Doomwalker

by Kathryn Zurmehly

  He got two steps forward before the knight guarding him slammed him down again. The nobleman drew back from the woman and looked down at Valen for a moment, amused. He glanced at Sola and frowned. The woman was pale and sweating. “Bring in the doctor,” he said to one of the soldiers. He jammed the poker into the vase for a moment before pulling out again. “We need her to last.”

  He seemed to hold it against her hand for a long time, the scream and the smell rending the air and turning Valen’s vision red for long, long heartbeats.

  He lunged for the Lord, was again thrown to the floor, this time harder, sending him sprawling.

  An old man was hauled over to the High Priestess’ side and fussed over her, pressing a compress to the burn. Not for her good, no, Valen knew that.

  He treated her only to keep her alive long enough for…long enough for what?

  She screamed again and it didn’t matter. He rolled to his side with a pained hiss and grabbed his sword. Everyone in the room except the High Priestess and the doctor were looking at him.

  He felt detached. There was dim sensation in his limbs, a sense of slipping control. It was like when the Herald came, but he was awake. Horribly awake.

  “Do you get the rules of this game, Paladin?” Lord Beriskar asked, “You aren’t going to be allowed to stop me by attacking me.”

  He shoved the poker against her cheek this time for emphasis.

  Valen shut his eyes as he managed to stand. He couldn’t think against the screams and the scent and his own anger and the strange foggy feeling in his body.

  Years ago, when the Herald first came to him, it was High Priestess Sola who believed him first. When he opted to stand his Trials a year early, she allowed it. When he balked at taking guard duty at the Temple, she had taken up his cause. Lyrica’s light, hard and bright and strong, poured from her, even as her body grew frail.

  She screamed again, loud enough to shatter glass it seemed, and Valen lunged.

  Not for Lord Beriskar.

  His sword bit right through High Priestess Sola’s thin body. He’d angled the strike upward to kill quickly.

  To end the pain, because this was the only way fucking Beriskar would allow.

  She didn’t even look at him as she died.

  Valen froze. He couldn’t even draw his sword away from the woman who it had been his duty to protect. One of Beriskar’s knights drew her body off the blade. The steel was red with her blood, and he knew in his heart it would shine no more with Lyrica’s light.

  Her body was dropped on the ground like a sack of grain, deliberately thrown down upon the edge of the seven-pointed star on the floor.

  The ground began to rattle and shift. Valen fell. His legs no longer worked. His heart was beating still, he could hear it, but he didn’t understand how. Beriskar was chuckling in glee. Everyone else was silent, staring at the center of the room. Valen turned to look without curiosity or caution.

  In the center of the floor was a shallow pit, and within in it a stone coffin covered with elven swirls.

  A strange burst of negative light seared across its surface, an anti-flash of blinding darkness. Several soldiers shouted.

  Then the lid shifted, rocking once, and was hauled aside from within. A man pulled himself out with catlike grace and stood surveying them all as if he’d just walked through the door.

  He had to be eight feet tall, clad in silver and gold armor with dizzying intricate swirling designs. His long mane of hair was black, and his skin was inhumanly fair…an elf. Valen knew it before he saw the pointed ears as the man turned his head to survey the room. An elf, buried beneath the Councilhouse.

  Then his gaze came to rest on him, and Valen realized that this was no elf, not really, not inside.

  His eyes were not luminous like Maryx’s. They were pitch black, windows into howling nothingness. He smiled at Valen with those elven pointed canines and moved to stand over him with precise clicking steps.

  “Valen, my little Valen,” he said, with an oozing patronizing affection, “You’ve done so well for me, Immor. Such a nice bit of agony and betrayal, the right kind of killing to open up my prison.”

  “I don’t know you,” he managed roughly, trying to look away from that terrible gaze.

  “Irrelevant. I own you. I have always owned you. Your mother gave you to me. I have not been bound by time in my—” He frowned at his hand and wiggled his fingers. “I was not been bound by time.”

  “Milord,” Beriskar interrupted, walking over. He moved like a starving dog. “Milord, welcome to the world of the living.”

  The not-elf turned to him with narrowed eyes. “Yes. Lord Beriskar. I congratulate you on your part.”

  “Of course, milord.”

  “From here, of course, is the true beginning. Again.” He snarled at that. It was an ugly and deeply hateful expression that marred the handsome elven face. He calmed quickly, a mask slamming down. “Recent developments require a man of vision, Your Majesty.”

  “It would be my hon—”

  A gauntleted hand closed around Beriskar’s throat. He struggled. “I would advise,” the elf said, “that the men of Beriskar remain still.” As the heavy Lord stilled, he dropped the body and looked around the room. “Lord Mulvane.”

  “My…Milord,” Mulvane said. His captors let him go and moved away.

  “Call me…what was the name…Nihloch.” He dropped Beriskar’s body. “You are a man of vision, I can see it.” He gave Mulvane a charming smile “You know how to make the world a better place.”

  “I…I have a plan.”

  “Indeed, you do. I know it. It is an excellent plan. I am not another sycophant, Lord Mulvane. I, too, want to make the world a better place, which was why I went to such lengths…and company…” he kicked causally at Beriskar’s corpse. “To be freed.”

  Valen dragged himself away towards the door, gripping his bloodied sword carefully so as to make no noise. No one heeded him.

  “What are you?”

  “Listen to me, skeptic.” Nihloch towered over him. “You have been right and you have been wrong. I am the nearest thing you’ll ever know to a god. I don’t desire your worship, though it has occasioned my ends from time to time, worship has. I want you to start enacting your plan. That’s all, really. I’ll help you.”

  “Why should I…why should I trust you?”

  “Fair point. I give you the army of Beriskar to that end.” He gestured at the troops all around. “Bring His Majesty’s commanders here, so they may swear a new loyalty.”

  “No…no oaths to me,” Macauley managed, “To the People.”

  “Of course.” Nihloch stalked over to tone of the chairs and sat. “I will enforce all this, you have my promise on it. Quickly,” he told the nearest knight, “I have a problem to fix at the Temple. What is your first edict, Voice of the People?”

  Mulvane looked around, eyes wide, blinking owlishly. Something settled in him and he straightened his tunic. His expression grew hard. His scholarly leanness became sharper. “History has all been leading to this moment. It’s arc always lead to our triumph.” He looked around at the Councilhouse, expression dripping contempt. Level this miserable city. It is overburdened with meaning.”

  Quietly, as the knights rushed to find Beriskar’s commanders, Valen stood shakily. His mind hummed with senseless noise, his body moved too slow and too fast at once. The Temple. He had to get to the Temple, he had to stop this thing, this Nihloch.

  He spared a glance back, and swore that Nihloch quickly flashed him the grin of a victorious predator.

  Instinct took over and he found it in himself to run.

  ✽✽✽

  There were a lot of things to process as Maryx led the ragged little band to the small swift column rushing from the battle.

  One, the enemy was soon to be here, though they’d cut down any pursuers and the looting of the city had begun in earnest.

  Two, her shoulder had spasmed a few moments ago with a strange kind
of pain, an awful of echo of agony. It was fading now, but it left her sore and even more tired.

  Third, apparently there was a postern gate in the Wall. That was new information, and in spite of everything, she found it very annoying. There had been better choices available in the battle. It hadn’t had to end in ruins.

  She also could have run through that gate at some point, dragging an unconscious Lyrican Paladin with her.

  Ryl had grunted as they had seen it yawning before them, rough but clearly there. “This city and its trap doors,” he muttered, “Doesn’t matter now, I suppose.”

  “No,” she had said, scanning all around them. They’d piled four wounded Crownsguard on a cart belonging to some Orishalites, who hadn’t protested too much. Everyone was pale with fear. The air had been smelled of smoke, but all sound had become distant. It seemed the Tribunal had blessed the column with some protection, or so everyone could hope. They could only pray that this lasted all the way to the haven Valen had prophesized.

  Fourth…fourth, no sign of Valen with the little column.

  Very few people who had been headed here seem to have made it, but she saw the familiar form of the Alberanite High Priest ahead on a small black horse. That meant that some of those who had gone to the Councilhouse had gotten to the Temple in time to catch them.

  An Orishalite nearby began to hum a dirge quietly and several others took it up.

  Crownshold had fallen. There was no denying it now.

  “Maryx!” a breathless voice shouted. She glanced back to see a man come galloping up on a donkey from the back of the column. Her breath caught as she spotted the blue cloak, but then she saw the eye patch.

  “Galian,” she said, glancing behind him to see if…

  “He stayed behind to defend the High Priestess,” he told her, “The Temple…left her. Some others. She didn’t want to leave.”

  Stubborn old bitch. Stubborn, stupid, accursed Paladin.

  “If the Immor dies,” Ryl asked, academically, “does that mean that was the purpose of his existence? Is that the doom he brings, somehow? Unintended consequences, perhaps…”

  “Give me your mount,” Maryx told Galian, ignoring the older elf.

  “Going back there is suicide, Maryx,” Ryl said, “You know that.”

  “I swore an oath.”

  “A child’s oath.” He sighed. “Do you think the Paladin would want to leave these priests unguarded? Do you think he is still alive if he is still there? Outriders will catch up. The Tribunal’s grace seems limited.”

  Maryx stepped out of the path of the wagons for a moment to look back at the city. Smoke was rising above the walls. They were moving along a track through an orchard, headed north. Beriskar’s army had flowed towards the gap in the Wall like water to a drain, leaving the way clear, and they were now burning the city.

  Those child’s oaths. Only one set concerned the Immor. There were others. They mattered just as much. I will bring justice down upon the unjust and sow mercy in fields where it is unknown. If she went back, she would likely die in the sack, outnumbered, and then could she uphold those oaths then?

  “Bastard Paladin,” she muttered, “Please don’t be dead.”

  She turned back and joined the column, looking for an undoubtedly low quality bow and crooked arrows to seize from their ungifted owner. They’d picked up a gaggle of Crownsguard recruits. One of them would have bow he didn’t know how to use.

  The Tribunal’s grace was limited, after all, and enemy outriders would no doubt come calling.

  17

  The Temple grounds were abandoned. The looters had yet to come here and it looked like the wagons prepared by the High Priests had left; the rear gates to the complex had been left wide open. The great courtyard between the shrines, usually so busy, was lifeless now. Dust and smoke filled the air.

  Valen stood in the great courtyard. His legs didn’t feel like they could hold his weight. His clumsy dash had left him breathless.

  With the caravan gone, he didn’t know where to go next. Surely that was what Nihloch was coming for. It was the only thing left, but an important thing. If they managed to get past Beriskar’s army, then they would allow the Temple and all it stood for to continue.

  Valen let his sword rest on the ground. Exhaustion rolled over him in waves.

  He’d let Nihloch out. He’d killed the High Priestess and had opened up that thing’s prison.

  He didn't know how. He didn’t know what that thing was. He wanted the city levelled, He had put Mulvane in charge, handed him Beriskar’s armies. He thought of those terrible eyes, unlike the eyes of anything he’d ever seen, human, elf, animal, or godshard.

  Valen made his way through the open threshold of the Shrine of Lyrica. The goddess would have the answer. The Herald would tell him where to go.

  Perhaps, he hoped, she would forgive him for what he’d done to Sola. He’d had to! He remembered her screams and the smell of the burns...he remembered the terrified look in her eyes as the life went out of them, the feel of sword cutting through skin and organs, the smell...

  The lamps had been put out in the shrine, and only the smoke-dimmed sunlight offered any illumination. The great golden statue of the goddess seemed like an artifact in a tomb.

  “Please,” he whispered to her, “I did what you asked. That’s what I always did.”

  “Immor,” a voice whispered. It resounded throughout the room, despite its softness, and Valen swallowed. “Immor. You have doomed the world and are doomed yourself.”

  The Paladin tightened his grip on his sword. The High Priestess’ blood was drying on the blade. He tried to ignore it and dropped off the dais, sword raised.

  Nihloch watched him without expression. He’d found a sword, clearly human, as it was far too short. “You are mine. You were always mine. You are all of you mine.”

  “I belong to Lyrica.” His voice sounded so small in the empty, lightless shrine.

  Nihloch’s voice was cool and factual. “You killed her favored one…who favored you in turn. The betrayal of a noble soul by a trustworthy soul was all I needed. A fairytale spell. The mage who cast it was mine, too, not that she knew it.” He walked forward, calm and steady. Every step was precise and perfect, graceful but somehow inorganic. “The priests who moved this body from its ancient cairn—the binding was weakening, you see—were mine. The Tribunal, who ordered it all, is mine, and have been for longer than they know. All this world was given to me and all in it are mine.”

  Valen tried not to shiver but failed. “No.”

  Nihloch swung his blade one-handed and Valen blocked. The pressure was immense and Valen trembled as he tried to keep it from his throat. “’No’,” the thing that wore the elven body said, terrible eyes locking with Valen’s, “You don’t have the strength to say that to me, mortal.”

  There was hatred in that gaze. Only hatred, no intelligence, no wit, no desire, just roiling hate.

  Niholch pushed harder and knocked Valen aside. “You were bred for this purpose. Your mother was gifted, just like you, but she didn’t seek out one of your foolish gods. She and her coven sought out me in their little dirty hovel, eeking out a living by selling their bodies.”

  Lazily, he swiped at Valen again. The blow was harder than it seemed and made Valen’s muscle ache as he blocked it. “They wanted something. Power, of some kind, it’s always power. I just wanted a child connected to the Beyond, you see, found and bound to me, then given to the Temple. Or...well, the mangled bodies of your half-siblings were many and delightful to behold.” Nihloch shrugged as Valen circled. “So, you see, you owe your existence to me.”

  The story sent a chill down Valen’s spine but he refused to let it show. “And what are you?”

  He chuckled, a mockery of amusement. It wasn’t really bothering to disguise that it was acting. “Better than you.” Nihloch swung again, incredibly fast. Valen moved to parry but the stroke shifted and his blade went flying out of his hands.

  The
next slash didn’t go for this throat but whipped across, slashing shallowly across his shoulder. The force of the blow sent him staggering and warped his sunburst brooch. Nihloch grinned at him and sent the brooch flying away with a quick precise movement.

  Something inside Valen, a stupid childish part, whimpered as if struck.

  Nihloch’s grin grew terrible, changing into some other strange new expression. “All your courage is too little, all your strength is too small,” he said, “Your faith is meaningless. Your honor has proven false; the blood on your dropped sword proves it.”

  Valen searched for something to do, to say, to shout. Something.

  Nihloch moved faster than his thoughts. His sword whipped forward and sliced up under his broken arm.

  Valen knew as the blade bit into his flesh that the blow had killed him.

  He fell to the mosaic floor as dark red blood began to pool around him, staring at Nihloch’s ornate boots. Nihloch neither said anything nor moved. The empty silence of the Temple loomed.

  It faded into the scent of blood and heavy blackness.

  Then light, ethereal and golden, and he saw he stood in upon a great seven-pointed star, made of flowing points of light, like summer stars.

  A mosaic, this one made of light.

  No, he realized, seeing the formless thrashing thing behind the lines and shapes of the great star, a cage. A cage for something made of the same nothingness as was in Nihloch’s eyes.

  “Paladin Valen,” a woman said in a vast booming voice.

  He looked up and saw the fifty-four thrones around the star, saw Lyrica sitting golden and perfect before him and threw himself to his knees.

  Like the Herald, her mouth did not move as she spoke. But the Herald was a pale copy, like the statue in the Temple. Lyrica’s armor was made of fire forged into gold and her golden face was not metal but living sunlight. Her eyes were remorseless sapphires, burning with an internal light.

  To one side sat a tree with a man’s face, roots grown into his throne, and to her other sat Alberan, shrouded in black as his priests were. All around sat the other gods, some like men and women, others with strange shapes, but only Lyrica spoke.