The mortal races would persevere over time, and in this knowledge Valkrage took some consolation. Those communities farthest from the main cities, where everyday life was less dependent upon the convenience of runestones, would recover first. The city of Artalon, however, was the heart of the Empire. It had been the heart of its light, and now it was the heart of its darkness. There was something about Kaldor. Kaldor had planned for the aftermath. How?
Where was Kaldor? He couldn’t remember.
“Master,” spoke the soft voice of one of his counselors from behind him. Five hundred years ago, he had recruited high elves from the few remaining sidhe cities to help with the administration and running of the Empire. He wanted wizards to run the Empire behind the scenes, people who did not get their power solely through another being.
“What is it, Tindron?” he asked.
“Master, the High Templar wishes an audience. He’s been asking to see you since the night Klrain died.”
“I’m sure,” Valkrage nodded. “In a moment. Have him wait.” Valkrage suppressed a giggle. He felt cold. He never would have laughed over such a thing before…
“Yes, Master.” The younger wizard turned to leave.
“Tindron,” Valkrage said.
“Master?”
“Are you aware that the Otherworld is no more?” the Archmage asked.
“Yes, I am,” the elf answered. His lips pressed thinly together. “We are all concerned. We have been waiting for you to speak of it.”
This time, Valkrage did giggle. “Klrain’s dreamwalker,” he said. “We entrusted him to the care of the Fae King!”
Tindron did not see the humor.
Valkrage shook his head sharply, clearing away the laughter. “Killing Klrain caused the Otherworld to collapse. The death of the faerie is on my hands, too.”
“But for the Otherworld to fall…” the younger sidhe reflected without betraying emotion. “…there are so many ties between the two worlds. Is Ahmbren to follow? How long do we have?”
Valkrage shook his head. “I don’t know. We should have felt something by now. But Graelyn—she has vanished. I suspect our continued existence has something to do with her.”
“Shall we withdraw to the sidhe cities, just in case?”
Valkrage gave him a disappointed look. “Tindron, would you abandon these people?”
Tindron did not answer.
Valkrage sighed. “Of course you would. They served their purpose. Tell the other sidhe you are free to depart, as you wish. I will see it through here.”
“And Sidhna?”
“Sidhna?”
Tindron’s eyes widened in unmasked surprise. “Graelyn’s vessel?”
Valkrage frowned. He should know this, but he could not remember.
“The revenant?” prompted Tindron.
He nodded. “Yes, Sidhna.” Now he remembered but it was hazy. The sidhe woman. The abandoned vessel of Graelyn’s dreamwalker. He had wanted to kill the undead creature she had become, but Aaron insisted he freeze her in temporal stasis should they one day discover a magical cure that could restore her to life.
“Shall we move her?”
“No, no…” Valkrage trailed off.
Tindron waited silently.
What had they been talking about? Oh. Templars.
“I’ll see the High Templar now,” Valkrage said.
High Templar Pavlin was a human man in his late forties with striking blue eyes and hair that had aged from dark black to dark gray. A neatly trimmed beard hid the deepening lines on his face. He wore his white pants in the modern style, its legs hanging loosely over his boots down to his ankles. His top was a fitted white coat, and he held a polished black gentleman’s cane engraved with silver rune-work. He paced the hall nervously over the red-carpeted floors, frowning at the floating candles.
Valkrage observed the man’s agitation with pleasure as he approached. The high elf then felt disappointment that he felt pleasure over such a thing. His inner feelings were starting to become strange to him.
“Archmage,” he said, voice gruff from years of smoking the dried tobacco leaf. “Why have you not met with me sooner? It is a disaster!”
“Yes,” the sidhe agreed. “It is.”
Pavlin seemed taken aback. “Well, what is it then? The God-King is nowhere to be found, and his blessings no longer grace our runes.”
“Nor will they,” Valkrage stated dryly. “The God-King is dead.”
Pavlin did not move or respond, as if the very words had struck him dumb. His eye twitched once. “That is not possible. Surely you—” he cut himself off. He could not very well accuse the Archmage of blaspheming.
“Congratulations,” Valkrage stated dryly. “Artalon is yours now. You are free.” No, there was something he was forgetting. There was still something left undone. He must discover what it was. He must remember what it was.
“What do you mean?” Pavlin asked cautiously.
“I mean,” he stated dryly, finding perverse pleasure in what he said, “that the last thousand years have been a lie. Your God-King is dead. Karanos is gone.” It felt good to be free of the lie.
“Karanos will return,” the High Templar stated with certainly. “He will come back to us.”
Valkrage shrugged. “If you wish to believe that, it is of no consequence to me. The city is yours, except for the Imperial apartments. I will keep these for myself. The rest of my wizards will take their leave.”
Pavlin flushed red with rage, but he kept his stance and tone controlled. “You would leave us here? The city relies on Karanos’ grace! What will we do without power? People will die!”
“People are already dying,” Valkrage remarked. “I suggest you restore order and figure out how to organize and feed them.”
“They won’t listen to us without our rune-power,” Pavlin protested. “The rabble only worshipped because they got tangible blessings in return. That, and they would be killed if they didn’t.”
“Yes, that is right.” The elf turned his back to the Templar and walked away. “But that’s no longer my concern.”
The Templar’s face contorted in rage. He drew a dagger from his boot. “You condemn us to hell!” he exclaimed and stepped towards the elf.
Valkrage turned and uttered a word in the language of magic. A pattern of energy, charged in the soul of the wizard’s being through prior magical ritual, was released. Time warped around Pavlin. He hung suspended. Valkrage walked around behind him and released the spell, allowing the man to tumble clumsily onto the floor.
“I believe you forget yourself,” he said.
“What… what did you do to me?” Pavlin broke down on the floor, sobbing in relief. “I thought… I thought I would never…”
“Frozen for a week in the span of a second. Be happy I didn’t hold you longer. Now go, govern your people and save whose lives you can.”
Valkrage left the Templar there on the floor and returned to his apartment, sealing the doors behind him. He presumed it would be a while yet before the man’s mind recovered enough for him to stand, much less walk back to the Church offices.
26 - Dirt City
Skole was the guild boss of Malahkma, the wealthiest crime guild in the streets of Artalon. It dealt in vice and desire, like its goddess namesake. Dirt City was home to Artalon’s minorities, relegated to Artalon’s streets with the poor and undesirable human citizenry. Minorities like the orc who now pointed a wicked broadsword at Skole’s throat.
“You might want to think this through,” he told the orc. “You’ve been a good man. I would hate to lose you.” It was true. There weren’t many orcs in Artalon, and they made excellent muscle. He considered for a moment that he had never bothered to learn the orc’s name.
“Honor demands it!” the orc growled. “You have made an orc woman one of your… commodities! You cannot do this.” He wore a loose linen shirt with short sleeves, green muscles bulging underneath his chest. His shoulders rose and fell with heavy
breaths.
The orc was bold. That was why he had hired him. Skole sat at the table in his guildhall’s common room, eating a hunk of bread. The single-story lodge had been built two guild-masters before him, between the great towers of Artalon. It served as a central hub for his operations in addition to being the guild’s largest pleasure house, peddling flesh and narcotics. His captains sat at the table with him, watching in curiosity. Two of his other strongmen at the door drew their weapons and advanced at the orc. Skole waived them away.
“I make many women my slaves,” he admitted. “Non-human cunt sells. You know that.”
“She is my clan!”
“Not any more,” Skole stated calmly. “She abandoned her clan for Malahkma’s Milk.” He referred to the thick white fluid harvested from the orange mountain flower known as Faerie’s Breath.
The orc roared. “She would never have chosen that! Defend yourself!” He raised his sword and waited.
If the orc won, he would take leadership of the guild. That was the way. But Skole was not a small man. He was broad shouldered and almost as muscled as the orc. The edge the orc might have in strength would be counterbalanced by Skole’s advantage in speed. He sighed. He hated it when his men underestimated him. The orc had proved a valuable asset, and with Artalon going to hell, he needed muscle right now. Well, at least the orc had honor enough to exploit. The orc waited for him, giving Skole a chance to retrieve his own weapon.
Instead, Skole punched the orc in the nose. The green man stepped back, surprised by the bald human’s speed. A stream of blood trickled from his right nostril down to the tiny tusk that protruded from his lower lip.
Skole didn’t wait for him to recover. He slammed his fists into the orc’s belly, knocking the wind from him. The orc tried to fight back, but Skole twisted his arm around until the blade fell from his hand.
The orc grunted and elbowed Skole in the ribs, knocking him away with a jab of pain, then outstretched his arms, ready to crush the man. Skole dropped to the floor and grabbed the hilt of the broadsword. He whirled as he rose, swinging the blade in a deadly arc. His challenger did not have time to react. The blade completed its path, and the orc’s head fell away from his body.
“Stupid bastard,” he muttered. Then he turned to one of his captains. “Clean this up.” He threw the blade on the ground and walked outside onto the street.
The mid-March air was crisp but pleasant enough. Small one- and two-story apartments, shops, and taverns comprised the slums around him, dwarfed by the towers overhead. It had been over a month since Darkfall. The tower Templars had lost control and the tower dwellers realized they now depended on the guilds of Dirt City. They needed food and water, and their way of life, their entire societal organization, had disintegrated. Many of them died in those first weeks. Violence broke out and some starved in the towers, unable to get food.
The Dirt City guilds—both crime guilds and more legitimate trading guilds—had mobilized to move resources into the towers. They knew it was in their best interests to do so, even though they had always been on the outside looking in at the paradise that had been Artalon. No one wanted tens of thousands of hungry citizens descending upon them like locusts.
It was the crime guilds that came out ahead. They already had the structure and muscle to protect their interests, and they were feared; the other guilds fell in line. Eventually, Dirt City took control of the tower entrances, locking down tightly what or who went in and out. They traded food into the towers in exchange for trinkets and valuables. There was a lot of wealth in those towers. Eventually, it would run out, but not for some time yet.
He pulled out a pouch from his jacket and rolled a pinch of tobacco between his finger and thumb. He placed it under his lower lip and proceeded to chew it, spitting the excess fluid onto the ground. He started to relax after the sudden fight with his man.
He stared down the road at the entrance to God Spire. It was impossibly tall, but he had never been struck by its presence. He had grown up on these streets, and it was just a part of life.
The palace tower was not sealed. The Templars there had approached the guilds, leveraging them to move food into the other towers and keep the peace. He wasn’t stupid enough to challenge the Templars. Even without their runic power, the central palace tower had plenty of them, all trained to fight. They hadn’t succumbed to the mob as many of their brethren had in the other towers. And at the heights of God Spire they still had the Archmage. No reason to risk his ire.
So he cooperated and prospered at the same time. The Templars didn’t care so long as he kept the peace, provided a means for the city’s populace to survive, and proclaimed faith in Karanos’ return.
He laughed to himself. Faith in Karanos. As strict as they were in the towers, they hadn’t ruled Dirt City quite so harshly. As long as you said your daily prayers, you were free to live as you would, for the most part. Well, faith in Karanos had proved a failure in the end. The god’s power was gone from the world, and it was only a matter of time before the Templars would be no more. In the meantime, demand for the services of his vice guild only grew. He offered women and men to those who would pay, liquor to those who sought to escape their sorrows, and Malahkma’s Milk to those who craved a deeper escape. When those on the milk could no longer pay, they gave their bodies for him to sell in exchange for a supply of the drug. Business before had been discreet. Now, it boomed, as all the crime guilds grew in power.
He considered his guild’s namesake: Malahkma. He wondered if, with Karanos gone, the old gods would return, but discarded the thought. He didn’t really believe in them anyway. The idea of the goddess was enough—the desire for pleasure so powerful that you would give everything you were over to the master of your desire. The mountain flower’s juice was named after the goddess, and his guild thrived on it. If the goddess was real, she lived in his organization, not some dark, fantastical Abyss.
Davin, his most trusted captain, approached him. “It’s taken care of, sir,” he said.
“Good.”
“There’s something else, sir.”
“Go on.”
“The Assassins Guild has been robbed.”
Skole stared at him for a moment, and then spit more tobacco juice on the ground. “Robbed?” he repeated.
“They say it was the Thieves Guild. Or a free agent.”
“What was stolen?”
“Documents. Contracts. Guild membership. They left a note behind with the seal of the Thieves Guild.”
Skole frowned. “That information getting out could be the undoing of the Assassins. Who in the Abyss would be stupid enough to do this? I hardly believe it was the Thieves Guild.”
“Maybe the Assassins took out one of the Thieves? Maybe it was personal?”
“Any thoughts on who did the job?”
“Someone named Kristafrost, but no one knows who this is. The Thieves Guild denies anyone of their number by that name.”
“They would, wouldn’t they?”
“Hence you see the problem. The Assassins are out for blood. All the guilds are on edge. The balance of power is threatened.”
Skole considered. “We need to hire someone to replace the orc. Now is not the time to be short on strongmen.”
Davin nodded. “A man moved recently into the area with his wife and daughter. He has a shotgun.”
Skole raised an eyebrow. That could be useful. Firearms were hard to come by. “Make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
* * *
Pavlin’s pen scratched furiously over his parchment. He had abandoned his old office high in the tower and moved to ground floor to be close to his troops and Dirt City. Right now, he needed to be accessible. He spent his time drawing up plans and organizing the system that would save his city. Without the runes, everything had to be redesigned from scratch. He was a soldier at heart. He would rather have been directing troops and defending the Empire’s borders against the harrowing orc tribes in the Southern Wilds, but he
did have a talent for administration. Border skirmishes were days for younger men, in any case, and right now the city needed leadership. He would save Artalon from total chaos.
Out of habit, he still wore his sword of office. He tried not to think of its lifeless runes running the length of the steel blade. How could it all have been a lie? For a thousand years?
He couldn’t bring himself to believe it and threw himself into his work. He sent out messengers to the cities of the Empire, and initial reports from the vicinity all came back the same. Runes had failed and order crumbled. Just like that, almost overnight, the most ordered Empire humanity had ever achieved disintegrated into chaos around him.
No. He would not let that happen.
He received word that the elven wizards had abandoned the city, returning to their sidhe strongholds. Thinking of them turned his stomach to bitter bile. This was all their fault, he was sure of it. Only Valkrage remained—he couldn’t imagine the elf abandoning God Spire. There were rumors that he and the God-King had been more than friends. The Archmage had locked the doors to the palace levels, and no one had seen him since. At any rate, the people of Artalon had been abandoned to their fate.
Pavlin made deals with devils. The crime guilds’ bosses effectively ran the city now. There was one Thieves Guild, one Assassins Guild, and a variety of vice guilds of different names. But the order they imposed saved lives, and he needed the faithful saved. They had to reestablish life without reliance on runes, and then he would bring the order of the Church back. This was just a temporary, necessary evil. He had to believe it was all for something.
Karanos would return. The elf must have lied to him. All elves lied. The sidhe race had been humanity’s bane since the dawn of history. Karanos was a human god. He would not abandon his people. They just had to rebuild their faith. Karanos would return.
When Dragons Die- The Complete Trilogy Box Set Page 26