The Fall of Neverdark

by Philip C. Quaintrell

  This changed things. He was about to attack a large group of capable-looking beasts with a short-sword. Silvyr or not, it wouldn’t be enough to see him free the dragon and make it out alive.

  The magic pulsing against his skin intensified, the only warning before a powerful wave of magic washed over the half-elf, its source the dais.

  Alijah felt pressed against the rock, as if the insidious energy pulsing out of the ritual was a physical force. A light had sparked from nowhere in front of The Crow, silhouetting his voluminous robes. The shaking feet of the skeleton could be seen at the end of the table, only they weren’t skeletal anymore. Valanis had flesh!

  Alijah took a breath. He had to act now, while The Crow was surely at his weakest. Freeing Malliath weighed heavily on him, but it was suicide to enter that tunnel. He had to kill The Crow…

  With a steady grip on his hilt, Alijah pushed off from the wall and battled the waves of magic that poured out of the spell. Every step was akin to wading through a blizzard, the only sound that of The Crow’s voice and billowing robes. His chanting sounded distant, as if his voice was in another world, echoing into theirs.

  With one hand shielding his eyes from the light, Alijah brought the point of his short-sword to bear, ready to pierce his enemy’s back.

  Valanis couldn’t be allowed to return. No matter what.

  A cacophony of snarls and growls reached his ears from behind, but he dared not look back for any more than a glance. The creatures pinning Malliath could see him now, with a few breaking away to attack him. He couldn’t worry about that now. He was so close.

  In the shadow of The Crow, he approached the blinding light that shone over Valanis’s body. With his blade angled upwards, he was moments from thrusting it up into The Crow’s spine. Then, as suddenly as it all began, the light vanished in an even stronger wave of magic. The rock under their feet cracked outwards from the hewn table in every direction and Alijah was thrown back.

  Dazed and bleeding from a fresh cut above his eye, Alijah reached out clumsily for his short-sword. His green cloak was wrapped about him and tangled around his legs. The dim glow from the surrounding torches was hard to adjust to after the magical light and it took him another moment to realise what was happening.

  Only an inch from his face stood a wall of black robes. Alijah blinked hard and looked up to see the ancient face of The Crow staring down at him.

  “And so it begins…” he said in his croaky voice.

  Alijah looked upon The Crow’s work. The spell was complete.

  Part II

  10,000 Years Ago

  Sarkas hurried about his master’s table, setting out the fine cutlery and the very best plates. Everything had to be perfect today. His master, High Priest Vyran, was hosting the rest of the council and The Lord Crow himself. With that in mind, everything had its place on the table, from the positioning of the candles to the layout of the various knives and forks. After six years of service, Sarkas could do it in his sleep.

  He stood back from the table, satisfied with his work.

  The sound of a glass shattering in the adjacent room sent shivers up Sarkas’s spine. He rooted himself to the spot and clung to the back of a chair until his knuckled paled. He couldn’t respond to the sound. He wasn’t supposed to be able to respond to any sound.

  A stream of curses were spat forth from his master’s mouth. It sounded to Sarkas as if Master Vyran had cut himself. It would be he who got punished for his master’s accident: not for the cause, but for the lack of attentiveness. He should be watching his master at all times.

  Subconsciously, Sarkas rubbed the palm of his hand over one of his ears. It had been luck and luck alone that had saved his hearing. Strapped to that chair, with the other six children destined to be servants to the council, they had all suffered terrors that no person should be made to endure. Sarkas could still feel the slender pick entering his ear and the small hammer tapping the end. Those light taps should have caused agony and deafness, but the man had botched the angle, new to his job in The Citadel, and simply pierced the canal inside Sarkas’s ear.

  Hearing the agonising screams of the others, Sarkas did his best to appear in as much distress. Indeed, he was deaf for a time, since the blood filled his ears.

  Now, six years later, he had the recurring dilemma of what to do when he actually heard something. The faster he reacted, the less he would be punished. But he shouldn’t be responding to anything he couldn’t hear…

  Satisfied with the table, Sarkas decided that he would walk back into his master’s chambers. The speed with which he moved showed no sense of urgency, therefore hiding the truth he felt.

  “Where in all the hells have you been?” Vyran shouted.

  Sarkas bowed his head and put his hands together as if he were praying. Asking Master Vyran for forgiveness was like asking the ocean to stop moving.

  Dropping to his hands and knees, Sarkas began to pick up the shards of broken glass.

  “You’re more concerned with the glass than my hand!” Vyran waved his bloody hand in the air.

  Sarkas had to ignore the words. He gritted his teeth and continued to pick up the glass as quickly as possible. Then Vyran’s boot came down on his back. Sarkas was pushed down and stamped into the remains of the broken glass. Three times the boot came down before Vyran moved away.

  Picking himself up, Sarkas was covered in cuts and gashes, his pale robes stained with blood. He pulled one larger piece out of his eyebrow and winced before the blood ran over his eye.

  The searing pain had distracted Sarkas from his master, who strode over to the desk and retrieved his wand. Completely defenceless, Sarkas was ripped from the floor, thrown upwards and pinned to the ceiling.

  Vyran looked up at him and sneered. “Useless maggot!” The master flicked his wand down and then back up, sending Sarkas plummeting to the floor before slamming him back into the ceiling.

  Annoyed by the blood staining his robes, Vyran released Sarkas from his spell and let him drop to the floor, back onto the glass. “Fetch me a new robe!”

  Again, Sarkas had a choice. Obey his master and reveal the truth of his hearing or lie there in the glass and await the next beating.

  The young servant looked up, blood streaking his face, to the see the glowing end of his master’s wand. That little stick held all the power. Even before his time in The Citadel, Sarkas had seen the power of magic, used by the Mage Knights. In magic there was strength and his master had all the strength.

  Vyran flicked his wand again and Sarkas found himself stood upright in front of his master’s furious face. “New-robe-now!”

  Sarkas nodded and ran to the next room in search of an appropriate robe. After dressing his master, Sarkas was instructed to clean himself up and appear presentable before the council arrived. Holding back his tears, the young servant nodded his understanding and did as commanded.

  A little while later, the councillors arrived and took their seats before The Lord Crow sat down. The head of their order preferred to arrive late and have the room stand to attention.

  Outside of King Atilan’s court, the six men of The Echoes council were the most powerful and influential in the entire kingdom. Sarkas hated every one of them.

  The Lord Crow was an intimidating man, taller than the other councillors. The contrast between his black hair and pale face created an other-worldly appearance.

  Along with his six brothers, all servants to the council, Sarkas lined the wall and watched their masters eat and drink as if there weren’t people starving outside The Citadel.

  It was at times such as this when Sarkas wondered briefly if his parents were still alive.

  “This is good stuff,” Master Vyran commented, peering inside his empty glass.

  Sarkas reacted first and made to pour some more wine into his master’s glass. He chastised himself immediately, having reacted a moment too soon in his eyes. Still, Master Vyran just seemed pleased to have his glass refilled and thought nothi
ng of his servant’s fast reactions.

  The other six servants noticed. They always did and they always warned him to be more careful. They were the closest thing they all had to family and they protected each other as families should.

  “It’s not bad, is it?” One of the other councillors lifted his own glass for a refill. “You’ll never guess who sent ten barrels of the stuff.”

  “He didn’t?” Vyran asked rhetorically. “If old Atilan thinks that sending us some wine will replace the coin his court owes to The Echoes he’s—”

  “He’s what?” The Lord Crow interjected. “He’s still the king of an empire that spans three continents. He is still our king.”

  “Our king, yes,” another councillor agreed, “but he is not a god.”

  “He certainly fancies himself as one,” Vyran added before taking another sip.

  The councillor sitting in front of Sarkas sighed. “Atilan has no respect for our order, Lord Crow. He needs reminding that the majority of his empire worship Kaliban.”

  The Lord Crow waved their concerns away. “Our great king is slave to a plethora of self-destructive tendencies. He will see to his own demise before too long, I have no doubt.”

  “Perhaps we could—”

  The Lord Crow hammered his water cup into the table, silencing them. “I have to deal with that old wretch on a daily basis. I do not want to discuss him any more than I have to.”

  A tension, that Sarkas would have picked up on with or without his hearing, filled the room.

  Eventually, the chamber was noisy with their merriment again as the wine took root in their minds. They ate like animals, ruining their robes and dirtying the floor as their food slipped between their clumsy fingers.

  Sarkas was drawn to the wand poking out of his master’s robe. Whoever held the wand, held the leash. It wasn’t the first time Sarkas’s fingers twitched and he envisioned the wand in his hand, pointed at the inebriated council. Not that he would know what to do with it…

  As always, their conversation flowed towards the usual boasting about their power. It had been hard for Sarkas to hear at first, even harder to control his expression, as the six men talked of their greatest trickery, passed down through the generations of their order.

  There was no Kaliban.

  It was a simple truth in their eyes and a world-shattering fact for Sarkas. Years later, he stood to attention, as was commanded of him, and saw the lie for what it was.

  Control.

  They joked, believing no one else could hear them, that their great god had been made up centuries past to curb their civilisation’s aggressive tendencies. It had grown significantly since those earlier days. Now, they were the dominant religion, commanding power, influence, and deep coffers. Even King Atilan couldn’t touch them.

  Learning that his god had been a fiction, a fiction created and sustained by these six monsters had almost driven Sarkas mad. It had been his brothers who kept him sane and reminded him of their need to survive.

  Of course, Sarkas always asked: to what end were they surviving?

  18

  Grey Stone

  Doran Heavybelly looked upon the kingdom of Grey Stone and conjured but a single thought.

  “I friggin’ hate this place…”

  Nathaniel passed the dwarf astride his horse. “I thought we decided there wasn’t going to be any more complaining?”

  Reyna passed Doran on the other side. “We haven’t even reached the north yet, master dwarf. I fear your temperament when we finally reach Namdhor.”

  “Oh, I’ll be mighty displeased standin’ in Queen Yelifer’s court, don’ ye doubt! But Grey Stone… there’s just so many damn steps.”

  The kingdom before them was a sprawling mess, but it was almost entirely hidden within the base of Vengora’s most southern tip. Directly ahead of them, the mountain was cut in half, providing a narrow ravine for the people of Grey Stone to set up their homes.

  The ravine appeared oppressive from the outside, but inside it was only worse. Often compared to a cobweb, the city comprised of a network of ravines, its alley ways and streets, that all branched from one central courtyard.

  Then there were the stairs.

  Doran craned his neck to the top of the mountain, where a flat plateau housed the richer inhabitants of Grey Stone. The Lords and Ladies of The Ice Vales lived in grand castles and miniature fortresses above the din of the common folk. The upper city was connected by series of bridges that crossed the network of ravines.

  Of course, to reach those dizzying heights, one had to traverse the stone steps carved into the high walls of the ravines. They zig-zagged from bottom to top and were themselves home to market stalls desperate to find any space in the cramped city.

  Of all the cities Doran had visited in Illian, Grey Stone was the closest in its resemblance to the dwarven kingdoms; with the inhabitants forced to carve their homes out of the mountain stone and become accustomed to a gloomier life by torchlight. It was the smell, however, that got to the dwarf. All those humans jammed into the mountain without the appropriate sewer system or ventilation…

  Doran wrinkled his nose at it.

  “We could a’ done as I suggested,” the son of Dorain piped up. “If we had gone straight north to Wood Vale, I could o’ collected the reward owed to me, an’ then we could o’ crossed the White Vale and been standin’ at the foot o’ Namdhor in no time!”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “No one crosses the White Vale in winter, Doran. It’s a cold death.”

  “Bah!” Doran waved the notion away. “Ye southerners are wimps….”

  Nathaniel looked back over his shoulder. “Southerner? I grew up in Longdale, Heavybelly! That’s as far north as you can go!”

  Doran licked the icicles from his moustache. “Is it south of Vengora? Then ye’re a southerner to me, laddy. Ye’re all just summer dandies!”

  Reyna’s melodic laugh could be heard over the wind, which was quickly picking up some speed. As a dwarf, Doran was naturally predisposed to find elves on the irritating side, but damned if he didn’t love the sound of Reyna’s voice.

  “So, how are we to play this one, Galfreys?” the dwarf asked, spurring his Warhog on. “Resupply, find somewhere quiet to stay the night, an’ be on our way at first light?”

  “Those were the days,” Nathaniel muttered.

  Reyna glanced at her husband before regarding the son of Dorain. “It would be improper of us to enter one of the kingdoms without forewarning the ruler of said kingdom. King Jormund is expecting us…”

  Doran couldn’t bring his lips back together as he stared at the grand keep at the top of the mountain. “Well… ye enjoy the good king’s company, won’t ye. Come get me when ye leave.”

  Reyna flashed her perfect smile. “Fear not, master dwarf. King Jormund has installed a pulley system. We will be raised to the keep without breaking a sweat.”

  The idea of breaking a sweat in this weather was preposterous, but those stairs took no prisoners. Doran, now somewhat happier, began to think of a royal reception and all the meat and ale that would come with it.

  “Perhaps travellin’ with the likes of ye ain’t so bad after all,” he commented.

  The three companions rode side by side across the icy ground, making their way through the growing mist until the sounds and smells of the lower city were upon them. There was precious little light offered by the thick grey clouds that sat overhead, making the column of light from the ravine all the more inviting. Doran found it to be a confining sight, but he had to admit, and only to himself mind, that the warmth of the lower city would be much appreciated.

  A group of armoured soldiers in thick fur cloaks broke away from the fire pit beside the ravine’s entrance, blocking their path. The men were emblazoned with a bear’s head, the sigil of house Orvish.

  “What strangers arrive in the mists?” the captain asked.

  Reyna removed her hood. “I am Reyna Galfrey. This is my husband, Nathaniel Galfrey. We
are amba—”

  “Ambassadors!” The captain bowed his head before gesturing to his men to attend their horses. “King Jormund told us to expect you. My men will see to your mounts and belongings. I will escort you to the Black Fort.”

  Doran dismounted the Warhog and slung his pack over his shoulder. The soldiers happily took the reins from the Galfreys, but not one of them approached the dwarf’s hog.

  “He don’t bite… people… much.” The dwarf’s honesty only acquired further scrutiny.

  “My Lady,” the captain began with one eye on Doran. “Has this dwarf been harassing you on the road?” His hand came to rest on the hilt of his sword.

  Reyna adjusted her bow and quiver before answering the captain with perfect clarity. “This is Doran, son of Dorain of clan Heavybelly. He fought in The War for the Realm at both Velia and Syla’s Gate. He’s also two hundred years older than all of us and hunts monsters for a living. If he intended us harm, Captain, I am sure both my husband and I would already be dead. As it is, Doran is our friend and companion on the road. He will be treated as we are.”

  The captain bowed apologetically and ushered his men to take care of the Warhog. He then turned to Doran and bowed again, flustered and embarrassed.

  Nathaniel’s grin caught Doran’s eye. “I love it when she does that,” he said quietly.

  “Aye,” Doran agreed. “Remind me to stay on her good side…”

  Free of their mounts, the companions followed the captain through the busy streets and alleys of Grey Stone’s lower city. Hundreds of market stalls lined the ravine, each separated by braziers and torches. Walking past them all was an assault of sounds and smells as some cooked in powerful spices and others shouted out to sell their wares.