Web of Eyes

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “He was no innocent," the warlock said. “And you were interfering with our judgment."

  “And what was his crime?”

  "He was an infidel and a liar," he said. "That is what we do to liars and failures." His gaze flicked toward the man on his knees, who didn’t dare speak. Sweat now poured from his forehead to mix with the blood.

  "It appears you’ll have to crucify all of the Glass Kingdom then,” Torsten said. “If Iam doesn’t strike you down first.”

  “Iam’s eye is blind.”

  “I pity those who can’t feel his light.”

  He could tell the warlock wanted to reply, but he bit his lip instead. "The Grand Maester will handle you,” he growled. He spun, snapped his fingers, and he and the others departed, leaving Torsten alone again. The bleeding one screamed his innocence as they carried him away, fighting to break free. The moment they were around the corner, he went silent. Torsten didn’t have to think hard to imagine why.

  He wasted no time before picking up the shard of glaruium broken off his gauntlets. After so many years in the Shield, he knew a lockpick when he saw one. His arms, however, were too thick to fit through the bars to reach the lock even with his gauntlets off.

  Maybe the kid has a few skills after all.

  He tried to maneuver himself for a better angle. Still unable, he leaned back and placed his booted foot firmly against one of the bars. He thought maybe he couldn’t finesse his way out like that pestering thief, but this cage was intended to hold a dwarf, not a man anywhere near Torsten’s size. Now that his muscles weren’t completely exhausted from lack of sleep, falling from his horse, and fighting, nothing was going to keep him from getting out.

  He pulled his leg back and kicked. He repeated this until the bar began to bend out at the center, the space between them now just wide enough to fit his arm.

  He jiggered the lock as steady drum beats began reverberating throughout the cavern again. Torsten didn’t know what it meant, but it couldn’t be good. He wondered if Whitney had been caught trying to escape.

  It would serve him right; leaving a brother at arms behind.

  The drums intensified. Torsten continued to prod with the thin piece of metal, but he had no idea what he was doing. By the time he could feel the vibrations of the drums in his bones he still hadn’t gained any headway. His frustration mounting, he stood, lowered his shoulder and rammed into the gate as hard as he could. He backed up and went again harder this time.

  He could feel the metal starting to give when a procession of the masked cultists entered the hollow area and parted around the central node. A man emerged from the heart of them wearing an unmarked robe like the others but without a mask or hood. At first, Torsten thought it was the warlock again, but a braided, white beard fell below this man’s collar.

  This new stranger raised a fist, and the drumbeat stopped. He took a step toward Torsten. Torsten expected to be regarded with disgust, but instead, the old man appeared confused.

  “Torsten?” he said.

  A response got caught in Torsten’s throat as the man stepped into torchlight and his face was illuminated. Of all the people to show up in such a foul place, Uriah Davies was the last he’d expected to see. No one had heard from him in over a year, but Torsten was sure it was him. Especially once he saw the one-of-a-kind sword sheathed at his side. The blade, crafted from glaruium hewn from Mount Lister, bore a mighty lion’s head carved on the pommel.

  Hard lines creased his forehead and the corners of his eyes. Dark, heavy bags hung from his eyes like ripe fruits straining their branches. A web of scars spread from a barren patch in his beard up to his right eye and across the cheek. But that’s how he’d always looked. As a matter of fact, he didn’t look a day older than when Torsten had last seen him.

  “Uriah?” Torsten had done everything but bury his predecessor’s body, yet here he was, holed up in with blasphemers and heretics.

  “Yes, my friend. Though now they call me Grand Maester Ur.” His staid, wrinkled face settled into an emotionless stare.

  The memory played in Torsten’s mind: a broken-hearted Uriah Davies, haunted by what Redstar had done, intent on finding him no matter what the cost.

  “Open the door,” Uriah commanded. A cultist stepped forward, unlocking the cage Torsten had expended so much effort trying to bash through. The mangled bars labored to pass each other.

  Torsten backed away.

  “Old friend,” Uriah said. A soft smile spread across his face, but Torsten was unconvinced. “You have no reason to fear. I am sorry for how you have thus been treated.”

  Torsten inched toward his former compatriot until one of the masked cultists beckoned Torsten to step through. The moment he was free, Uriah wrapped him in a tight hug. Then he held him at arm’s length, smiled, and asked, “How long has it been?”

  “Too long,” Torsten said. “Have you been…” He looked around, “…here all this time?”

  “Are you hungry?” Uriah asked, ignoring the question.

  After a moment Torsten nodded. “Starved.”

  “Grand Maester,” the warlock interrupted, now masked. “His companion escaped. Shall we send anyone after him?”

  “Don’t waste our time with him,” Uriah said. “He’s worthless.” He turned back to Torsten. “Let us feast old friend.”

  Before he could ask any more questions, Torsten was led upstairs to a celebratory hall. Torsten had gone from being beaten and stuffed in a cage meant for dogs, to being treated like royalty. He couldn’t help but be skeptical, old friend or not.

  A long, bulky table made of bronze awaited them, covered in biscuits soaked in sausage grease, pickled herring and cod, boiled apricots and honeyed hams. The dessert table was just as grand with rich foods Torsten would have been impressed by, had he not lived in the Glass Castle and had the walls not been adorned with banners and idols to the Buried Goddess. Her unholy sigil was everywhere, a droplet of blood buried within a triangular shape similar to either a mountain or an arrowhead. On the far end of the room, two massive, eye-shaped apertures looked out over a ravine, as if they were within the empty head of a giant.

  "All this food…" Torsten said, averting his eyes from the devilry. Every attempt to ask Uriah what had happened was ignored, so he decided starting with small talk was the best course. "Where does it come from?"

  "Oh, this place and that," Uriah said, licking his fingers after trying a sugared dough ball. "The servants of the goddess deserve only the best."

  Torsten cocked his head. "The goddess?"

  "You don't need to play coy with me. I’m sure you know exactly where you are. Any Shieldsman would.”

  “And, I also know that we took an oath to destroy places like this. To save those who would stray from Iam’s blessed light.”

  “You have so much to learn, old friend.” He pulled out a chair for Torsten and sat in one beside it. “Sit. Eat. There is much to discuss.”

  Torsten eyed the finely crafted dwarven chair and then cast his gaze upon all the masked heretics patiently awaiting his next move, wondering which of them was a warlock serving Iam’s sworn enemy. He’d witnessed their profane magic, and now they wanted him to take his guard down. He sat with one leg on the chair, and his feet planted and ready to shoot him upright. Uriah had served Liam and the Glass Kingdom longer than Torsten had been alive, so he deserved an opportunity to explain himself.

  "Uriah, what are you doing here?" he asked, this time making eye contact so he wouldn’t be ignored.

  “I could ask you the same. A Wearer of White beyond the Yarrington walls is a rare sight indeed.”

  “Same reason you left. The Queen sent me to track her brother into the Webbed Woods and retrieve what he stole from Pi.”

  Uriah smirked, torchlight catching the shine of the scars on his cheek. “So, the Flower of Drav Cra finally ran out of grunts and once again sent her best to his doom.”

  “I’m sorry, Uriah,” Torsten said. “I never should have allowed
you to go. I told her it wasn’t wise after—”

  “Allowed?" Uriah spat, his features darkening, wrinkles between his eyes appearing. “I was your Wearer. It was my choice to go in the name of your queen."

  Torsten didn’t miss the fact that Uriah had referred to Oleander as Torsten’s queen and not his own.

  “If anything,” Uriah continued, “I am grateful. Had she never sent me, I’d be blind as the rest of you.”

  “Blind? How could one who once served under the vigilant eye of Iam now stand in halls wet with the blood of blasphemy and call anyone blind? You do know that one of those heathens no mere cultist, but a Drav Cra warlock, don’t you?”

  “I’ll explain everything Torsten, but please, eat. It would be a shame to have all this good food go to waste.”

  Torsten pushed the food away. “I will not defile my body with food sacrificed to her.”

  “Always cautious,” Uriah laughed, mouth full of bread. “The goddess does not require the blood of beasts. None of the food before you has been tainted as you might believe. Please, friend: eat.”

  Torsten hesitated still, but his growling stomach finally got the best of him. He tore into the buffet as if he'd not eaten in a fortnight. The meats were tender, the bread moist. How these people managed to cook such a decadent feast, Torsten couldn’t understand, but Uriah was a noble since birth and knew how food should taste. He was humble, brave, and selfless—Torsten had never known a better knight.

  "I never found Redstar after I left, but I saw evil in the Webbed Woods that no man should witness,” Uriah said. “My men were lost. I watched as their eyes were torn from their sockets and their bodies wrapped to be devoured by Bliss and her unholy spawn.”

  Uriah took a bite from a chicken leg while Torsten’s stomach lurched at the thought.

  “Their eyes…”

  “Gouged out,” he said, nonchalant. “She says its eternal damnation.”

  “She…Bliss?”

  “Aye. From that day forward, I knew such evil couldn’t be allowed to exist; feeding, growing, preparing to wipe us all away. I knew that the moment your queen stopped sending her food in the form of knights, that the woods would no longer contain them.”

  “No great spider has ever left those woods,” Torsten said, testing a bit of pudding with the tip of his tongue, “in legend or otherwise.”

  “So we all thought, and then I looked into the beast’s eyes and saw true evil. Ancient evil, Torsten; the likes of which Iam and his followers believe no longer exists. It must be destroyed.”

  “And why didn’t you return and tell us?”

  “Would you have returned had you failed to find Redstar? I knew Oleander wouldn’t listen to me and she was the only one who could. Too obsessed with the curse her brother put on Pi, she is.”

  Torsten leaned forward. “So, he was cursed?”

  Uriah stopped chewing for a moment. “That’s what I assume. She believed it was the orepul he stole, but I knew Redstar as a boy. There was no evil he wouldn’t turn to.”

  “We could make her see together if you’d come back. You left us alone. The King, Pi… me. For this? Hiding like a mad hermit amongst cultists and Drav Cra.”

  “None of you would have understood. I couldn’t risk being locked up for speaking what I saw. For I have learned that Redstar himself asked for her help in destroying Bliss. That is what started all this. The color crimson and a thousand eyes, my friend. I saw it, everywhere, in all our futures.”

  “What did you just say?”

  “Ah, so you’ve heard those words spoken before? I can see the fear in your eyes.”

  “Yes. King Pi said something like it before he fell ill.” He didn’t mention the vision he’d seen on the road or in the Glass Castle courtyard thanks to coming in contact with the cursed boy.

  “A warning, sent from our Lady Goddess, Nesilia. Though she is buried, she is not dead. But Bliss grows in power, Torsten. Emboldened by this new wave of attention. Waiting to feed on the flesh of all mortals if we do not strike her down as Redstar intended.”

  Torsten almost choked on his next bite. “So, you’re working with Redstar?”

  “Redstar hasn’t been seen since I left chasing him,” he said, terse. “He doesn’t matter any longer. Bliss is the true enemy, and she must be stopped lest all Pantego fall to her swarm.”

  “Redstar cursed Pi, you said it yourself! How could you turn from your own people to chase a mindless beast?”

  “Ah, you still don’t believe. Let me show you.” Uriah stood. Torsten didn't know why, but even after everything, he still trusted the man.

  They rose, and he guided Torsten back down into the depths of the fortress.

  "Do you all live here?" Torsten asked.

  "Not all, but most."

  "Do you live here?"

  Uriah’s gaze sunk to the floor. "I have no home anymore.”

  The passage opened into a large hall. On the far end sat what little was left of a stone-hewn throne once meant for a dwarven king. A smooth, painted wall was behind it, rising high up through a rift in the ceiling. Sunlight poured down through the slit, its soft glow cast along the top of the space like a crown.

  Uriah pointed to the smooth wall. Upon closer inspection, Torsten realized it was composed of numerous stone pieces all fitting together like a puzzle to form a mural depicting a mountain and other figures. An inscription wrapped the borders written in a language Torsten didn’t recognize. A few characters seemed similar to Drav Crava hieroglyphics Torsten had seen, only vastly more ancient.

  “What is this?” Torsten asked.

  "A painting from the first men, long before our time,” Uriah said.

  “I never took you for a collector of artifacts.”

  “Alas, it was not me. It must have taken years for Redstar to find all of the pieces.” He lay his hand upon the wall with reverence. “His followers led me here after he abandoned them and disappeared into the Webbed Woods. They were desperate for a new leader, you see. He forgot his purpose as both the Ruuhar dradinengor and the Arch Warlock of all Drav Cra, and unleashed something terrible.”

  “Arch Warlock. Listen to you, Uriah, you sound like one of them. They’re all the same.”

  “All the same? The Arch Warlock is chosen to speak for all of them, Torsten. He survived beneath the dirt for three days in their Earthmoot. They trusted him to destroy Nesilia’s enemy and preserve this world, and instead, he allowed vengeance to cloud his mind after his very sister denied him. He decided that if Oleander wouldn’t help him, he’d bring the orepul containing a piece of a royal soul and offer it as a gift to Bliss so that she may help him show his sister how wrong she was to deny him.”

  “Once a traitor. Always a traitor.”

  Torsten reached out to trace one of the lines of the mountain in the center of the mural with his finger. He knew which one it was meant to depict, although Mount Lister’s tip was presently a flat plain. Flames etched all around it were filled with soldiers and instruments of war. Nesilia, the Buried Goddess, lay in the center of it all. She was locked in a losing battle with a deity legend referred to as the One Who Remained.

  Torsten had seen similar imagery before, only here the beauty of Nesilia was inscribed in detail, strikingly gorgeous. The churches of Iam usually painted her as the grotesque witch she was. Here, her wild, luscious black hair cascaded to the ground and even amidst the fierceness of her losing fight there was a softness to her features.

  The One Who Remained was equally striking, depicted here as a female when Torsten had mostly seen her as male. Her armor was spiked along her spine and limbs almost like an insect’s carapace. She gripped the spear piercing Nesilia’s chest on its way to cracking the top of Mount Lister.

  A fracture coruscated down from the tip of the spear into the heart of the mountain where the Eye of Iam was etched in black. One of Nesilia’s arms was being pulled down through the fissure.

  Torsten stepped back and examined the mural in its enti
rety. In typical portrayals of the God Feud, Iam brought an end to the battle from above, not below. The god’s battled over who held the right to reign over the realm of Pantego, ravaging the land in their selfishness. Nesilia and the one who buried her beneath the great mountain were the last remaining, while Iam, in his wisdom, stayed out of the pointless feud. Instead, he protected the mortals over which the gods watched, and when the fighting stopped, he banished the weakened victor from the world. The One Who Remained, remained no more, and Iam’s light could finally shine upon Pantego unhindered.

  "The language around the border is ancient,” Uriah said. “Predating the Glass Kingdom, even the dwarves. Redstar had translated the fable it tells before he vanished. Would you like to hear it?”

  “Spare me,” Torsten said.

  Uriah sighed. “Essentially, it tells that Nesilia will return when the blood of the enemy, the One Who Remained, is spilt. Redstar and the Drav Cra have lost hundreds to the cause before he chose vengeance instead, your queen too in sending our people there to find him. All I know for sure is Nesilia is the key to destroying this great evil."

  “You believe that this… spider—”

  “Queen Bliss,” Uriah interrupted.

  “Fine… you believe she is the One Who Remained?” Torsten asked.

  “I know it. And she is not just a queen—she too is a goddess. Yes, deformed, a remnant of her former self, but a goddess nonetheless. It was a punishment by Iam. He mutated and mutilated her for piercing the heart of the one he loved.”

  Torsten wished he wasn’t so concerned or he would have laughed. “You have truly lost it, Uriah. It was Nesilia who began the feud by her selfishness. The one who slew her was banished from this realm by Iam, and both of them deserve what they got. Iam does not punish out of lust or love. He protects us, guides us.”

  “My friend, you must listen to me. Nesilia is not who you’ve been made to believe. She is not the enemy.” Uriah laid his hand upon Torsten’s shoulder, but it was promptly shaken off.

  “I pity you, Uriah. You have turned your back on Iam, your people, and it’s clear there is no changing that. These are carvings etched by warlocks and heretics, like Redstar, who want nothing more than to see us burn. They lie, they sin, they sacrifice their own—I will not be party to it.”