The Orglots rose to their feet and gazed fearfully at the image. Even they looked small standing compared to the tower.
“Ara,” Oscar said, “show me what would happen if a completed Tower of Dusk attacked our mountain.”
“Yes, Oscar.”
The resulting spectacle was horrifying. Oscar had seen it once already, while preparing for the presentation in his cell. It was just as frightening the second time around.
Vile tendrils of red energy seeped out of holes in the outer walls. They rose and gathered to form a spinning ball at the tower’s tip, a swollen red-orange globe of pure energy that burned like the sun’s evil, disfigured twin.
A wreath of black smoke exploded outward as the tower launched the burning ball into the sky. The display shifted to follow its trajectory across the sea toward the shores of Lightonia. Seconds later, it crashed like a flaming red asteroid into the mountains. The smoke and glare from the blast filled the cavern. The Orglots were ready for the shock. They cowered but none dove away. Afterwards, all that could be seen of the mountains was a smoldering crater.
“The weapon won’t only threaten us little beasts,” Oscar said, standing with his back to the smoking ruins, feeling distinctly like a professor in front of a class of stupefied students. “Every Orglot who stands against this murderous magician will become his slave—or die in the explosions. But death would be a blessing compared to this.”
Oscar spoke his next words into the hologram. “Show me the slave.”
Ara obeyed. The ruins collapsed in a burst of particles that immediately reformed, like a whirlwind taking solid shape, into yet another disturbing image. This time, the representation was of a malnourished Orglot in chains and a collar. He was so skinny you could see his ribs straining against his splotchy skin. The one slave became many. As the view zoomed out, they could see hundreds of these pitiful creatures trudging forward in chains on what looked like a battlefield, with a Tower of Dusk burning against a fiery sky choked with black smoke.
One of the slaves turned to face them. He, like all the others, had pink scars slashed across his face, sealing his eyehole. They were blind. All of them. Blind and starving.
“Nooo!” Ruk howled, shaking his fist at the image.
The other warriors wailed and growled and swung their daggers and clubs over their heads. Oscar stepped back in fright.
“Ara, switch back to a peaceful mountain.”
The image changed to one of lush greenery and untouched mountain peaks. This served to soften the roars and wails, but only slightly. The Orglots were thirsty for battle.
“Speaker, go back to the destroyed homeland,” Ruk ordered him.
Oscar took a shivering breath and spoke the command. The visual changed back to the smoking crater. Ruk turned his back on it, then raised one arm to silence his warriors.
“No black-magic destroyer will ever make a slave of me,” Ruk promised, “or any of my brothers and sisters.”
Ukril and his fellow warriors lifted their weapons and barked several times in unison. Oscar chilled at the sound of it. He still couldn’t believe this was happening. His plan had seemed so crazy before, but now it felt as though his arrival at the Caves of Krilkan Haut was meant to happen.
Ruk roared the rest of his speech. “We will destroy this vile weapon in honor of our ancestors and in protection of our future sons and daughters. Then we will reclaim our land in the light!”
His warriors cheered. Oscar pictured them marching across the shores of Valestaryn, headed toward the coliseum. The thought brought up an interesting puzzle.
“How will we get there?” he said.
The Orglots were too excited to hear him. He used his mental voice to reach Ruk.
How will we cross the seas to the tower, Master?
Smiling fiercely, Ruk winked his great eye at Oscar.
That, Speaker, is where your voice will become our greatest ally.
CHAPTER 11
C oscoros reached the entrance to the Emperor’s personal lab and paused. Basher came to a sudden halt behind him. They both took a moment to breathe deeply.
“Are you ready?” Coscoros said.
The question was more to prepare himself than Basher, who only sighed impatiently. There was a rustling sound as the Berserker swung the enormous sack he carried from one shoulder over to the other. Sensing his partner-in-crime’s impatience, Coscoros raised a hand to knock on the door, and stopped when he heard a woman’s voice inside.
“Yes, my lord?”
The fuzzy flatness of the voice indicated Leticia Arronyl was not actually in the room but at the other end of a holographic transmitter.
“How is he?” came Kovax’s muffled voice.
“As diligent as can be expected. Construction on the tower has been going smoothly, many thanks to his efforts. Though I can think of braver men—women, too.”
“Keep an eye on him. Report anything unusual. Xanthus has a weak will, and I can’t afford any missteps.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Coscoros envisioned Leticia’s scarred but still beautiful face as she spoke the words. A chill ran through his body and settled in his feathers. He might never see her again.
A click sounded, followed by the descending hum of a machine powering down. The moment had arrived. Coscoros took a deep breath and knocked three times.
A magical force swept the doors open. Coscoros stood ready to face the emperor, his mind scrolling past various excuses he had conjured—and obsessively practiced—in anticipation of this meeting. His failure at Crystal Bark was worse than his failure to kidnap Milo and Emma Banks in the human realm, or his subsequent failure to cause the orphans any actual harm at the Battle of the Ranch. During those two battles, at least, he had been part of a team and could not be the one solely to blame. But Crystal Bark had been his operation alone, his chance to redeem himself.
Now he was royally screwed.
“Knight-Marshal,” Kovax said, lowering the hand he had used to cast open the doors. “Your timing is impeccable. I have just heard the news of your disastrous failure.”
Coscoros stepped into the lab, his mouth suddenly dry. Basher stomped in after him.
The emperor looked more tired than usual. He stood by a large floating orb filled with a purplish color that made Coscoros think of a dark, ocean planet.
“My lord, I take full ownership of my failure at Crystal Bark.”
Kovax approached, his bony white face grimacing inside the hood of his cloak. He held a charged blood crystal in one hand. Then, with both hands, one atop the other, he made a strangling motion. The crystal brightened.
Coscoros had no chance to react. An invisible force took hold of his throat and spine, lifting him. His windpipe closed completely, and he could barely gag, let alone breathe. It tightened until Coscoros was sure he would never taste air again.
“You wingless bastard of a dark one,” Kovax said. “I should have known you weren’t the man for the job.”
Coscoros went to pry the force off his neck, but there was nothing solid to grab. “Explain…” he rasped, using all the strength he could muster. The world began to darken around him. He didn’t want to die in this room, around all these cursed machines.
“You will explain nothing. Emmanuel and Pris are alive. Your mission was to assassinate them. That means kill them. Not wish them a merry farewell.”
Kovax made a pushing motion. Coscoros flew back into the doors, which banged shut a moment before he crashed into them. The invisible grip pinned him against the surface so his boots hung a foot above the ground. Everything was going dark. He couldn’t breathe. He had seconds left before the end.
Basher stood nearby, watching with a stupefied look on his face. Was the big, stupid bastard enjoying this?
“My lord,” Basher said finally, “Coscoros has not failed as badly as you think. Look what he brought you.”
Basher tossed over the bundle he had dragged in with him. Kovax studied it with a mixtu
re of irritation and curiosity, his hands still strangling the air in front of him.
“What is it? Explain quickly.”
“I beg you to release the Knight-Marshal first. Then I shall explain, my lord.”
Kovax pulled his lips back in a vile sneer as he gave Coscoros a look most people reserved for cockroaches. He pulled his hands apart, stretching the fingers. Coscoros slid to the ground and immediately gave in to a coughing fit. His throat burned as if someone had stuck a hot poker down his gullet.
“Thank you, my lord,” Basher said with a grateful bow.
“Get on with it.”
Basher bent to unwrap the bundle, and the chamber filled with the smells of blood and grass. Coscoros considered them the most delicious smells he had ever experienced—a moment ago, he’d been sure he’d never smell anything again.
“My soul be damned,” Kovax said.
He leaned forward, hesitantly and with a frown of disgust, to better study the corpse. It was the enormous, blood-soaked body of a very fat man in a robe. The lower half of the dead man’s face was missing, his jaw torn off by other, more vicious jaws.
“The low mage Velgar,” Basher said, stepping back. “Coscoros caught him fleeing the castle. He interrogated the man—”
“He interrogated my top mage?” The emperor sounded furious. “A Prime Brother of the Low Order? And then what—he killed him?”
The emperor’s dark eyes bored into Coscoros like ice picks, shattering his courage. His artificial wings felt heavier than lead.
“I’ll let him speak for himself,” Basher said.
Coscoros was still trying to recover his breath.
Kovax snapped at him. “Stand up straight when you address your emperor.”
Coscoros leapt to attention, which made him cough miserably.
“Apologies, my lord,” Coscoros said when he found his voice. “I caught Velgar leaving this very room last night. When I came in, I noticed you were unresponsive but alive and undisturbed. I was suspicious, so I followed the mage.”
Kovax frowned even more deeply at the “unresponsive” part. He seemed to resent the implication that a man of his stature could be caught in such a vulnerable state.
Coscoros continued, frantic. “I—I thought if he was up to no good, I could—”
“You could appease me,” Kovax said. “Make up for your failure at Crystal Bark. So, get on with it. Why is this man dead?”
Coscoros cleared his throat. He had worked so hard to memorize the lie, practiced a hundred times so he could say it convincingly. Now, his mouth could only fumble with the words. “I saw him, the mage, Velgar, get on a levathon. He—he then made his way into the foothills, my lord. I know because I flew after him. I thought if the low mage had stolen something and was meeting a buyer, I could arrest them both. Instead, I—I saw him reach a carriage packed with his belongings, and I saw red light when he took something from his coin purse. Crystals. Stolen from your chambers. That was when I called Basher to assist me.”
The emperor’s eyes widened. He spun suddenly and bolted across the room. Basher and Coscoros eyed each other nervously as the man released a howl of rage, then sprinted back to face them.
“It’s empty. The box is empty. The bloodstones—tell me you have them. Tell me you had Elki tear this man to shreds, and that you found the crystals and have them right now!”
“Basher summoned his brothers,” Coscoros said. “The low mage directed his attack toward the Elki, killing many of them and draining the stones. But he was no match for us.” Coscoros stepped forward, the emperor stiffening at his approach, his already murderous scowl deepening.
“I’ve returned the stones,” Coscoros said. “A sign of my loyalty.”
He dug the coin purse out of his pants pocket and held it out.
Basher added, “He could have sold them, my lord, and made a fortune.”
Kovax snatched the purse out of his hands and turned his back to them, shoulders hunched around his neck as he dug out the stones. There was no red light. The energy had gone elsewhere.
“Curse the cowardly gods,” Kovax said. “What a blasted idiot. He released all of it. He needed only a fraction of this much power.”
He spun around, face pink with rage. “Take me to where it happened. We go now. I must examine the scene myself. A blight on the realm. A cursed blight! I can’t trust anyone in my own kingdom anymore.”
He flung a hand at the nearest machine. The looming, black structure toppled backward and slammed into the wall, sparks flying from its innards.
“My lord,” Basher said meekly.
There was another bang, this time coming from Basher himself, as the emperor flung him across the room as easily as if he had tossed a handful of pebbles.
Thankfully, he left Coscoros untouched.
Maybe this would work after all.
AN HOUR LATER, as the sun slipped above the horizon only to hide behind a sheet of dense, gray clouds, Coscoros, Basher, and Kovax stood at the edge of a clearing in the forest. The air was pungent with the smells of blood and hellfire. Smoke stained the sky overhead. The surrounding trees had been torched, and the charred corpses of Elki lay scattered around a carriage that had been destroyed. The four levathons that had been selected to fly the carriage out—or make it appear that way—were now little more than blackened skeletons covered in the ash of their own disintegrated feathers.
Iolus was brilliant. The scene looked every bit as real as if an actual battle had taken place. Even Kovax was convinced.
“Clean this up,” the emperor said finally, turning away from the wreckage, “and make sure not a word of this gets out to anyone.” With a flick of his left hand, an Elki corpse, still giving off smoke, rose off the ground and spun gently in the air. “Unless you want to meet a similar fate. Understand me?”
Coscoros and Basher saluted and said, “Yes, my lord.”
“As for you, Coscoros,” Kovax said, approaching him. As he neared, the Elki corpse floated dangerously close to Coscoros, its hideous eyes sealed shut by fire, its teeth crooked and black. “I’ll let you live, though the gods know that wasn’t my intention when you stepped into my lab. However, you are Knight-Marshal no more. Not even a lieutenant. No, no, no—tonight, you cross the seas to D’Aliara. Before first light tomorrow, you will report to General Hadras in Salsiviar, where you, my featherless failure of a dark one, will spend every single day of the rest of your worthless life training new recruits under his command. Your fighting days are over.”
He clenched his hand into a fist. The dead Elki dissolved into a dark cloud and flew against Coscoros, coating him with its oily residue and burnt-meat smell.
Coscoros tried not to sputter as he spoke. “You are too generous, my lord,
“Maybe.” Kovax peered at him, suspicious yet. “Maybe I am.”
As he turned once more to examine the wreckage, Basher flashed Coscoros a relieved look. They had succeeded tonight, all thanks to Iolus. There was no telling what would happen next—what kind of massive power shift had yet to come. Coscoros knew only that there would be one—and he couldn’t wait.
“Things are going to change in my kingdom,” Kovax said as he exploded the corpses and wreckage into fine powder. “Yes, things are definitely going to change. No more Mr. Nice-Mage.”
Back at the castle, Coscoros bathed several times, but he still couldn’t wash off the smell of burnt Elki. He dressed, packed a few bags, and stopped by Iolus’s chambers on his way to the stables.
The sorcerer was lounging on his couch among floating, half-melted candles and scattered articles of women’s underclothing. He was munching on an apple. The skin of the fruit was a radiant scarlet compared to the dull yellow of his fingernails. Thanks to his blood-ether addiction, webs of pink veins stood out on various parts of his body, one rimming his left eye and giving him a monstrous appearance.
“So…” the sorcerer said. “How did it go?”
Coscoros explained what had happened.
<
br /> “Battle flight instructor, eh? Sounds boring.”
“And yet, I owe you my life. My wings are yours.”
Iolus bit into the apple with a loud crunch. “Save it. If it ever gets too hot in here, I may tear off one of your wings and use it as a fan.”
Coscoros winced.
Iolus continued, chewing loudly. “Until then, good luck teaching featherbrains how to hold a crossbow and fly at the same time. If I need you, I’ll call on you.”
Coscoros nodded, allowing his eyes to briefly scan the room. He hadn’t wanted to offend the sorcerer by staring at the man’s personal space, but Iolus seemed more concerned with his snack than anything Coscoros was doing.
Iolus’s private quarters were a mess, with toppled nectarwine goblets and half-empty plates of stale food strewn everywhere. Beyond an open door, Coscoros could see a bed in the next room. Two pairs of dainty feet hung off the edge at odd angles, as if the two women resting on the twisted sheets were either dead or drunk.
A realization struck him. This was all a part of his ruse, and it had been the entire time. Iolus was more adept at survival than Coscoros had given him credit for. The women, the booze, the parties—it was all a carefully constructed illusion, like the smoking wreckage back in the forest.
Kovax was not the most powerful man in the empire. Iolus was.
“If it means anything,” Coscoros said, turning toward the door, shouldering his pack, “thank you.”
“Hey, Cos,” Iolus said.
Coscoros froze, fingertips grazing the door handle. What now? With Iolus, you never knew what was coming next.
He turned. “Yes, my lord?”
He flinched at the sight of Iolus’s yellow eyes, mere inches away and level with his own. The sorcerer had risen off the couch without making a sound and was close enough for Coscoros to smell the apple on his breath.
“Keep a low profile,” the sorcerer said. “When I’m ready, you’ll hear from me. Then the fun will begin. I’ll give you the sweet revenge you’ve been craving for months. I’ll give you the blood of the one who took your wings.”
Savant & Feral (Digital Boxed Set): Books 1 and 2 of the Epic Luminether Fantasy Series Page 87