Clash (The Arinthian Line Book 4)

by Sever Bronny

  He stepped before the golden doors and pushed on them. They swung inward soundlessly and he immediately caught the heavy scent of ancient musty books. Before him was a vast, long room in which everything seemed to glimmer and glint in his blue light. The walls were lined with the most ornate bookshelves he’d ever laid eyes upon—scrolling works of art in their own right, with motifs of ivy intertwining with gargoyles and cherubs. Gold was everywhere, even worked into the fine masonry between shelves of books. Scattered about were gilded claw-foot study tables.

  But it was the center corridor that was of most interest to the eye—oversized statue after statue stood on a long and ornate runner carpet, each posing with books before it, except the books hovered in mid-air. Some statues only had a few books, whereas others had dozens.

  One thing stood out—the absolute silence. It was as if he was inside a tomb, frozen in time. Nothing moved here. Nothing made noise. It was so quiet he swore he could hear his own thoughts crashing about in his head.

  He stepped before the first statue, depicting the founder of the library, Theodorus Winkfield. Everything on him was gilded, with accents of silver and bronze. His robe was gold and had a glittering gargoyle over the breast. The fringe was tarnished silver. Even his bald head had a sparkle to it. His hands were splayed in a gesture of welcome, with no less than twenty books floating between them, each on a different subject: Formative Years; Elementary Teachings; Accomplishments; Institutional Biography; and so on.

  Augum moved on, admiring the workmanship of intricately inlaid wooden pedestals, twisting ornate obelisks, and fine silk carpets. He passed many statues of historical figures, including Attyla the Mighty, Occulus, Atrius Arinthian, and even his great-grandmother, Anna Atticus Stone. She was portrayed, as in the Hall of Ancestry, in her prime. Although the statue was undefiled, not a single book floated before her, which was terribly disappointing for Augum. Perhaps they were hidden somewhere in the library …

  He strode on to the end, where a somewhat newly-erected statue stood looming over all the others. This one wore great golden full plate with the Legion burning sword engraved into the chest. His fists were at his hips, one arm crooked over a plumed helm, iron gaze fixed ahead. Seven clear orbs hovered around his head—they were absolutely still, eerie replicas of the real things. Inscribed into the base in golden lettering was the name Sparkstone. Underneath was written Lividius Stone, of the Arinthian line, followed by a series of titles that included King of Solia, Lord of Death, Lord of Dreadnoughts, Lord of Scions, and Lord of the Legion. A set of ornate golden-covered books floated before the man.

  Standing there before his father, he felt small and insignificant, especially unworthy of the task of defeating him. But the Legion blocked access to this part of library, so why bother putting a statue of him here?

  He noted how the man presumed he’d acquire all seven scions. Typical and arrogant. He picked out the first book, titled Formative Years, and carried the heavy tome to a nearby table. He sat down at a fancy chair with crimson padding and cracked the book open. Each phrase was written in a neatly scrolling hand that was so even it gave the impression it was done arcanely.

  After some initial browsing, it seemed to Augum that every detail of his father’s life had been catalogued, as if there had been a scribe there the entirety of the man’s life. Nearly every day described what he had eaten, where he had gone, what he had done, what he had said, even how he slept. The writing was cold and without judgment, stating only the facts, such as one passage he found when his father was a young boy of eight.

  Young Lividius slept soundly. Ate stew for breakfast. Played with a squirrel in his room. Strangled the squirrel. Carried it to Anna Stone.

  He asked her thus, “Why is it not moving?”

  “It is dead,” replied she after inspecting it. “You strangled it.”

  “Can I have another one? I want to strangle another one!”

  Augum had to take a breath. This was difficult reading, yet only the beginning. Remarkably, it appeared to be an honest retelling, which he hadn’t expected.

  He skipped ahead, looking for something—anything—to give him a clue as to how to defeat his father, but all he found thus far was how brutal a child the man had been. The pattern started with lies. The boy lied a lot.

  “Did you clean your room?” Anna Stone thus asked.

  “Yes.”

  Young Lividius watched as she checked and returned.

  “You lied, Lividius. How many times have we discussed that lying is wrong?”

  Lividius merely shrugged so. “Can I go play now?”

  Later, he would boast, taunt, and needle.

  “You’re a stupid old hag!”

  “You do not call people names, Lividius, especially your elders,” replied Anna Stone whilst peeling an egg.

  “Why are you so stupid? Why don’t you die!”

  The boy quickly moved on to theft, then the torture of insects, then animals. Augum skimmed over callous act after callous act, even finding the part about him poisoning two of his bullies at ten years of age, which Mrs. Stone told him about back in her cave.

  Lividius stole into the boy’s home through a window. He tip-toed into the mother and father’s room. He watched them from the doorway. He moved on through the corridor, feeling at home in the darkness, until stepping into the room of the boy who dared to bully him.

  What the passage described Lividius doing next curdled Augum’s blood. It was so cold he skimmed through it quickly, whispering aloud only the last line, disbelieving the nature of the man. “ ‘He calmly strode out in search of the girl’s home next.’ ”

  His father’s actions reminded him of the monsters under his cot he had feared as a boy, except his own father was one of those monsters, a monster that now ruled two kingdoms. It was difficult reading, but he forced himself to go on.

  As the boy aged, there were mentions of Lividius pestering Mrs. Stone about the scion.

  “Give it to me, it’s mine!” thus spoke eleven-year-old Lividius.

  “I should not have told you about it. You need to forget it exists.”

  “It’s mine, you stupid crone, and one day I’m going to take it from you!”

  Poor Mrs. Stone appeared unable to control the child, as if she didn’t know what to do with him. Neither did she discipline him in a way Augum would have liked to see, or, for that matter, seek help for him.

  How he wanted to read it all! Especially the part about when Lividius took the bird test, but there just wasn’t time. And so he skimmed on, stumbling across a bit about how Lividius came across a crowd of people gathered around a man. This was later that year, in the streets of Blackhaven. The man told the crowd he could bring back the dead, for a gold coin price. A curious onlooker eventually promised to pay this steep price, if the man could bring back his father first. The whole crowd followed the man to a cemetery, where he miraculously raised the onlooker’s father—except the raised creature then proceeded to attack his own son. The horrified crowd declared the raiser a necromancer and summoned the watch. Meanwhile, Lividius watched from behind a tombstone as the dead creature mercilessly beat his son to death. He watched with a smile on his face, taking peculiar delight in what he saw. Internal emotional description entered the text here, as if it was a significant moment.

  Lividius was flush with excitement. For the first time in his life, he wanted to be someone, someone who held that much power over life and death, a man who everyone feared and paid attention to—a man who could raise the dead. Lividius wondered if he could prevent his own demise. He wondered if he could raise his own father and mother, so that he may kill them for leaving him alone.

  “Huh,” Augum said to himself after reading this passage. He sat back to think. So the necromantic desires started early. Lividius later did raise someone from the family only to kill him—an ancestor, Atrius Arinthian. But that had served a purpose, and that was so he could gain control of the Dreadnoughts.

  Augum fl
ipped ahead, discovering Lividius had sought out that man from the cemetery, later becoming his secret apprentice. The man’s name turned out to be—

  “ ‘Narsus the Necromancer’,” he whispered, remembering how Mrs. Stone would later defeat the infamous man in a legendary duel under the Academy of Arcane Arts.

  He skipped ahead again, this time to the areas that discussed his mother. Lividius met her in his seventh year at the academy. The pair would marry in his eighth and final year. Except the entire relationship seemed based on lies and control, as exampled in the following passage near the beginning of their marriage.

  At the toll of the eleventh bell, Lividius, contented from the murder of the old woman, returned home to Terra Titan.

  “Where have you been, dear?” Terra thus asked.

  “Helping a neighbor with chores. I told you not to ask me questions like that. I am the man of this household, I do as I please.” He kissed Terra on the forehead. “Supper ready?”

  “Yes, but I burnt the pork—” Terra suddenly thus cried out as Lividius slapped her.

  “Why must you be so damn clumsy? Do you think I arcane money into existence?”

  Terra fell to her knees crying, holding her cheek. “Why, Livie? Why do you treat me this way?”

  Lividius watched her. He hated how she had a hold of him. This was one of those times he wished her dead.

  “Livie …”

  He sighed and paced over. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. I’ll change.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise, Tee.”

  Tee had to be her nickname. Augum noticed the only time Lividius used it was when he was trying to apologize while promising to change. Yet Augum, skimming the pages, saw that Lividius never did change. In fact, the pattern seemed to repeat itself—the man would abuse her time and again, and each time she would seem weaker, more cowed by his ways, and he would apologize less and less, just as she used her arcanery less and less.

  “Did you just move it telekinetically?”

  “Livie, I was just trying to—”

  “What, is my arcanery not good enough for the household? I told you, you don’t need to perform it anymore! I’ll do it enough for the both of us. You know better. And stop looking at me like that unless you want a smack.”

  She did, however, once seek advice from her only friend regarding her troubled life with her husband. Except the woman mysteriously disappeared not long after. Augum could have probably found what happened to her, but he did not have the time. Lividius was questioned in the disappearance by the town watch, but by then he had become superbly adept at hiding his true self from people, becoming popular and very persuasive.

  “I’ll bring you that fire drink I promised, Captain Scott,” Lividius thus spoke to the head watchman.

  “Good, and let us have another merry game of chance. I enjoy taking your gold.”

  But Lividius was calculating—he purposefully lost at gambling with the night watch, playing the fool, secretly keeping a close ear on what was going on in town, particularly the details of any ongoing investigations. He also learned who controlled what, how strong they were, and what secret lives they held.

  Lividius kept doing dark things, brazen things, especially at night. He once even got a beggar to burn himself alive for a sum of gold, promising immediate healer attention. Instead of calling the healer, however, he watched the man expire in front of him—he did this right outside a watchtower, knowing they were gambling inside.

  And it kept going and going, dark deed after dark deed, everything in secret.

  “Can’t read this,” Augum muttered, angrily shoving the book away. There were acts in there no one should have endured. Unspeakable, unthinkable things he wouldn’t repeat to anyone, not even Leera, for they were too dark.

  Augum rubbed his head in frustration. No, he needed to read on. In particular, he needed to read about his mother. He had this deep sense that somehow she was the key. There was something he had seen in his father’s eyes the first time he met him in Sparrow’s Perch, when Mrs. Stone mentioned Terra—real pain, authentic sorrow. Something was there and it needed exploring.

  Then he recalled Mrs. Stone telling him about nineteen years during which Lividius had disappeared with Terra, at the end of which Augum had been born.

  He yanked the book back over and flipped ahead to that time, reading about how his father had travelled all over Sithesia with his wife, searching for famous necromantic landmarks of old while trying to learn the dark craft. And as Augum skimmed along the pages with a finger, he saw signs of frustration and anger, which Lividius took out on Terra. One particular day deep in a southern jungle, Lividius and Terra were sleeping in the ruins of an ancient sacrificial pyramid.

  Terra pointed at Lividius. “I’m sick of this place! I’m sick of your stupid rituals! I’m sick of you! I want to go home! I don’t want to travel anymore!”

  Lividius stormed at her and she cried out, backing into a wall. But he froze before reaching her, suddenly realizing the ritual in the other room needed immediate attention. Sierran stinkroot needed to be mixed with the bones before they boiled, otherwise the spell would fail.

  He spoke through clamped teeth. “If you move, I’ll kill you.” He thus spun on his heel and returned to the room. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not muster the concentration, and the angrier he became the more he lost focus, until the boiling pot made a fizzling sound, and Lividius screamed in anger.

  Augum did not want to read what happened next, though realized it was some kind of dark life-extension ritual. He skipped ahead, coming across another instance of Lividius losing his focus due to anger. It was during a duel in the Canterran countryside, when a giddy warlock had telekinetically thrown dung at Lividius’ head. Even though he missed, and it was supposed to be a somewhat friendly duel to show skill, Lividius became so angry at the affront he charged the man and tackled him, instead of simply using his arcanery.

  Lividius also grew in power, for he studied diligently, even allowing himself to be mentored by masters, which he of course killed and robbed after he was done with them. Terra knew nothing. She was there in the background, a shadow of her former self, quiet, broken, distant. This seemed to be perfectly acceptable to Lividius, for he could then concentrate on what he needed to do.

  Augum soon ran across a particularly insightful passage.

  The spell failed and Lividius scurried to a corner, shaking. He had seen his own death. He did not want to die. It was the only thing he truly feared. He enjoyed seeing others perish instead, for then he had beaten them; become victorious. Killing was, in a way, a form of extending life to him, for by taking it, he consumed it.

  Augum reread that last part aloud. “ ‘Killing was, in a way, a form of extending life to him, for by taking it, he consumed it.’ ” A telling passage. He returned to the book, finding more.

  Lividius at last successfully cast the spell. He raised his fists in triumph as the three bodies dug their way out of the graves, limbs merging and enlarging with every passing moment. Soon the head became misshapen as the limbs outgrew the skeletal body. Flesh tore in strips as the thing hissed. It kept growing bigger and bigger, until it towered over Lividius.

  “You are … beautiful,” he thus said. “And mine. You are a part of me forever. My first wraith. I shall call you—”

  But then the wraith struck him with its talons, ripping open his chest. He was flung against a tomb. He inspected his gored chest and began shaking. The wraith quickly closed in on him.

  “Adai!” he thus shouted at it, but it kept coming. “ADAI!” he shouted again, this time with an arcanely amplified voice. The wraith stopped, tilted its head at him, watching. Lividius began sobbing and shaking as he inspected his wound. “I can’t die … not now, not like this …” He glanced up at the wraith and his face contorted in fury. “You dare betray me?”

  Lividius violently brought his wrists together. “ANNIHILO LITO!” A five-pronged bolt of li
ghtning crumpled the monster.

  Augum skipped ahead—Lividius had destroyed that wraith, but he made others, stronger ones, and became better at controlling them. And he searched for deadlier spells and more astute mentors.

  But that’s not all he searched for—he also sought the scions.

  “But you didn’t have one with you when you came back,” Augum said to his father, glancing up at the statue standing nearby, bathed in the blue light of his palm. “So you started the quest for the other scions during that time … but why? Why get greedy?” Then he thought about it. “You wanted to use them to defeat Nana, didn’t you? You wanted to take the scion from her, and the only way to do that was to get much stronger, isn’t that right?”

  The statue of the Lord of the Legion stared menacingly ahead, unmoving, stone silent.

  Or he could have done it to extend his life. He was, after all, afraid of death. But then, he had been gone for quite some time studying necromancy, hadn’t he?

  “You did all that for so long,” Augum went on in a wondrous whisper. “Nineteen years. What does that tell me about you?” He drummed the book with his fingers, imagining Nana sitting across from him, waiting for him to put it all together. “It tells me you had far-reaching plans for some time. It tells me you are persistent. It tells me you’re spiteful. It tells me …” He groaned. “It tells me I enjoy talking to myself—” He expelled a long breath while running fingers through his hair, muttering, “This is driving me crazy.”

  Augum eventually returned to the text, finding another revealing passage.

  Lividius pointed a finger in Terra’s face. “You need to be with child.”

  “Why do you keep insisting? Our lives are … so dark. A child should not be born into such an existence.”

  “You need to be with child. I do not expect you to understand.”