurgled on his own blood. He couldn’t move his arms or legs. He watched his mortal enemy pour another glass and then gulp it all down.
Theodore Crowe walked over and bent low, his face inches from Jandhar’s. Jandhar wanted to spit at Theodore so badly, but nothing in his body worked. He was dying. He couldn’t feel his extremities. He could only feel the blood pooling against his skin. He felt cold… wet…
Theodore produced a flask as he looked into Jandhar’s eyes.
“You see this?” he asked. “It’s not mead or brandy. It’s a type of salt. When heated to a boil and combined with water, it explodes—quite violently, actually. Burns through just about anything.”
He raised a different flask from his belt and poured a few drops of water to the ground.
“I want you to know that it’s over before you fall into the Abyss,” Theodore said. “I’m cleaning up your mess. I’ll make sure Jahgo has a clean death. Orcus will never have a dragon, not on my watch.”
Jandhar sputtered and gurgled his curses, none of which were intelligible.
“Your legacy dies here,” Theodore said before knocking over candles and leaving the tent.
Jandhar watched the flames climb the far fabric and spread quickly across the cloth tent. He couldn’t yell. He couldn’t pull himself across the floor to escape. As the infern
o reached his body, the room started going black. The light from the fire no longer flickered, and he tumbled into darkness—into the Abyss.
He found himself falling into perpetual darkness. He rotated without force or direction. He felt nothing. He saw nothing. He screamed as hard and loud as he could, but no sound came out. He couldn’t close his eyelids to block out the madness because he had no eyes.
The Void was all around him. He was one with the Abyss.
23
The Crowe Flies North
Theodore Crowe monitored a closed pan suspended over a crackling fire. He watched the courtiers and teamsters trying to put out the blaze that consumed the prince’s tent, but not so intently that anyone noticed he wasn’t helping. That was his gift—going unnoticed.
He sat within the shadows cast by the flame that was so close but seemed to miss him with its light. The dragon slumbered just a dozen feet away, warmed by the fire and oblivious to the danger it was in. It wheezed and whined over its wounds. Theodore found it somewhat comforting that he would really be helping the animal find peace—keeping it from an eternity of servitude to a dark power like Orcus or Mekadesh. If only he could help the rest of the world of Nirendia before it suffered the same fate.
The men in the camp were less important—less potent weapons for Orcus. They could choose to put out the fire or run to the water and save themselves from the undead that were surely minutes away. Theodore stayed for the dragon. He had to do what was necessary. Besides, if the demon lords came, he was less of a target. Mekadesh knew much, but she didn’t know who he was—not that she would have seen him as anything more than a potentially useful subject.
“Theodore Crowe?” a man asked.
He tensed up. He must have been careless. He knew the voice. It was a worst-case scenario.
“Julian Mallory,” Theodore greeted the man without looking away from the fire.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” Julian said. “I’ve always wanted to meet you. Growing up, you were larger than life. My father said you killed three princes and dozens of men in Visanth, and that wasn’t even including King Jofka. Ruined a plot in Kingarth. Think it involved a snake… or a vial of poison. Made the guy drink it himself. Is all of that true? What are you doing here?”