The interior of Hellsgate was as grim as the Hunter had expected. The walls, floor, and ceilings were made of the dark grey stone shot through with veins of red, and not even the soft glow of the torches and oil lamps hanging in their ornate stone sconces could drive back the ominous feel in the massive fort. The absence of color and decorations made it seem a far sterner, starker place than any hall, mansion, or castle he’d visited.
The front gate opened onto a narrow hall lined with arrow slots, with dozens of murder holes in the ceiling. The corridor ran for five paces before it entered the great hall, a high-vaulted chamber easily a hundred paces wide and fifty long. The room had been converted into a dining area lined with wooden tables and benches, where dozens of blue-armored Elivasti sat eating in silence. A somber mood hung over the entire chamber. Even the children in the room seemed too afraid to make a sound.
The meaty, spicy smell wafting through the dining hall reminded the Hunter he hadn’t eaten in days. The lives consumed by Soulhunger had driven away his hunger and thirst, but his body would need sustenance soon.
But not now.
For a moment, the Hunter found himself at a loss for where to go. He could see no staircase leading up or down.
He grabbed one of the smaller blue-armored Elivasti walking past. “You seen Chault?” He pitched his voice low and added a good deal of gravel to it, the same voice he’d used when playing the terrifying character that met clients in the darkened Room Four in the Rusted Dangle.
“Chault?” The Elivasti’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Who is—” He seemed to see the blood red fists and black lines on the Hunter’s armor for the first time, and his skin went a shade paler. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “He’s likely on the fifth floor, though I couldn’t tell you which room he’s in.”
The Hunter grunted and released the man’s arm. He felt the Elivasti’s eyes burning into his back as he strode away, but true to character, he didn’t glance back. If the Blood Sentinels were like any of the elite units of mercenaries, soldiers, or guards he’d encountered, they believed themselves a cut above the rest. They had earned their swagger, through merit or violence. That dominating personality would make people do what he wanted or give information without question. Not his favorite sort of character to play, but certainly one of the most useful.
He strode in the direction the man had indicated, through the grand hall and into a chamber half its size beyond. This room was lined from wall to wall with wooden racks, upon which sat hundreds of Elivasti spikestaffs. No Scorchslayers, he noted. Perhaps the Blood Sentinels didn’t trust the rest of their kin with the powerful weapons.
Stone staircases were set into the northern and southern walls of this room. The Hunter chose the southern staircase at random—like most fortresses, they would ascend to the higher levels parallel to each other.
The Elivasti he passed gave him a wide berth. One look at his broad shoulders, scarred face, and outthrust chest—bearing the crimson fists and black swirls of the Blood Sentinels—and most simply flowed around him. He never gave way, never moved aside, but strode up the stairs with enormous self-assurance and a scowl that had made dockhands and Bloody Hand thugs blanch.
He knew little about the layout of Hellsgate, but he’d had enough experience with the Sage to know the demon would room as close to his protectors as possible. If the Blood Sentinels had their quarters on the fifth floor, that likely meant the Sage’s quarters were there as well.
Few people looked beyond the Scorchslayer and armor that marked him as a Blood Sentinel. He adjusted his armor and ran a hand along solid, cloth-wrapped outlines the Swordsman’s iron daggers he’d tucked into the backplate of his blue armor made. He’d had to push them in deep to hide them from view, but he could still reach their hilts. When the time came to kill the Sage, he’d be ready.
He’d come to Hellsgate for two reasons. The Sage had to die, but first he needed to reach the Terrace of the Sun and Moon. That was where he’d find the opia to save Hailen from the Irrsinnon. He’d come to Enarium to cure the boy’s madness, and to do that, he needed the opia.
According to the snatches Arudan had read from the Serenii stone tablet, he’d find the opia in direct sunlight beneath a glass dome that encouraged it to grow larger and reach maturity more quickly. How hard could it be to find a glass dome, even in a garden as vast as the roof of Hellsgate? If he could find Garnos, the process could be significantly expedited. After all, who better than a gardener—Garnos’ wife—to lead him to the opia?
The first three floors he passed seemed to be living quarters for most of the Elivasti. Someone had taken the time to decorate, with colorful rugs, paintings, and more of the ornamental flourishes that made a stone keep a suitable living space. The fourth floor was also living quarters, but of a higher standard of cleanliness and affluence than the lower levels. Perhaps this was where the Detrarchs and other officers of the Elivasti lived.
He paused at the fifth floor and stared down the hall. Four Elivasti stood at a pair of double doors at the far end of the corridor, Scorchslayers held at the ready. That had to be the Sage’s chamber. The Hunter resisted the urge to charge down the hall, burst through the doors into the room, and kill the Sage. Four Blood Sentinels weren’t too many to go through, but the twenty doors between the staircase and the far end of the hall meant at least a few score more lived on this floor. Even with the ten or fifteen that had fallen in battle today, that still left a lot of them between him and any chance of escape.
Though he hated the idea of leaving Hailen in the demon’s clutches for another minute, he turned away from the hall and climbed the stairs to the sixth level of Hellsgate. He’d get the opia first, then deal with the Sage on his way down. No sense being trapped on the top floor with an army of Blood Sentinels seeking vengeance over the Sage’s death.
Once again, he found himself preparing for a mocking voice that never came. He knew what his inner demon would say: “Foolish Bucelarii, you’re going to get yourself killed! All for the sake of the boy.” Alone, without Soulhunger, surrounded by enemies, he couldn’t deny he’d put himself in a situation that very likely would lead to death if he was discovered.
Yet it would all be worth it. With the Sage dead, the Withering would come and go without threat of Kharna breaking out of his eternal prison. Even if the Hunter couldn’t understand why Taiana served Kharna—just the thought filled him with burning fury—at least they could agree that Kharna could not be released. Once he’d dealt with the Sage, he could turn his attention to Taiana.
And what exactly did that mean? His inner demon would have mocked him for being a fool, and ridicule him for his attempt to save someone who deserved death. To the voice in his mind, everyone was better off killed.
The absence of the voice struck him as bizarre. He’d thought that here, now, facing death on such a vast scale, the presence in his mind would be filling his head with its demands for blood. It would have thrilled to see the Pit sucking the life from the captives, and shouted with delight as he hacked through the Elivasti guarding the Sage.
Yet he had only silence. But why? The question had nagged at him since he’d arrived in Enarium, but he hadn’t had time to give it much thought. It felt strange not to have the voices pounding in his mind. With Soulhunger gone and the demon fallen quiet, it almost felt…peaceful. Even surrounded by enemies and facing the constant threat of death, the silence in his mind filled him with an odd serenity.
Was this what normal people experienced? He had wrestled with the voices in his head for so long he had no idea what to do without them. He welcomed the change, yet it felt as foreign as solid ground after a month-long voyage across the Frozen Sea.
The staircase ended and the Hunter stepped onto the uppermost level of Hellsgate. It took all his willpower to keep the scowl plastered on his face, so surprised he was at the sight before him.
The entire top floor was an enormous garden.
Lush greenery met his eyes everywh
ere he looked. Ripe red tomatoes hung heavy on thick vines that climbed metal trellises. The tang of oranges, grapefruits, lemons, and other citrus fruits he’d never tasted filled the air as he passed five tall trees—trees, growing on the roof of a fortress! Potatoes, carrots, turnips, and radishes grew alongside cabbage, lettuce, cauliflower, and five different types of squashes. It seemed impossible, yet somehow the Elivasti living here managed to raise enough food to survive—not just survive, but feed all the people living within Enarium and Khar’nath.
No, there was no way this could be Elivasti ingenuity. The Hunter had little understanding of agriculture, but he’d never seen anything like the hanging pipes that fed water to the plants growing in pots suspended above vast stone tanks. No human on Einan could have contrived the intricate system of tubes, hoses, and channels that pulled water from the pools to supply the trees, plants, vines, and bushes with nutrients and moisture without the need for soil.
He strode through the gardens, taking in the fresh scent of green life, the light mist hanging in the air, and the coolness of the shade between plants. It was a thing of beauty atop the harsh, ugly fortress of Hellsgate. An impossibility, like so many other creations of the Serenii.
A little pang of homesickness coursed through him as he passed a pair of Snowblossom trees. A memory of being in this place echoed deep within his mind. He had sat there, on that stone bench, with Taiana beside him and spoke of the future of their child. No wonder he had loved visiting Maiden’s Fields in Voramis—their sweet scent was a reminder of the past he’d shared, even if he couldn’t remember it.
He shoved down on the emotions welling in his gut. He’d have time for melancholy and reminiscence when Hailen was safe.
In the heart of the Terrace of the Sun and Moon, a glass dome rose above the rest of the garden. Twenty paces long and wide, it was easily twice his height and made of the same blue-colored glass as the Keeps.
The words Arudan had read from the stone tablet came back to him. “For faster maturation, it is my recommendation that the plant is grown in sunlight amplified by a mixture of sapphire and ghoulstone treated with weeping wintermoss.”
The Hunter couldn’t take his eyes off it as he approached. Within the dome, plants he’d never imagined could exist grew in abundance. There, pale blue flowers with short stems grew beside tall white orchids, purple roses, and lilies of a fiery orange. A hundred smells—some familiar, most exotic—filled the dome. It was like stepping into a brand new world.
And there, before his eyes, he found what he sought. A dark green bush with small leaves, white buds, and dozens of berries the same deep purple color as the Elivasti’s eyes.
He had found the opia.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The Hunter’s jaw dropped. Keeper’s teeth!
He couldn’t believe the vastness of the opia bushes before him. In Kara-ket, a single spindly bush had flowered, with just one tiny berry for show. Yet here, the plants towered nearly twice the Hunter’s height, their branches heavy with hundreds of rich, round fruits the size of large wine grapes. Hundreds more tiny white buds dotted the green leaves.
No wonder the Warmaster had boasted that he could get his hands on all the opia he wanted. Here in Enarium, the berry grew in a greater abundance than the Hunter had imagined possible.
Relief washed over him like a drink of cool water in the Advanat Desert. After his flight from Kara-ket, he’d stubbornly clung to the hope that he would find the opia, the only thing that could cure Hailen’s madness, in Enarium. Yet it had been little more than hope built on the flimsy foundation of the Warmaster’s words.
To find it here, and in abundance enough to save Hailen a hundred times over, drained away the tension that had filled him since his discovery that the berry could cure the boy. He wanted to laugh, to bask in the triumph of finding what he’d traveled leagues to obtain, but forced his face to retain the permanent scowl of the Blood Sentinel. He had to remain in character a little longer.
He stepped into the dome and was immediately struck by a solid wall of heat. The circular dome reminded him of the glasshouses he’d seen on his visit to Icespire, across the Frozen Sea. Evidently, someone had discovered what Yalleng the Serenii had known and written in his stone tablet—that the amplification of the light or heat within the glass dome sped up the growth of not just opia, but all plants. Perhaps that was why the garden at the pinnacle of the Sage’s tower in Kara-ket had flourished in such abundance despite the high altitude.
“Can I help you?” came a woman’s voice from behind him.
The Hunter ignored the question, as an arrogant Blood Sentinel would. A moment later, a woman squeezed herself through the doorway around his armored frame and came to stand in front of him.
“Can I help you?” she repeated, this time with more than a hint of disapproval in her voice.
The Hunter glared down at her. She barely reached his chest, and she looked to be in her fourth or fifth decade of life—which meant in the early hundreds, given her Elivasti heritage. Brown and grey threaded her long, braided hair in equal measure, and the first lines of age showed at the corners of her lips and mouth. She had a heart-shaped face that must have been gorgeous in her youth, but now bore the beauty of a mature woman tempered by hard years. Given everything that happened in Khar’nath, just a short distance from her garden paradise, the years must have been hard indeed.
“I’m surprised to see you up here.” She spoke in a prim voice, one that reminded him of Graeme. “None of your kind ever bothers with this place.”
“My kind?” the Hunter growled, adding a hint of irritation to his gravelly voice.
“Blood Sentinels.” She rubbed her cheek with a gloved hand, which left a smudge of soil on her light-colored skin. “Too focused on death to care about life.”
The Hunter bared his teeth in a snarl. “That a problem?”
She shrugged. “Not to me. Just don’t get any ideas about picking the fruits from my garden. I’ve enough to worry about without adding one more pest to the lot.”
The Hunter struggled to conceal a grin at the woman’s brazenness. He stood close to twice her height, a Scorchslayer in his hand, yet she spoke to him as if dressing down one of her gardening drudges after a foolish mistake.
“And who’s to stop me if I do?” the Hunter asked, curious to see how she’d react to anyone threatening her precious garden. “What if I get it in my head to strip every fruit from every tree in this place? What’ll you do then?”
“Just you try it!” Her heart-shaped face creased into an angry scowl, and she shook her mud-covered trowel beneath his nose. “All the armor in the world won’t stop me from shoving this so far up your—”
“Rothia, darling!” A familiar voice, edged with a hint of fear, echoed behind the Hunter. Garnos hurried into view, a worried look on his face. “Forgive my wife, Ryken. She didn’t mean anything by it.”
“What do you mean--?” Rothia began, but Garnos cut her off with a glare.
“Darling,” he said in a pointed tone, “didn’t you mention something about wanting help gathering clippings from the Watcher’s Bloom? Now that the sun has set, it seems the perfect time to be doing just that.”
Rothia shot a glare at Garnos, at the Hunter, and a second helping of scorn for her husband. Muttering an insult that made the corners of the Hunter’s mouth twitch, she turned and stalked away into the garden.
“You.” The Hunter grabbed Garnos’ arm as the Elivasti Elder made to follow his wife. “Stay.”
Garnos blanched, but nodded. “Of course.”
“You know who I am?” the Hunter asked.
“O-Of course.” Garnos gave a little bow. “You’re Ryken, Detrarch of the Blood Sentinels, second in command to Primarch Dannus himself.”
Detrarch, eh? The Hunter chuckled inwardly. I definitely made the right choice of face.
“Seems a lot of people don’t like me.” The Hunter thrust his chin in the direction the diminutive woman had go
ne. “Your wife chief among them.”
Garnos’ face went paler. “Oh no, Detrarch, she’s just—”
“Come with me.” The Hunter decided it was time to end the charade and put the man out of his misery. He led Garnos to one side, to a section of the garden where the opia bushes grew thick enough to conceal him. “Look into my eyes.”
Garnos hesitated, then met his gaze. The Hunter gritted his teeth and exerted his will on his nose, eyes, and mouth to return them to their normal shape. Garnos let out a gasp and recoiled.
“Drayvin?” he hissed.
The Hunter nodded, then with effort restored his face to the brutish, scowling features of the man Ryken.
“What are you doing here?” Garnos’ eyes flashed. “And looking like that? How is that possible?”
“A gift from our ancestors,” the Hunter said. “Much as your ancestors passed to you the Irrsinnon.”
Garnos’ eyes narrowed, then went wide. “Is that why you’re here?” His gaze darted to the ripe purple growing on the bush beside them. “You want the opia for this boy of yours?”
The Hunter nodded. “It is the only way to keep the madness at bay.”
Deep lines creased the Elivasti’s forehead. “You know what will happen to him, do you not?”
“Are you talking about the side effects of the Expurgation?”
“What?” Garnos jerked backward as if struck. “Great ancestors, so it’s true? The Sage is still practicing that barbaric ritual?”
The Hunter frowned. He doesn’t know.
Garnos seemed not to notice his expression. “I never believed the rumors from Kara-ket, always wrote them off as nothing more than tales designed to terrify us into obedience.” He glanced up at the Hunter. “It should never have occurred!”
“So you don’t practice the Expurgation here?”
Garnos’ eyes flashed. “By the ancestors, definitely not! How anyone could submit to that antiquated practice is beyond inhuman.” His lip curled into a snarl. “So, of course our master would make full use of it.”
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