by Sandell Wall
Sir Ignatius turned to face Saffrin and his champions. “Make ready to leave,” he said. “We march for the imperial palace at midday.”
Chapter 12
GAUNTLET RAISED, REMUS FACED down the enslaved Brax. Pinned in place by invisible bonds, Brax blinked slowly as he stared at Remus. The giant warrior breathed heavy, his massive torso rising and falling like a bellows. Sweat and splattered blood dripped down his face. Behind the pain and madness, awareness burned in his eyes. Brax was still in there. This close, Remus could see how Brax’s body had been ravaged. Someone had carved deep gouges in the man’s skin, drawing a complicated pattern of rune symbols. His entire chest and back was an angry mass of swollen flesh and barely healed scabs.
“Take it off, Brax,” Remus said. “Remove the circlet and you’re free. I don’t know how long I can hold you.”
Remus was sure Brax understood, but the big man seemed unable to act.
“Pricker,” Remus barked. “Move, damn you! Get that circlet off of his head.”
Pricker took a step forward, but before he reached Brax, a thunderous voice ripped through Remus’s body with almost physical force.
“IMPOSTER!”
Remus staggered. A maelstrom of voices exploded in his mind, each one more painful than the previous.
“Pretender!”
“Find him. Kill him.”
“Make him suffer. Make him bleed.”
Remus dropped to his knees, gripping his head in his hands. He could not get away from the voices. He sensed they were entering his mind through the gauntlet, but he was powerless to resist them. Brax’s eyes went wide. He took a step back. Pricker paused, his yellow eyes wide with alarm.
The voices reached a crescendo, and just as Remus felt like his head was going to explode, a new voice spoke.
“SILENCE!”
The power of the command rippled across Remus’s consciousness. His vision flickered black—he dropped to his hands in the dirt, fighting to not pass out. Brax turned and ran, racing out of the camp too quick for anyone to react.
Remus collapsed to the earth.
Some time later, gentle hands picked him up and returned him to the cot in the hut. These details were insignificant and seemed to happen at a great distance. His external senses were dulled as he turned every bit of his focus inward. Since the command for silence, no other voices had spoken in his mind. On the edge of his understanding, he sensed a vast and awesome entity. Formless, inescapable, the presence stretched like a wall of darkness on the horizon of his mind. It observed him. It waited.
There was nowhere to hide. Remus was stripped bare—no secret was safe. The dark presence knew him, and in that knowing, reduced him to nothing. He was a bug being inspected before its existence was casually obliterated. Instinctively, he tried to throw up barriers. He fled into memory.
Every vibrant image, every feeling of pain, joy, happiness, or sorrow became a brick in the wall he built to shield himself from the great lurking shadow. He grabbed onto the hazy memories of a vagabond childhood. Buried in the recesses of his mind were the sights and smells of a life on the streets.
Frantic, Remus tried to find an anchor, a place that he identified as home. In the end, he found himself at the smithy. Its walls felt like safety, the heat of the forge like comfort. Holmgrim would protect him. He sensed amusement. The watcher was delighted by his attempts to hide.
In growing panic Remus abandoned memory and instead summoned every dark and twisted fear he harbored in the depths of his soul. Misery and blackness swallowed him, manifesting itself as fear of failure—of not being strong enough. He lashed out, snarling, willing to hurt anyone that made him feel weak.
He gave himself to madness, seeking to lose himself, and hoping that on the other side he could put himself back together. Eradication was better than the relentless grip of the watcher’s omnipotent gaze. Remus suffered for an age. Time ceased to have meaning. For an instant that seemed to stretch forever, he was no longer Remus, and when he came back to himself, he was changed.
When his terrors were no longer enough to hold him, he surfaced from the void. As his being coalesced back into the sense of self that was called Remus, he knew that he was different. The emptiness had claimed some part of him, a ransom paid for his delving into the dark recesses of his soul. But he was stronger, and he was no longer afraid.
The lack of fear did not release him. Disembodied, Remus hung in the limbo of his mind. He was Remus, but he lacked purpose. There was no reason to wake, to continue the work of living. He could float here forever. And then, in his mind’s eye, the gauntlet appeared on his hand. It came unbidden, and its appearance surprised him. It whispered to him, made him promises of power and glory. It showed him visions both terrible and grand. He could conquer. He could rule.
The hunger returned. Remus could shatter himself on the rocks of insanity, even strip his being down to the fundamental elements, but he would never escape the hunger. An unquenchable fire burned in his soul. A fire that drove him, that defined him, but it did not have to consume him. For the first time in his life, Remus understood that he could master himself.
Through all of this, the watcher observed.
Stripped of his fear, and growing angry now, Remus turned to face the shadow. He sent a questing thought toward the presence—a challenge.
It laughed.
“You wriggle like a hooked worm,” the watcher said.
The voice was not as overpowering as when it first spoke, but it still plucked the breath from Remus’s lungs.
Remus tried to form a coherent statement with his thoughts. “Get. Out.”
Again, laughter.
“You can dismiss me anytime you like,” the watcher said. “Just take off the gauntlet. I shall even release my hold on you so that you may do so.”
Remus felt a pressure release in his mind and he could move again. Without hesitation he reached up to tear off the gauntlet. Before he removed it completely, the voice spoke again.
“Fear rules the weak,” the watcher said. “I sense greatness in you. If you would be the master of your own destiny, conquer your fear and wear the gauntlet. I can offer you power beyond your wildest dreams.”
Remus paused. He tried another thought. “What sort of fool do you think I am?”
“Not a fool. A disrupter. The force that sparks change. The Volgoth and Ethari were inconsequential until you arrived. Where before there was no resistance, your squad has harried my troops for months. Now you have even managed to kill one of my prefects. This intrigues me.”
“I don’t intend to stop at one. I’ll kill them all.”
“Do you think the pitiful, shambling thralls are the extent of my forces? My legions will sweep your empire away like flotsam upon the tide. Take heed of my words and this need not be your fate. I could use your cunning and strength. The Ethari enslaved you, yet you now stand with them. Is my offer so different?”
“What do you offer, and why would I trust you?”
“I released you, did I not? I could have made you my slave. You will have to decide for yourself to trust me or not, but know that I can give you the strength to realize all of your desires. I know you feel the power the gauntlet contains. I can teach you secrets you have never imagined.”
“You can teach me about runes?”
A chuckle reverberated through Remus’s mind. “If that is what you wish.”
“Prove it.”
“Beware who you test, little one. I could pluck the life from your chest like a flower from a field. Here is your proof: draw this rune in the dirt.”
A rune symbol flashed into Remus’s mind. Even when he dismissed it, it stayed ever ready, so that he could recall it to his vision at will. He dropped to the floor of the hut and scratched the rune into the earth.
“Now pass the stone in your gauntlet over it.”
Palm upward, Remus lowered his gauntleted hand to the ground. There was a flash of red light that lit the hut, and then the stone
faded back to a dim glow. Remus lifted his hand and looked down. The rune symbol had turned to solid metal. Astonished, he pried the thing out of the floor. As far as he could tell, it was the finest steel he had ever seen. Five or six of these could be melted down to forge a blade of the highest quality. And he had just pulled it from a few lines scratched in the dirt.
“A mere trifle,” the watcher said. “The knowledge I can give you will make you a god among men.”
“So you know about runes, but why teach me anything? What do you get out of it? Who are you?” Remus asked in his mind.
“The sparrow does not inquire of the storm. Think on my offer. When I ask for your answer, be ready. I do not give second chances.”
Marked as much by its absence as by its presence, the dark watcher departed.
Remus remained on his knees for a long time. His mind struggled to comprehend what had just happened. The implications were profound. He believed the dark entity was some sort of Drathani leader, perhaps their emperor. Whatever control this being exerted through the gauntlet meant that the wearer was its thrall, imprisoned just as the runebound were by the circlets. He should tear the piece of armor off and never touch it again, but he did not. Temptation tickled at his soul. While terrifying, the entity did not seem overtly evil. The offer of power and forbidden knowledge called to Remus like a fish enticed by the lure that spells its doom.
Lost in his thoughts, Remus did not notice Tethana enter the room until her strong hands were lifting him from the cold ground. His limbs were stiff and aching. Having been immobile for hours, he struggled to walk. He allowed her to help him. She struggled to move him to the cot and then gently laid him on his back. When he was settled, Tethana sat on the side of the bed. She leaned over him, peering into his eyes. He sensed she was searching for something. With a shy hand, she brushed the hair away from his face.
“You saved Goregash’s life,” she said. “He’ll be very weak for a time, but he’ll survive.”
Remus stared up into Tethana’s eyes. Something was different. Despite his growing affection for Tethana, he had never felt comfortable around her. He constantly evaluated himself through other people’s eyes and saw only his own shortcomings and failings. When he was around Tethana that burden increased tenfold. He imagined himself through her eyes and saw all the ways he did not measure up. But now that feeling of inadequacy was gone. In its place was…freedom. Looking into her eyes, Remus knew his answer to the dark watcher’s offer.
“You’re beautiful,” Remus said.
That’s not what I meant to say!
Tethana’s eyes widened. She blushed so red that she looked like the stone on Remus’s gauntlet.
“You’re delirious,” she said. “You’ve been under a lot of stress and you need rest.”
“No,” Remus said, deciding to embrace the boldness he felt. “I’m not. You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. All my life I’ve been driven by a fear of failure. I thought I was controlled by the cruel hand of fate, but now I understand that ‘fate’ was just an excuse I used to avoid admitting I had a choice. Now I see that I can make different choices. I can choose to see beauty. I can choose to…care for people. You were right. I’ve got a fire burning in me, but it doesn’t have to be a destroying fire.”
“That’s a new one. I’ve never been told that my beauty broke the chains of fate.”
Now it was Remus’s turn to blush. “That came out wrong. I mean, I think you're beautiful, but it’s more than that. You’ve watched over me when you didn’t have to. You’ve cared for me and my men, even when we were the enemy, when we were prisoners. There’s strength in you. Real, true, enduring strength. It’s the sort of strength Holmgrim has. It’s the sort of strength people need. I want that strength, even though I don’t know how to get it.”
“You really think that?” Tethana asked quietly.
“I do,” Remus said. “By the gods, I do.”
She kept a straight face, but a smile danced in her eyes. “You imperials and your talking. It’s a wonder you save any breath for war.”
The mention of war sobered Remus in an instant. “Do you trust me?”
Tethana sensed the change in his mood. “Yes,” she said after brief hesitation. She looked wary.
“Go to my men,” Remus said. “Have them give you a few of the rune circlets we’ve collected and bring them here as fast as you can.”
Tethana’s eyes dropped to the gauntlet on his arm. “You cannot play with these powers that you don’t understand. They will control you.”
“Please,” Remus said. “You have to trust me. There’s a threat far greater than the runebound coming, and we have to find a way to fight it. If it will make you feel better, bring Pikon and a squad of Ethari with you when you return, but I need that circlet.”
It was clear that she was unsure, but Tethana left anyway.
The power contained within the gauntlet was astonishing. Remus had discovered that while talking with Tethana he could maintain multiple, separate trains of thought. Every last bit of his growing mental ability was focused on trying to find a way to wrest control of the gauntlet from the dark watcher. Tethana had chased the temptation away: he would not side with the enemy, but the power of the vessel stone was too great to cast aside. They needed some sort of advantage to stand against the Drathani, and he was sure this was it. There was only one thing he could think to try, and it hinged on the rune circlets.
“I have reached the limits of my patience,” the voice of the watcher returned, interrupting Remus’s thoughts. “I offer you power beyond imagining. Do you have the courage to walk the path that so few dare to tread?”
Remus jerked. Unbidden and unexpected, the voice in his mind was still a shock. He had to stall, and hope Tethana returned in time. “If I accept your offer, what happens next? I’m in the midst of your enemies. There are those who won’t let me leave with the gauntlet.”
“That is a small thing. Do as I say and you will be delivered.”
“What would you have me do?”
“My prefects are not pleased with you. You slew their kin, and they cry out for your blood. Even now, they march every last thrall to surround your ruin of a town. But all is not as it should be. My prefects think themselves beyond my reach, and so they conspire against my will. It is time for them to learn the folly of disobedience. I will give you the means to create weapons that will allow you to fight them on equal footing. It is up to you to decide how to use them. Consider it a test. If you survive, we will speak again.”
“And if I refuse?”
“You cannot refuse. I know you feel the power contained within the gauntlet. If you were going to remove it, you would have already done so. It calls to you, ensnaring you as completely as if I were to control your every move.”
Tethana returned, and behind her Promost Lister and Pikon entered the hut. Their weapons were drawn. In her hand, Tethana held a glowing rune circlet. Remus did his best to ignore them, hoping the watcher would not sense what he planned. He held out his hand, beckoning for the circlet. Tethana stepped forward and placed the rune-inscribed metal band in his waiting palm.
“You’re right,” Remus said in his mind. “I can feel the power flowing into me, but it’s the power to defy you. I reject your offer.”
Remus slipped the rune circlet onto his head.
The world shifted. His consciousness tried to tear itself from his body. He dropped to his knees. He envisioned lines of red rune fire, the infernal web of some great and terrible arachnid, wrapping themselves around his soul. The harder he struggled, the tighter they became. But he was both spider and prey. He watched himself fight for freedom, and at the same time he was in control of the chains that bound him. Suspended somewhere in between slave and master, he could manipulate his actions with the gauntlet.
The watcher raged. “What is this? What have you done?”
Remus could feel the presence throwing itself against the barriers in his mind, but now he
could withstand the attacks. Just like with Brax, he was able to override the attempts to take control of his circlet with the gauntlet on his arm.
“You have chosen death and suffering,” the watcher snarled in his mind. “Let me show you what comes. Let me show you the future.”
On his hands and knees, Remus gasped as a vision was thrust into his mind. He looked through someone else’s eyes. He stood on a parapet of a black stone, looking out over a vast plain. Spread out before him, hundreds of thousands of soldiers stood in formation—they were all identical. The sun reflected off their flawless silver armor. A sea of gray faces were raised toward him. Remus raised his right arm in salute. At his signal, the soldiers raised their fists and shouted a war cry that shook the heavens. Great castles of obsidian and bone floated over the plain, drifting above the legions like black clouds. From his vantage point, Remus could see a line of towering trees on the far horizon, and he knew he was looking at the Barbarian Wilds.
The vision shifted, and now he was running across a grassy field. It looked familiar, and he recognized the farmland between Delgrath and the Wilds. Around him, a huge army of runebound surged, far more than he’d ever seen, and they were moving fast. He sensed that he was not alone, other prefects ran with him, sharing the load of controlling the horde. A target burned in his mind. A city. Delgrath.
When the vision was torn from him, tears were leaking down Remus’s face.
“Tell your people,” the watcher said. “Tell them that Savaroth comes, and all who do not bow the head and bend the knee will be ground under the boots of my legions. I will reclaim what is mine.”
Remus struggled to his feet. In front of him, Tethana looked at him with a mix of worry and fear. Promost Lister and Pikon were staring at him like they wanted to put him in chains and throw him back in a cage.
“I’m okay,” Remus said. His voice sounded weird to his own ears. Controlling himself with the gauntlet was going to take some getting used to. “It worked. I’m able to resist the will of the enemy. But we have no time. A runebound army is racing toward us as we speak. We have to warn the others and prepare to fight or flee.”