Nochman looked up, neither angry nor amused. He had the same benevolent look plastered on his face that he always possessed. “Have I done you a wrong, Son?” he finally asked.
Rancor teetered there for a moment, struggling to support his frail frame on the back of a chair. “You should be thanking me,” said Rancor. He glared scornfully at his father. “If it were not for me you would be in prison right now.”
“In prison?” exclaimed Nochman. He shook his head with certainty. “No, I don’t believe I’ve done anything that could be grounds for incarceration.”
“How about forming treaties with foreign states?” demanded Rancor. He held up a parchment bearing Nochman’s and Waymire’s signatures.
“I cannot begin to understand how you came upon this,” said Nochman dismissively.
“It’s easy, Father,” said Rancor. “Everyone can be bought in this city. Information is a commodity. It’s not like the old days when declaring allegiance actually meant something. There’s no loyalty to anything besides money. You’re lucky the porter who overheard your meeting came to me first. He wasn’t cheap, either. He knows the councilors have deep pockets, they could have paid him more.”
“Certainly they could have, yet he came to you.” Nochman cursed under his breath. “You know, I’ve known that man since he was a child. There is no excuse for such...”
“Father, you’re missing the point,” interrupted Rancor. “It is not your place to rule. Your peers deemed you unfit to make these decisions. You need to respect that choice.”
“My peers!” snapped Nochman, clearly growing frustrated. “A bunch of cowardly traitors is what they are. More interested in expanding their estates than in governing this empire. And then there’s your own kin, the most dangerous of all.” His face drooped with disgust.
Rancor tried to hold his father’s gaze, but a childish instinct told him to look aside from that stern glower. “I need to know the whereabouts of the Orb.”
“Who would like to know; you or the Council?”
“Does it matter?”
“No,” said Nochman stubbornly. “I would not grant it to either of you.” He rose, indicating the conversation was over. “Your aunt won’t help you this time. She leads you with one hand while stabbing you in the back with the other.”
Rancor ignored the insinuation. “War is coming, Father, and we must prepare. If we have this tool, this weapon, we should use it. We should let Jotham see it. He might find a way...”
“Ha! He’d incinerate the whole city.” Nochman snorted cynically. “The Orb is no tool, nor is it a weapon. It is the power of the gods. Without their knowledge there will be no containing it once loosed.” His face hardened. “You know, Son, I never asked to be high lord. I never vied for the title. It was simply understood that I was the most suited for the job. You can’t buy that. Blind, unwavering trust. When such responsibility is put upon the shoulders of one man, he has two options. Deny the people their desires and go the route of corruption and misdeeds. Or heed their cry, and sacrifice everything you know, everything you love and cherish, so that you can put your entire being into their cause. The lordship is greater than all else. It is a path only for the righteous of hearts; a weaker man cannot handle the responsibilities or the temptations. This burden, once undertaken, is undying. You may take the scepter from my hand, but you cannot stay my mind or my soul. I am a servant of the people, and as long as blood still flows through these old veins, I will not allow the needs of the masses to go unanswered, whether it be lawful or not.”
“I am the high lord now, Father,” said Rancor quietly, almost under his breath. “You may advise, but you may not rule. It is my duty alone.”
“The time for chances is through, Son,” said Nochman coolly. “Success is your only option, for the consequences of failure are too grave to comprehend. Conduct yourself as a lord should and I will not be obligated to intervene. Is this understood?”
Rancor said not a word; he simply collected his crutch and limped from the library. He slammed the door shut, and stood in the portal sucking in the chill night air. His heart was racing.
“Did he mention the Orb?” called a voice from within the shadow of a nearby buttress. Rancor’s skin crawled. Tulea Farsidian emerged from the gloom. Her velvet robe was so dark her frame melted into her surroundings.
He was grateful his aunt had followed his instructions and waited to meet him outside. If his father saw them conversing it would only further cement his fear of their collusion.
“No,” lied Rancor.
“But it is in his possession.” Tulea nodded knowingly. “We need it, Rancor. The seat of power comes with responsibilities. Your people before blood.” He couldn’t ignore the echoes of his father’s sentiment. He also couldn’t ignore the implication of her expectation.
“There need not be violence. I will convince him. We have time.”
“For now,” she agreed. She drew so close he could taste the perfume on her neck and spy the age lines she so carefully concealed. His aunt grinned in false coyness, and slid her fingernail to his lips. “I can make kings and I can ruin them.”
Rancor recoiled from her touch. “Once given, a throne is difficult to take back, my lordess.”
“Difficult, but not impossible,” said Tulea with an air of certainty that was bred from a lifetime of getting her way.
Rancor wanted to grab the woman and scream into her smug face. To tell her she would not make a fool of him like she did his father. Yet her unwavering eyes made his gut gnaw on itself. He swallowed his bile. “I...I will get the Orb,” said Rancor, stumbling over his words.
She kissed him lightly on the lips. “I know you will, High Lord Rancor.” Then she was gone.
For awhile Rancor stood there in bewilderment, scowling at the sky. From the corner of his eye he suddenly caught motion in the adjacent building. The face of a young woman peeked through the curtain of a window. The comely girl, with her arresting brown eyes and jet hair, looked oddly familiar. He turned to look at her, and she stood brazenly at the window staring back. He smiled, and she let the curtains slide shut. The name came to him as if a whisper on the wind. Evelyn Manherm, he suddenly remembered. He would have to investigate what part she played in all of this.
CHAPTER
XIII
BANDITS
Bently crawled across the floor and joined Desperous beside the window. He cautiously peered about the edge of the sill. Night was nearly upon them, and the lengthening shadows of evening had turned the outside world into amorphous shapes of black and gray. Bently’s search was fruitless. “I don’t see them.”
“There,” said Desperous. He pointed to the left of the house. “They’re deep in the brush.” The elf spoke with the same calm and level intonation he always used.
“Carrion?”
“No, I heard murmured chatter,” said Desperous. “Whoever it is, they’re not dead.”
As if apparitions, three figures materialized from the gloom. One remained at the tree line, while a pair slowly skulked toward the hut, crouched low in the tall grass like hunting wolves. Bently spied the glint of flaring steel against the gathering dark.
“Bandits,” said Ivatelo, curling his lip with disgust. “The war has made people desperate. Good men have resorted to thievery. They’ve been wreaking havoc, raiding homesteads, killing farmers.” He bustled for the door.
Bently barred Ivatelo’s path. “Let the elf and me take care of this. You have been courteous with your food and drink. Let us deal with this in exchange.” Bently didn’t wish for the man to feel powerless to protect his own home, but he also didn’t want more blood on his hands.
Ivatelo opened his mouth to object, but Desperous was already out the door. Bently had no time for debate. He gave Ivatelo a gentle shove back into the house, then slammed the door. Desperous held fast beside him. The two figures were now only a dozen feet away.
“You have no business here,” called Desperous in a voice that dri
pped with menace. “I’ll give you this chance to leave.”
“There, that’s him,” called one of the men in a shrill voice. He wagged his finger accusatively at Bently. The other man waved his hand into the dark, presumably signaling the third assailant.
Bently looked at the shadowed figure queerly. These men weren’t bandits. Even in the dusking light, he could spy the dull sheen of chain mail habergeons over stiff leather. But if they weren’t bandits, who were they? The image of his wife suddenly sprung within the back of his mind. Although her lips moved without a voice, he could clearly hear her words. “I tried to warn you.” Bently blinked away the apparition.
The assailants shifted their hands to their hilts, girding themselves for a fight.
Desperous didn’t hesitate a second. He nocked an arrow to his string, drew it flush with his cheek, and let fly. The arrow punched the foremost man in the left breast, sending him reeling as if he were hit by a hammer. He came to a rest on his knees, gaping in disbelief at the feathered shaft protruding from his chest.
The second man awkwardly fumbled to draw his broadsword. Bently tackled him to the ground before he could clear the blade from its sheath. They rolled over each other. Bently smashed his vambrace into the man’s face, upturning his nose into a bloody obtuse angle. The man kneed Bently in the groin. In a rage, Bently locked one hand around the man’s neck trying to crush his throat. Frantic hands raked against Bently’s flesh. Fingernails scored his cheeks and eyebrows. There was an audible swoosh, and an arrow suddenly materialized in the man’s side. The man bayed like a dying pig, relieving Bently just long enough for him to pull a rock from the earth and send it smashing into the man’s temple. The skull gave way in a puff of blood. The assailant fell limp atop Bently.
The man’s dead eyes stared unblinking just inches from Bently’s own. Bently gagged. He recognized those miserable green eyes, he knew that sad pinched face. Bently scrambled out from beneath the bulk of dead weight, frantically kicking away as if he had seen a ghost. “A carrion,” he murmured to himself. “He must be a carrion.” Blood slowly cascaded across the man’s face, hiding him behind a crimson mask.
“Not a carrion,” said Desperous, with a melancholy shake of his head. He stood over Bently in a protective stance, shielding him from the remaining foe.
The leader of the group had paused at the edge of the forest and watched the skirmish carefully. He eyed the defeated men of his party, showing no concern for their demise, then slowly scanned Desperous and Bently from head to foot. A sickening realization came to Bently; this man had purposely waited, sizing them up to see if they were worthy of his time. The man rolled his shoulders and advanced, his armor clinking with each step.
He was cloaked in a black robe. The unmistakable outline of plate bulged underneath, granting him the semblance of a hulking shadow. The man withdrew his hood, revealing a heavily marked face. Archaic script covered his forehead and cheeks, flaring with ephemeral light. He slowly drew a scimitar, letting the curved blade drag audibly against the metal cusp of his scabbard.
“Blessed Guardian,” gasped Bently. He crossed himself and looked to the heavens with pleading eyes. “He’s a battlemage.”
“He’s a phirop,” said Desperous gravely. He hoisted Bently to his feet, then snapped out the blades of his Razorwind. “We take him together.”
Issuing a whooping war cry, they charged the man shoulder to shoulder. Desperous swung his double-bladed haft in a blinding swirl, while Bently hewed the air with enough force to cleave the assailant in two. Moving with inhuman speed, the man effortlessly parried both blows with one clean arch of his scimitar. Still they came on, stab, swing, lunge. Each thrust was met with either steel or empty air. The man spun with the flow of battle, as if dancing to a silent melody. His cloak billowed with each step, hiding a swinging fist, or a stamping foot. He drew Desperous out wide with a parry and crushed the back of his knee with a whirling kick. Desperous was sent sprawling to the ground. In one deft motion, the man disarmed Bently, hooked his foot around his ankle, and sent him tumbling. It all happened so fast Bently didn’t even have time to panic. He simply found himself kneeling helplessly before his executioner.
Then it was over. The phirop swung at Bently’s neck with all the intentions of beheading him, the cold steel meeting his flesh with enough force to cleave stone. Yet instead of rending clean through bone, the blade halted against an invisible barrier. Bently could feel the coarse hairs of his neck rise against the razor-edged scimitar. Blood began to trickle from either side of the blade, but miraculously the blow was only skin deep.
The phirop looked enraged. He leaned into the blade, but still nothing happened. He tried to draw back, but the blade held firm.
“You have had your fun, but now if I may, can I take care of this intruder as I originally requested?” Ivatelo was standing beside the door to his house, leaning upon a walking stick. He was grinning from ear to ear.
“Please,” managed Bently. He tilted his head as far from the blade as he could stretch.
In the blink of an eye the phirop acted. With a snap of his wrist, the phirop threw his palm flat against Bently’s chest and murmured a few cryptic runes. There was a flash of blinding light and Bently was ejected backward through the air.
Suddenly free of the binding spell, the phirop turned toward Ivatelo with contempt. He leapt through the air with his sword poised to cut Ivatelo in two. The old man, acting almost lackadaisically in his actions, lifted his walking stick toward his attacker’s flying body. The phirop struck the blunt end of the staff and halted in mid-air. A shocked look was perched squarely upon the man’s face. Then, in a earsplitting bang, he went shooting off, up over the trees and beyond at such a rapid pace the eye could hardly follow. Silence ensued.
Both Bently and Desperous gathered their feet in shock.
“Why didn’t you tell us you were a magic?” managed Bently, his breath coming out in bursts from exhaustion.
“I don’t recall you asking,” said Ivatelo.
“Well, that changes a few things,” muttered Desperous. He gingerly rubbed his leg as he hobbled to the door of the hut.
Ignoring the throbbing pain in his chest, Bently limped over to the man he had killed. The assailant’s face was now a ghoulish mask of blood, yet Bently couldn’t shake that brief moment of recognition. He kicked the man a few times to guarantee he was truly dead. Satisfied, he knelt down and began to rummage through his belongings. He couldn’t quell the tremble of his hands.
The pack of the supposed bandit was filled with basic provisions; food, a canteen, flint. Nothing to explain the man’s origin. Then something caught his eye, an item Bently knew all too well; the white tower of Caper imbued in an amulet. Dread strangled Bently like a noose.
Bently glanced around the clearing; Ivatelo was carefully examining Desperous’s injury, paying Bently and the dead man no notice. Bently yanked the amulet free from the man’s neck and scrambled over to the next corpse. The man lie supine with Desperous’s arrow lodged just below the breastbone. Lifting the man’s habergeon he revealed the same amulet. Bently felt ill.
Suddenly an icy grasp locked around his wrist.
The eyes of the two men met. Bently wanted to vomit. I know this man. He was once a conscript under Bently’s command. It took him a moment to remember the name.
“Please forgive my misdeeds, Captain Bently,” managed Eldin through gasping breaths. Desperous’s arrow had missed the heart, but dealt a fatal blow all the same. He would die soon, and his eyes were filled with panic. He pulled Bently close. “I had no choice. I truly had no choice.”
“What do you mean,” managed Bently in a hushed voice. He eyed Ivatelo and Desperous quickly. They were still paying him no heed. “Why would you betray me, why would you betray your people?”
“You needed to be identified...” stammered Eldin. “There could be no usurper.”
“But why?” asked Bently.
His wife was suddenly standing besid
e him, staring dismissively upon the dying man. “I tried to warn you,” she laughed in a voice not of her own. Bently looked up to meet the eyes of the necromancer. He shuddered and looked away from the vision.
“They were going to kill my family. I had no choice,” said Eldin through chattering teeth.
“What of my family?” hissed Bently. He bashed the craven man into the earth. “What has become of my family?”
Eldin nodded weakly. “The blood, it runs deep...”
“Answer me, damn you!” Bently’s head was spinning. He didn’t want the answer. He feared more than anything what the answer would be. But still he had to know, no matter what, he had to know.
CHAPTER
XIV
TAPER
Demetry cast his gaze longingly over the valley. They had come upon a seemingly endless chasm in the night. A glowing sea of embers lay within, shimmering yellows and reds. Slowly from the depth of night came shapes, and there, nestled in amongst the foothills of the Fir’re mountains, lay the village of Taper, dimly outlined by the flicker of oil lamps.
“Home,” said a voice softly in his ear.
“I have kept my word,” answered Demetry.
There was an unsettling scrape behind him as the rotting feet of a hundred thousand carrions came to a halt. Their leathery hides grated like sandpaper as they swayed listlessly to some unheard cadence. The noisome odor of death wafted about him like waves of heat off a fire. Demetry smiled. I have returned like I came.
When the Yanish Brothers had dropped him off at Taper, he still reeked of death. They had found him in a Caper slum nestling with the corpse of his mother long after the pox had taken her from this world. Try as they might, they couldn’t scrub the stench off of him. For the longest time no one realized he walked about with an undead rat tucked in his pocket. How would they have guessed that an urchin from Caper might channel the Sundered Soul for necromancy at so young an age?
The school headmaster, Brother Rioley, used a meat cleaver to hack Demetry’s little pet into pieces when it was finally discovered. Rioley made Demetry watch, all the while condemning his sinful deviation. “The rat is an abomination.” Thwack! “Your hands are tainted with sin.” Thwack! “The Sundered Soul will grow quiet to you if you continue upon this path.” Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
The Guardian (The Gods and Kings Chronicles Book 2) Page 12