The Blackest Heart

by Brian Lee Durfee

  The narrow corridor the oghuls currently led him down gradually widened. An orange glow emanated from the tunnel in the far distance. Sunlight!

  The oghuls hustled, their spiky armor naught but dancing silhouettes in the bright light. Tears of joy sprang from Stefan’s eyes, his heart soaring. Daylight lay ahead. The five oghuls before him eventually disappeared into the orange glow of the sun, and Stefan limped along, more vigor in his step, the tunnel around him widening farther, the walls receding on either side.

  And then the light before him began to take on a strange, fiery quality that didn’t seem quite natural. He slowed his pace, wary. The glaring glow ahead became almost too unbearable to look into. And suddenly the floor ceased to exist before him.

  He came to an abrupt halt. The walls, the ceiling, the floor, all things that had previously surrounded him had simply vanished.

  He stood on the brink of a deep, fiery-red oblivion.

  It took a moment to wrap his mind around what he was truly seeing, unnerved at the immensity of the glowing underground cavern that was revealed before him. Everything was bathed in crimson. A nightmarish painting of what he imagined the underworld might look like.

  The vast, spectacular cave before him was perfectly round, enormous, the width of the entire village of Gallows Haven and more. Some five hundred feet above, the roof was dripping with mammoth wine-colored stalactites. And the floor was a swirling mist of seething red-golden nothing, bottomless with fiery haze.

  Across the cavern, to the left and to the right, up and down, everywhere, the surrounding walls were honeycombed with tunnel-like entrances, thousands of them. To Stefan’s estimation, every cave opening was identical to the one that served as his own lonely perch. And he couldn’t begin to guess where such a horde of tunnels might lead.

  Firelike capillaries of orange and yellow danced above and below each of the many caves. And the colossal cavern pulsed scarlet to the sound of a deep Boom! Boom! like the beating of a giant hollowed-out heart. Exactly as The Way and Truth of Laijon described the underworld! Just beneath him was a staircase cut into the sheer wall, and the five oghuls he’d followed descended carefully into the feverish glowing haze below.

  Then the entire scene went dark. Consuming blackness. And the stillness was deafening. The silence was cracked like a whip as a heinous grating noise rushed up the massive cavern. A blast of hot air blew Stefan back from the ledge. Pain raced up his injured ankle. The cavern thundered and shook violently. He was slammed to the ground. He tried to grip the floor but couldn’t. The booming and rumbling shook his every muscle and bone and turned his guts inside out. He braced himself as best he could, or he knew he would be bounced right over the edge to plummet into the blackness. The quaking continued at a fevered pitch, accompanied by a long grumbling roar from the pit below.

  A red glow suddenly filled the air, a fiery plume of mist billowing from the deep like molten iron from a boiling forge, illuminating the flittering dust jogged loose from above. Pulsing veins of crystal and quartz streaked and flashed in the tunnel behind him like bolts of lightning, and everything seemed to swirl and twist in on itself wildly. The evil cacophony reverberated and boomed around him.

  It’s only in my mind! Only in my mind! Like Culpa said!

  In an instant, the unholy din ceased. The red light vanished. A pungent darkness swarmed over him, hot and rank, though his mind still buzzed with images of flickering sparks and twinkling lights, all of it fading down around him like falling snow.

  And something in the blackness below roared again, a thunderous roar of a thousand saber-toothed lions combined. The immensity of the sound shook the very air.

  Stefan’s ears rang with pain.

  He lay on his stomach, clenched his jaw, ran stiff fingers through hair as unruly and scattered as his mind felt, covered his ears.

  Stefan found he was at the rim of the ledge, looking down upon a nightmare.

  A hundred feet below lay the bottom of the cavern. The five oghuls were gone. But a ring of burning torches was set in the floor. A lone knight in a black cape and hood stood in the center of the circle. Under the hood he wore a silver mask in the shape of a human skull. Under the cape was a glorious suit of shining red-scaled armor. A bright silver whip lined with sparkling silver barbs was gripped in the skull-faced knight’s red-gauntleted hand. And the knight stood before the most heinous-looking creature imaginable.

  The nameless beast of the underworld!

  A dragon!

  Stefan couldn’t break his horrified gaze away. The dragon was enormous and red, the bulk of its sinuous body the size of his parents’ two-story Gallows Haven cottage, sleek and long and graceful as a saber-toothed lion, massive scaled thews bunching and clenching as it shifted and moved. On four legs it crouched, clawed feet scratching at the floor, unreal fiery-yellow light emanating from under its harsh red scales—knifelike scales that sheathed its entire corded bulk.

  A coiled tail of sharp spines and ridges swept the floor with a slither of scale on rock. Its forked wings unfurled like those of a huge bat, curved talons at the joints, a red velvety wingspan greater than the length of the Lady Kindly. The jagged row of sharp horns that ran the length of its spine from head to tail were as white as the ivory tusks on a Glacier Range musk ox and thick as a man’s arm. The two curving horns on either side of its serpentlike head were twice as thick and long as the spinal horns. And its eyes were like two stabs of flame, stark pupils, long and slitted.

  The dragon’s orbs smoldered and gleamed, both fixed on the whip-wielding knight. A black cauldron of liquid silver hung just above the knight. Next to that was a second cauldron of ruby-red blood. But there was no altar under either cauldron, no sacrificial human that he could see. Unless I’m to be the sacrifice! Stefan wanted to stand and run from the horrific scene. But he could not, his body rooted to the tunnel.

  The thongs of the skull-faced knight’s whip dripped silver to the stone floor. The dragon’s piercing red eyes were following the tip of the whip, the clover-shaped scales along its neck suddenly fluttering and rippling like a thousand hawk feathers.

  It raised its head, flashed rows of daggerlike teeth, and roared—a sound nearly unbearable. Stefan cringed against the pain.

  The knight cracked the whip, droplets of silver flinging into the air, his red-scaled gauntlet shimmering. The dragon backed away, silent, a spume of frothy drip trailing from its open and heaving maw, jaws finally clamping shut in deference to its whip-wielding master. The red-armored man stepped forward, whip cracking against the stone floor again, leaving a bright silver trail that glinted in the torchlight.

  Thick dragon scales fluttered and rippled as the monster reared back again, head pointed straight up as it let loose another thunderous roar. A tower of flame bloomed from its cavernous mouth, and the mammoth cave was instantly lit with a blinding fiery light. Stefan, overawed, blinked away the pain and heat, arms covering his face.

  When Stefan’s eyes cleared, he found the dragon looked upon him with its two piercing molten orbs—fiery crystal gems that sliced into him and stripped his soul bare.

  He wanted to turn and flee. Run far, far away as fast as he could.

  Then the whip-wielding knight turned his silver veiled face up toward Stefan too, one gauntleted hand sweeping the hood back. He slowly peeled the skull-shaped silver mask from off his head. The pale face of the man underneath was both startling and striking at once, almost feylike in quality. Sharp pointed ears pierced through long silvery locks of hair. A Vallè! Yet the hue of this knight’s pure white skin was unlike anything Stefan had ever seen, and the knight’s two stark, solid silver eyes bore into his with blazing malice.

  With that one powerful stare, Stefan’s thoughts were fractured into a million scattered pieces. As he heaved himself to his feet and scrambled away from the blasphemous scene, it felt like every bone in his body was trying to slither and crawl out of his skin. He even felt the Sør Sevier slave brand on the underside of his wr
ist flare in pain. A Skull! A Skull man! Just like Culpa said! Without thinking, he fled down the dark tunnel.

  After only two steps, he was met by the mottled gray face of an oghul, large purple lips snarling under a spiked half-helm coated in rust.

  A heavy gauntleted fist came smashing down onto his jaw.

  The stunning blow sent Stefan hurtling back toward the ledge and the dragon. Dazed, Stefan clutched at the walls of the tunnel to keep from falling into the gruesome deep cavern, pain lancing up his leg from his injured ankle.

  He gathered his balance quickly, instinctively snatching the bow from his back, hand frantically searching for one of the two arrows in his quiver. But the attacking oghul was on him fast. Another swift punch knocked the bow from Stefan’s hand. It clattered to the floor, nearly bouncing over the rim, teetering on the lip of the ledge.

  Stefan lunged to save his precious bow, but the oghul grabbed him by the back of his cloak, yanking him roughly off his feet, throwing him to the floor. Stefan rolled as the oghul kicked with a steel-toed boot. He threw up his arm in defense, latching on to the beast’s foot, jerking the oghul’s leg as hard as he could. Thrown off balance, the creature toppled heavily against the wall of the tunnel, rusted half-helm tumbling from its head. Stefan snatched up the helm with both hands and swung it swiftly down on the back of the beast’s skull. His blow connected with a solid crunch, and the beast flopped to the floor face-first, then rolled over.

  Stefan dropped to his knees and brought the helm down on the oghul’s exposed face with full force. Bones cracked under him. Anger flamed within Stefan. This was close combat like he had never before experienced, and the injustice of the oghul’s initial attack enraged him beyond redemption. He brought the helm up and struck again. Ropy streaks of oghul blood, hot and rancid, splattered the wall and also Stefan’s face. The oghul twitched beneath him. But the heady aroma of blood, combined with the pain shooting through his ankle, only served to sharpen Stefan’s fury to an arrow’s point of tightly focused wrath. Crying out for justice, he brought the helm crashing down on the dead oghul’s face again and again, howling and roaring his own primitive, guttural song as he struck and struck and struck.

  And when he stopped shouting and smashing, it finally registered what he had done. With one part horror and one part fascination, he looked upon the carnage he’d wrought. Beneath him, the oghul’s gray face was naught but bloody mush, splintered bone glinting in the surrounding orange haze. The beast was unalterably dead.

  Still kneeling, Stefan let the gore-smeared helm drop from his hand to the floor. He blinked back tears of rage. His cloak was soaked with blood. He shed it quickly, tossing it aside as if it were full of some foul sickness he couldn’t get rid of quickly enough. He sat back on his haunches and clenched his eyes tight against the misery and desolation he felt was consuming his entire mind and body.

  And when he opened his eyes, the corridor was complete blackness.

  He shook his head in disbelief and rubbed his eyes vigorously, hoping to summon the light. But all he accomplished was smearing his face with oghul blood. Still the blackness surrounded him.

  Even the orange glow of the dragon below would be a blessed relief.

  But everything was so . . . quiet . . .

  He crawled away from the dead oghul, crawled back toward the rim of the cavern, feeling along the stone floor for his bow, wanting to be careful not to knock it over the edge. When he found the weapon, he snatched it hungrily from the floor, clutched it tightly to his chest. Relief flooded him as he knelt there at the edge of the black pit, stroking Gisela’s name carved into the stock.

  A complete and utter silence now shrouded the darkness all around. It was unnerving. He could hear no noise from below, no dragon roars or hissings or oghul curses or scales sliding against stone or silver-skull-faced knights. It was as if the nameless beast of the underworld down in the depths of the cavern had never existed.

  I’ve got to leave this horrid place! I’ve got to leave it now!

  He strapped the bow to his back and searched his quiver. It was empty of arrows. Where did they go? There were two! Two arrows! He scooted forward, hands against the stone floor of the tunnel, searching for the arrows, hoping they hadn’t fallen into the pit.

  He scooted toward the edge, hands feeling the coarse stone under him in the dark, expecting to find the rim of the cavern right there nearby. But he felt nothing but solid stone floor. He reached forward, warily, hands searching for the rim. Still he found nothing, naught but a rough stone floor, no ledge, no drop-off that he was expecting.

  But the bow landed right on the lip of the cavern! his mind screamed. I haven’t moved! He frantically searched for the ridge he knew had to be there, crawling in the direction he knew it to be, heart pounding. He scrambled to the right, finding the solid wall of the passageway rising above, then crawled to the left, finding a similar stone wall. But there was no ledge dropping off to the underworld. No dragon below. Just darkness.

  And hunger. The hunger and thirst hit him like the punch from the oghul. He panicked. Keep your body nourished, for the wraiths will eat away at a starved mind, claimed The Way and Truth of Laijon. He had heard Bishop Tolbret read that passage of scripture from the pulpit many times. The wraiths! Culpa had warned him. And Skulls!

  He whirled and scrambled back toward the dead oghul he’d left in the corridor behind him, hoping to find food, even if it was naught but oghul gruel or rat meat in the dead fellow’s pockets. He crawled over the stone floor, cautiously searching with his hands again, searching for the dead oghul, crawled and crawled, slowly, weaving as he went, searching, feeling for the passageway walls on either side. Ten paces, then twenty, and thirty, and then a hundred . . .

  . . . and he never found the oghul, or the half-helm he’d used to crush its face. It was as if the dead beast had simply roused itself and walked away . . .

  . . . or the dead beast had never existed at all!

  Stefan struggled to stand. The excruciating pain in his ankle was almost unbearable as he put weight on his foot. Still, he limped into the blackness, not knowing where he was, but knowing he had to escape this place of sheer madness and despair. Culpa Barra’s words were ringing in his ears. Guard your mind against the wraiths. These mines are a living and breathing place, an evil dungeon liable to play tricks with your mind if you are not watchful.

  * * *

  Laijon is the defender of all who have faith and will lead them forth unto light, for those who reject faith are the patrons of the underworld. Slay the unfaithful wherever ye ensnare them, for unbelief is worse than slaughter. Such is the reward for those who mock faith.

  —THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON

  * * *

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  NAIL

  16TH DAY OF THE ANGEL MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON

  SOUTHEAST OF SKY LOCHS, GUL KANA

  Though the late spring sun sailed high overhead, the northern mountain air was still wintry. Brittle talons of cold wind raked Nail’s face as he carried Val-Draekin down the grassy slope. Many miles and days Nail had borne the injured Vallè on his back. The Vallè’s arms were wrapped around his chest and neck, splinted leg dangling at his side.

  Nail ignored the pain of his own battered and scarred bare feet. The grass underfoot was sun-scorched and salted with dandelions that struggled in the stiff currents. The hill they descended led to a winding ravine lined with tall pine and aspen, a gurgling brook its centerpiece. It was here that they planned to stop for the night and look after their wounds.

  Nail was glad to be free of the glacier. Still, it had been a miserable five days since they’d left it behind. No warm clothes. No food or supplies or weapons or even blankets to sleep under. They’d mostly wandered about, lost in the steep mountains and valleys below the lochs, even hiding yestermorn in a brush thicket as a passing band of oghuls stomped about, searching for game.

  Nail figured they hadn’t traveled far. He could still see the white gl
istening bulk of D’Nahk lè behind them to the north and west. When the Vallè had insisted on walking himself, Nail still had to help the fellow limp along. In the end, it was just easier for Nail to carry the Vallè, who likely weighed half what Zane had. The going was quicker too.

  They’d decided pretty early on to head for Amadon, figuring they would be of scant use to Seita, Stefan, and Culpa Barra at Deadwood Gate. That is, if the three still lived. Or if they could even find them. From Nail’s perspective it seemed all was lost, the quest a complete failure. Their first day free of the glacier, Val-Draekin had wanted to steal some horses. But what few lone huts and abandoned camps they’d stumbled upon had been completely bereft of either pony or horse, food or supplies of any kind. Their second day free of the glacier, Val-Draekin had knelt at the edge of a small gurgling stream and snatched out a small mountain pike. The Shroud of the Vallè they’d previously used to light fires long since spent, Val-Draekin got a fire sparked the old-fashioned way, with kindling and sparks from striking stones together. They buried the coals of their fire in the dirt and slept atop them that night, an old Vallè survival trick.

  Their conversations involved mostly small talk of Nail’s youth, growing up with Shawcroft and the drudgery of mining. Nail had described his adventure on the grayken-hunting ship, shared stories of his friendship with Stefan, Dokie, and Liz Hen. The Vallè had recounted stories of his own life growing up in Val Vallè, how he had fallen in love with Seita’s sister, Breita, and how he missed her.

  Nail had said nothing of the Vallè assassin Shawcroft had murdered, the girl who had looked exactly like Seita. He’d often wondered if that Bloodwood had been Breita. He did ask Val-Draekin what he knew of Bloodwood assassins. “Dirty killers not to be trusted” was all the Vallè had said.