The Complete Rhenwars Saga: An Epic Fantasy Pentalogy

by M. L. Spencer

  But now he knew where he was going, at least.

  The currents of the vortex were raging in a south-westerly direction, sweeping across the rolling swells of grass. It was a good thing he hadn’t just started walking, hoping to blindly run into them. The flow of the field was slightly different from the direction they had taken in from the road. He would have ended up hopelessly lost.

  Kyel put his foot in the stirrup and pulled himself into the saddle. He was too tired to walk, so he let the animal carry him over the open grassland, pausing after a while to check his bearing against the field lines. Again, he felt that sharp, searing jolt, though not as painful this time. So he refocused his mind and cringed in the saddle as he tried yet again.

  This time it worked, and he knew now what he’d done differently. Instead of just casting his will out across the flow of the field, he had felt along it, going with the current instead of cutting across.

  He almost laughed. It was so easy. He couldn’t believe what he’d been putting himself through just to figure out this trick. He kicked his horse to a lope across the grass, not even bothering to draw back on the reins the next time he reached out and stroked the power of the vortex.

  He rode for perhaps an hour, following the lines of magic as they bent gradually further toward the south. By the time the figures of two horses appeared on the horizon in front of him, Kyel had become adept enough at gauging the field that he no longer had to continue groping out to reach it. Instead, he just left his mind open to it, keeping it in a state of constant awareness.

  When he reached them, Kyel saw that both Darien and the priestess were sound asleep, their horses grazing a short distance away. Kyel dismounted, making no effort to be quiet as he slung his pack down on the ground beside the sleeping figures and turned his horse loose to graze.

  Darien didn’t stir, even while Kyel rummaged through his pack and rolled out his bed. It made him so angry. While he’d been back there, all alone and sobbing in pain, Darien had been making himself a cozy little camp and falling blissfully asleep.

  Kyel had almost come to think of the mage as a friend. How utterly foolish he had been.

  When he woke, Kyel found the sun had risen well above the mountains. The camp was pretty much broken down around him. Darien was just fixing the last bag to his saddle.

  Naia smiled a warm greeting Kyel’s way as she broke off a bite of biscuit. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

  His back was sore, his joints stiff, and he was still very tired. He’d had little sleep the previous night and none at all the night before. He felt as if he could have just gone on sleeping throughout the entire day.

  Darien turned and, noticing him awake, started toward him. Kyel looked down, not trusting himself to keep the anger he felt from infecting his eyes. Darien stopped and knelt beside him in the grass.

  “I’m not going to apologize for what I did,” he said. “And I don’t expect your forgiveness. You made it here. That’s all that matters.”

  Kyel felt his stomach sink like a lead weight. The man had no remorse, harbored no feelings of guilt or shame. More and more, Darien was starting to remind him of Garret Proctor.

  Darien seemed to be waiting for Kyel to say something. When he didn’t, the mage stood and dusted off his clothes. As he started walking away, Kyel heard him say, “It took me half a year to learn what you did in two hours last night.”

  Kyel had a stinging retort ready on his lips but decided to leave it alone. Darien’s mentor probably hadn’t dumped him down in the middle of a vortex and left him all alone with a galling message to follow the field lines.

  18

  The Catacombs

  They rode with their backs to the sunrise as the day grew warm around them. In the distance, a small structure rose from the sea of prairie. It looked so forlorn, only a square patch of brightness in a vast expanse of unrelieved green. Darien knew it must be the shrine. He’d seen others like it before, scattered in various places throughout the land. This one looked even smaller than most.

  There were no paths leading to or from the shrine. The sea of grass just stopped at the threshold. Inside, marble tiles took over where the prairie ended.

  They dismounted in front of the doorway and, to Darien’s surprise, the priestess led her horse inside. Its hooves made a sharp clatter on the tiles, slipping a bit as they fought for purchase.

  Darien had never much cared for the temples of Death, although this was the first time he’d actually been under the roof of a satellite shrine of the goddess. His mother had often compelled him to go with her to Aerysius’ temple to offer prayers for the soul of his father. Those trips had always disturbed him, and he’d always left with the feeling that the Atrament must be a cold and dismal place.

  The shrine was just like a temple, but on a much smaller scale, complete with all the typical trappings. Stationed at the far corners of the room, long tapers held by tall candlesticks burned with lively flames. Darien wondered who tended the shrine. Someone had to keep the tapers lit and sweep out the floor occasionally. But there was no one within, and certainly no space where anyone could possibly be living.

  He led his horse into the shrine, bringing it up alongside the priestess’ mare. The black gelding tossed its head as its hooves encountered the unfamiliar surface. The space inside was barely large enough to contain the three horses. The priestess walked forward to a ledge that supported three votive candles. She gazed down reverently at the tiny flames, then closed her eyes as if offering a prayer.

  Darien felt drawn toward the candles himself. Each of those fragile lights represented a prayer for a departed soul. It had been a long time since he had offered such a prayer.

  Compelled by a whim, he moved to stand beside Naia and picked up one of the candles from the ledge. The priestess’ eyes followed the motion of his hand, but she said nothing as Darien held the small votive candle before him, contemplating it in silence.

  He found a striker on the ledge. The flint was old, and it took him a few tries to create a spark. The wick of the candle flared up immediately, producing a strong, healthy glow as he set the candle down on the ledge with the others.

  But then something happened that was entirely unexpected. The glowing yellow flame darkened as if a shadow had passed over it. The light dimmed, becoming pale. Then the candle’s flame flared up brilliantly, as if seized by a sudden draft of wind, before turning a filthy shade of green.

  Darien couldn’t take his eyes from it, filled with horrified recognition. It was the same color as the pillar of energy he had seen in the sky above Aerysius. The putrid, ethereal glow of the Netherworld.

  Naia hissed like a feral cat. Her hand swiped out, knocking the candle off the shelf and casting it to the floor, where she stomped on it with her feet until it was reduced to nothing more than a crumbled pile of tallow.

  The violence of her reaction appalled Darien almost as much as the sight of that terrible green flame. With one last kick of her slipper, Naia sent the whole pile scattering across the dark tiles of the floor.

  Then she rounded on him, shrieking, “How dare you desecrate the altar of the goddess with that abomination! Whose spirit was that candle meant for? How do you even know a soul so vile?”

  Darien took a step back away from her, struggling to control the sorrow that threatened to overwhelm him. But the priestess was relentless. She advanced on him, eyes flaring in anger and revulsion.

  “Tell me who that candle was for!”

  Darien twisted away from her. He hung his head, scrubbing his hands through his hair as he fought for the strength he needed to give voice to what had once been his most terrible fear, now twice confirmed.

  He whispered, “Her name was Meiran Withersby.”

  “Who is that?” Naia demanded, her eyes narrowing in confusion. “It takes hideous acts to condemn a soul to the Netherworld!”

  Darien couldn’t bear to meet the priestess’ eyes. Staring at th
e floor, he admitted, “She was the woman I loved. My brother killed her with my sword, then committed her soul to Xerys to unseal the Well of Tears.”

  Naia’s mouth fell open, the anger draining away from her face to be replaced by a look of horrified disbelief. She shook her head, sagging visibly.

  “Gods’ mercy, Darien.”

  A terrible anger suffused him at her choice of words, eclipsing even the pain of his grief.

  “The gods have no mercy.” He spun away from her, footsteps echoing loudly as he crossed the floor of the shrine to the doorway.

  There he stopped, staring out into the cool autumn sunlight, choking back the threat of tears. It was a truly beautiful day. He tried to take comfort in it but found he could not. There was only one thing he could think of that would ever bring him peace.

  Darien closed his eyes, envisioning what it would feel like to drive his blade hilt-deep into his brother’s chest.

  He lingered there in the entrance, leaning against a marble column that supported the roof. Behind him, he could hear the priestess and Kyel conferring in voices too soft for him to make out the words. But he didn’t need to hear to know what they must be saying.

  At last, the murmured conversation ended. The sound of footsteps moved toward him across the tile. Darien turned as Kyel came to stand beside him. His young acolyte had been silently seething at him all morning, but now there was only a look of troubled kindness in his eyes.

  “Naia says we need to go.” Kyel reached up to place a tentative hand on his arm. “Are you all right?”

  Darien nodded, swallowing. He closed his thoughts to his grief, walling it away in the back of his mind and sealing it there with the mortar of his will. He was surprised, actually, by Kyel’s concern. After what he had put the young man through, Darien wouldn’t have blamed him for holding fast to his resentment.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  He turned and walked back into the shrine, away from the warm glow of morning. Inside, he found Naia occupied with lighting the tapers of a candelabra set into a niche in the wall. Darien looked on as the priestess moved to touch the wick of each taper with the glowing end of a slender wooden splint, working in no apparent order, until the last candle was lit. Then she reached out and extinguished the splint between her thumb and index finger.

  Darien frowned, wondering what the purpose of the candle-lighting had been, watching as the woman moved back into the center of the room and took up the reins of her mare. She glanced toward him, a frown of concern on her face.

  “The horses may not like this part,” she warned.

  Darien took her point. Moving to the head of his own horse, he grasped its bridle under the gelding’s chin, staring down at the crumbled tallow that was all that remained of Meiran’s candle.

  It was such a simple thing, a votive candle. Simple, and yet amazingly profound. That was all he’d wanted: just one heartfelt prayer. Yet, even that was denied him. The remains of his good intentions were strewn across the floor under his feet like so much scattered dust.

  He tried to avert his eyes from the sight, but it was impossible. His gaze kept slipping back to the remnants of the candle despite every effort of his will.

  As he stared down at the crumbled tallow on the floor, he realized that it was vibrating, shimmying as the floor itself trembled beneath his feet.

  Startled, Darien glanced up at the priestess. Her smile of reassurance calmed him, but he didn’t like the way the floor seemed suddenly unstable. A terrible screeching groan, like the rake of metal against rusted metal, shrieked through the chamber.

  Then the floor was moving, jolting downward.

  His horse screamed, trying to rear, as Darien clung to its bridle and almost lost his footing. His stomach took a plunge as the floor lurched sharply out from under him and then settled, lowering almost smoothly. He glanced up, amazed, as the walls of the chamber seemed to stretch above them.

  “If you wanted to scare me, it’s working,” Kyel said, staring upward with frightened eyes. All around them, the walls of the room seemed to be lengthening, the ledge where the candles yet glowed rising ever higher above their heads.

  “Kyel, sense the field for me here,” Darien said, feeling wretchedly ill at ease. The currents of the vortex were lethal to him, but he was only asking his acolyte to practice the same technique he’d learned the night before. He watched Kyel’s face, pleased to see that the young man showed no sign of effort or fear of pain.

  “It’s not so intense,” Kyel reported after a moment.

  Darien took comfort in that. It meant he could soon take a sample of the field himself. Not just yet; he wasn’t a fool. But he had been strangled for two days by the barrier he’d been forced to erect in his mind against the vortex. He was grateful to know that at least that strain was almost done with.

  But the darkening of the chamber quickly quenched any relief he might have felt. The floor jolted again, coming to a rest as the light suddenly seemed to leech away as if sucked into the shadows of the walls. A crack appeared along the floor in front of them, yawning wider until it was an opening that shed a soft amber glow into the darkness.

  Naia led her mare through the doorway, then waited for them to join her.

  Darien led his own horse forward over the tiles. He found himself in a dim, cavernous hall. The source of the light came from huge urn-shaped braziers spaced at intervals along the walls. The ceiling was high, supported by massive stone columns that marched down the entire length of the room. The walls were carved in bas-relief, depicting various images from the Book of the Dead.

  “What is this place?” Kyel wondered, openly gawking as he brought his horse forward into the space between columns.

  “It is called the Inner Sanctum.” Naia’s voice echoed through the room. “Our temple has many holy mysteries, and halls such as this are one. Knowledge of its purpose is reserved only for initiates of Death’s priesthood. Of course, should you wish to learn more, you could always join,” she added with a smile.

  “He’s spoken for,” Darien assured her.

  Kyel winced, looking a bit pale, but nodded adamantly as his eyes continued to roam over the dark grandeur of the place.

  They led their horses up the center aisle. The sounds of the animals’ hooves echoed off the walls and ceiling, the noises magnified by the marble surfaces. As they approached the far end of the room, Darien noticed that there were two dark passages ahead, opening out of opposing walls. He could see nothing within, not even an inch beyond the openings. It was as if the dim light of the chamber just stopped at the thresholds, prevented from spreading further.

  Naia stopped her horse and reached into her saddlebag, fishing out three silk scarves. She took one for herself, tossing the other two to Darien, who frowned down at them before handing one to Kyel.

  The priestess took her scarf and began wrapping it around her mare’s head, covering its eyes. Darien moved to his own mount and did the same, winding the fine material like a bandage around the Tarkendar’s black face.

  “These doorways mark the entrance to Death’s Passage,” Naia said as she watched him tying off the scarf.

  When Kyel was done, she led them toward the black, gaping hole on the right. There, she drew up and turned toward them, a look of warning in her veiled eyes.

  “Before we enter, know this: the Catacombs exist partly in the Atrament. There are many mysteries within, which you will doubtlessly find troubling. And there are dangers, as well. Especially now that Death’s secret has been compromised. We must exercise great care yet proceed as quickly as we can. Fortunately, the way is not long.

  “And I must warn you: the living are expressly forbidden to communicate with the dead. You must ignore any shade that tries to distract you. If you do not, then you will be guilty of breaking the Strictures of Death, and you will not be allowed to return again to the world of life.”

  She fixed her gaze on Darien. “I gravely fear what manner of shades you might draw t
o yourself.”

  Darien felt a spark of anger. “Meiran’s not there, remember?”

  But Naia shook her head, a regretful smile on her face. “I would love to meet your Meiran,” she assured him softly, “but I was not referring to her. I was thinking, rather, of the troubling fact that nearly every person you’ve ever known has died. Remember the Stricture. No matter what you see, you mustn’t interact with the dead in any way.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Naia nodded and turned away toward the dark passage. She paused a moment, bowing her head in prayer, then stepped within. As she passed across the threshold, a shadow fell upon her. Her image flickered once and then was gone, lost completely in the darkness that moved to consume her horse as well.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to ride to Glen Farquist?” Kyel said as he stared at the dark passage ahead. He looked pale as he sucked in a deep breath and, holding it, stepped through the doorway.

  Darien watched, fascinated, as his acolyte’s image flickered before disappearing altogether, just as Naia’s had. He was starting to get the sense that there was much more magic involved here than in just the trip down. Death’s mysteries seemed to be fairly riddled with the workings of magecraft.

  Which suggested a partnership that must have existed, at least at one time, between the priesthood of Isap and Aerysius itself. He could easily imagine such a trade-off. It would have been well worth the effort for the ancient Masters to assist in the construction of the Catacombs if, in exchange, they were allowed uninhibited access to them.

  Shrugging off his thoughts, Darien whispered a soft word of comfort to his horse, then led the animal forward.

  As he crossed the threshold of the doorway, it seemed as if the world wavered for an instant when the shadow fell over his eyes. He experienced a momentary surge of vertigo, as if the framework of reality had suddenly shifted. But then the shadow parted, and the motion of the world steadied. Blinking, he stepped out of the darkness into a dim stone corridor.