King of Chaos

by Dave Gross

  I nodded.

  "Lalizarzadah burned the libraries of Stormont Keep decades ago. You will find no records there. Now tell me, why have you come to lost Storasta?"

  I drew the Ray of Lymirin to give him my answer.

  When it was done, Aprian approached. "You can't trust the dead."

  "No," I agreed, yet some vague intuition told me that Yadranko had answered truthfully. Maybe the dying wight calculated that I would disbelieve him. I chose to believe that he craved one last taste of honor before oblivion. "Still, we shall save Stormont for last."

  "Captain, if I may speak freely."

  "Allowed."

  "In war, deceiving the enemy is not only honorable, it is compulsory."

  "But it is not always necessary," I said. "I had my fill of deception in Kyonin." He could not understand just how truly I spoke. While assigned to escort a pair of visitors and report to the elven queen, I had discovered that the greatest deceivers were not the foreigners but my own people, the elves.

  "You could have let Naia and Erastus take him from the flanks. You could have sent me in your stead."

  "I'll keep that in mind as an option."

  "Captain, we can't risk losing you on a point of honor."

  "Noted," I said. "Appreciated."

  Naia and Erastus returned to celebrate our morning prayer. Only the Mwangi-born Silvio abstained, taking his place as sentinel on the mound. The rest of us dismounted, drew our swords, and knelt before the crosspieces symbolizing Iomedae's radiance.

  I removed The Acts from the silver chains securing it beside the Ray of Lymirin. As much as the sword, the accounts of the Inheritor's ancient miracles were my weapon, for they assured me of the miracles made possible by valor, honor, and justice. We praised Iomedae for her miracles, both her ancient acts and the wonders that had preserved our lives these past weeks and months.

  My platoon had first visited the infected site where Yath once stood, searching for clues among the debris. Detritus we found in plenty—shattered spears, fragments of stone and wooden furnishings, a length of rusty chain with a single manacle still encircling a skeletal arm—but no books or scrolls.

  Stymied by the desolation of Yath, we moved on to the next site, and the next, constantly under assault by demons and the changing land. We fought roving bands of fiends and cultists. Only a few had coherent goals, such as capturing escaped slaves or harrying the crusaders who tested the shifting battle lines.

  For two weeks we sheltered in the remains of a razed longhouse, surrounded by three rival demon gangs unaware of our presence. While they quarreled, we rationed food and water. It was there I first began to know my troops.

  My fellow Chelaxians had joined the crusade for prosaic reasons. After Bolivar strangled the man who had raped his neighbor's daughter, her parents spent their savings to bribe the magistrate into letting him join the crusade in lieu of hard labor. Gemma was a wanted thief who went nowhere without her prized coil of spidersilk rope and half a dozen keen knives. The paladin Porfirio pledged himself to the Children of Westcrown until the inquisitors rooted out his identity. Despite Queen Galfrey's decree freeing slaves who reached Mendev, the half-elf Silvio took up his fallen master's hammer and fought on.

  The foreigners had more romantic stories.

  The Qadiran Naia swore five years' service to the crusade after a priest of Iomedae healed her mortal wound. Dragomir left Ustalav with a broken heart. Erastus defied the Widow Queen and fled Isger before her devils could capture him. The Thuvian Jelani joined to earn a cure for her wasting disease. The Andoren Eagle Knight Tollivel, cashiered for bribery, claimed his discharge was motivated by family vendetta. The dwarf Urno said he lost a bet.

  Only Aprian came from a noble house. A second son, the Taldan joined the Order of the Sunrise Sword before devoting himself to the crusade, where mischance led him to demonic possession. Despite the liberation of his soul at the fall of Yath, some anonymous faction at court prevented his advancement.

  Of all the crusaders, I came to trust Aprian the most. His competence aside, there was a calm about him that reassured me as much as it did the troops under his command. Thus, one night as we sat beside a feeble fire, I almost answered him when he inquired about my history with Ederras.

  "Pardon me, Captain," he said when he saw my hesitation. "It's none of my business."

  I nodded my thanks, intending to let the matter drop. Then, for some reason I could not understand—perhaps because Aprian did not press me—I added, "It wasn't his fault."

  Aprian said nothing.

  "It is possible I was too ..."

  Aprian shrugged. "Nobody's perfect."

  My jaw clenched at the hateful phrase. We must all strive for perfection. That is what I had believed ever since I had been accepted into the Order of Saint Lymirin. It was not an ideal I was ready to discard, no matter how many times I fell short of it.

  In the weeks that followed, Aprian did not mention the matter again.

  We rose from prayer and mounted our steeds. We entered Storasta through Trathen's Gate unchallenged. The city walls had fallen to rubble many decades earlier. Skeletons both fiendish and human protruded from the churned earth.

  In the center of the city crouched a great hollow, thick with greenery. According to the briefs, those trees could lift their roots and walk the land. The surrounding vines could creep along the ground to trip a man, or to drag him into the boughs and hang him.

  All this ambulatory vegetation served the great tree-lord known as Carrock, once a friend to druids and protector of the city. More than any other part of Storasta, Carrock's How resembled the lair of the Queen of Thorns, where I had faced the worst horrors of my life—at least before facing the Worldwound.

  Unlike the dragon queen's sanctuary against the roving demons of the Fierani Forest, Storasta had succumbed to the taint of the Worldwound, and so had Carrock. Our primary concern was to avoid him and his forces while searching the city for the Lexicon of Paradox.

  The intelligence we had gained at the hidden Fort Amerine days earlier suggested three sites most likely to house the Lexicon. Of these, I reserved Stormont Isle as the last to explore, not solely because of Yadranko's words, but more because of the fort commander's warning that a terrible demon made her lair within the fortress ruins. Her description of the fiend corroborated Yadranko's claims about his mistress Lalizarzadah. We would not dare rousing her wrath unless absolutely necessary.

  Of the two other likely locations of the Lexicon, I chose to search Riverkeep first. Leaving Erastus, Gemma, Urno, and Bastiel to guard our mounts, I led the others into the ruins of the fortress nestled between the eastern wall and the West Sellen River.

  In the upper floors we found little more than dust and the debris of a century's abandonment. The prints of long, naked feet led us through the servants' quarters and into a wine cellar. There we found fresher bones and trails of blood. We followed them to a passage poorly concealed behind an empty wine tun.

  Not ten feet into the cellars, Porfirio grunted in pain. Weeks earlier he had confided in me that he felt the presence of evil as a painful tightening in his guts. I extended my feelings outward. The butterflies of evil fluttered in my belly.

  Aprian thrust a thumb against his temple and nodded. He felt evil as a stabbing headache.

  The sensation grew stronger as we followed a damp passage to a descending stairway. Even the non-paladins began to sense the presence of vile things by the carrion stench.

  "Ghouls," said Porfirio. He shrugged the shield off his shoulder and secured it to his arm.

  "Worse," said Aprian. He hefted his own shield and glanced at me. "You won't be immune."

  While I had not grown up among my people, I still enjoyed the benefit of pure elven blood. I secured my shield to my arm. With a thought, I activated the image of Saint Lymirin on its face. The figure of a winged and eagle-headed woman radiated white light, but less than usual. There was far more than a stench of evil about this place.
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br />   We reached the lower basement and stepped calf-deep into icy black water. The river had seeped into the basement. Moss hung thick upon the walls, its mottled surface suggesting tapestries designed by insane artists.

  Across the room, more than a dozen pairs of round, white-green eyes reflected the light of my shield. I turned it slightly upward. The light revealed patches of obscene fungus hanging from the wall, but also reflected to show the creatures whose feast we had disturbed.

  The fell ghouls squatted beneath a waterfall spilling through ragged cracks in the keep's foundation. Translucent webbing had grown between the creatures' blanched and scaled fingers. Gore smeared their long yellow teeth as they pressed putrescent morsels into their maws from some communal corpse beneath the water. They were all hairless, most of them naked.

  The exception was their king. Upon his scrawny shoulders lay necklaces of river stones and gnawed bone strung with threads of gut. Unlike his minions, he stood at our arrival, shriveled genitals dangling between his bony thighs.

  A female clutched the leader, pressing her sagging breasts against his arm and staring at us. "Too much to eat all at once," she called to us. "You may leave an offering for Ploscaru. Three, perhaps. Yes, three, but not that little one." She pointed a bony finger at Urno.

  Ploscaru shook his misshapen head and held up a hand.

  "No, five!" said the female, speaking for him. "The rest of you may run, for all the good it will do."

  "A generous offer," I said. "I have one to make in return. Tell us where the books reside, and we will leave you here to gnaw these bones."

  Ploscaru unleashed an inhumanly long tongue, red and swollen. A spectral hand appeared in the air just before his own. Behind me, Silvio shouted a warning, too late.

  Black tentacles rose up to grasp our legs. Simultaneously, the watery ghouls rushed us.

  I slashed at the rubbery appendages binding my legs. Beside me, Aprian ignored the tentacles, holding his sword's crosspiece before his face and half-closing his eyes in devout reverie. The light of Iomedae spread from his prayerful heart to sear the nearest ghouls. The undead shrieked as their skin blistered and burned, but they did not withdraw.

  They fell upon Porfirio even as the paladin freed himself from the binding tentacles. He raised his sword, but two of the ghouls leaped upon his arm and dragged it down. Two more grasped his legs and lifted him up.

  "No!" cried Dragomir. He lunged forward to aid Porfirio, but the tentacles held him back.

  I started toward Porfirio, but a sixth sense caused me to pause and free Aprian first. It took only two strokes to sever the tendrils binding him, but then Ploscaru's bodiless hand reached me.

  It pressed against my neck, cold as ice. In an instant, it chilled my veins and numbed every nerve in my body. My grasp slackened, and I nearly dropped the Ray of Lymirin.

  The rest was a blur of rising panic.

  My crusaders strove to reach Porfirio, but the ghouls dragged him under the water while their fellows gave them the cover of their own bodies.

  Ploscaru's hand darted toward me again. I struck it out of the air with my sword. Across the cellar, the ghoul king cried out in pain. He cried out again as Jelani sent a ray of flame across the chamber. He drowned his screams and vanished beneath the water.

  Aprian moved forward, only to plunge into a watery pit. A pair of ghouls pulled him down. I dove after him, and Bolivar joined me. As the brawny Chelaxian got his hands under Aprian's arms, I channeled the radiance. Water boiled off the seared flesh of the ghouls. One of them floated to the surface, destroyed. Its nearest fellows fled toward the waterfall.

  We pursued, but Ploscaru conjured a veil of sickening colors. Just the sight of the wriggling hues forced a wave of nausea through my guts and staggered half my crusaders. Before I shook off the effect, no ghoul remained except the few we had destroyed.

  Dragomir plunged into the water beneath the falls, calling Porfirio's name before diving again and again into the black depths. We joined him in the search until at last we pulled him away, exhausted.

  We found the passage leading from the cellar to the river, but it was too deep to follow. I looked to Jelani, but she anticipated my question.

  "Wind and sand," she said. "I have no spell to let us breathe water."

  "Outside," I said. Dragomir balked. I shook his shoulders. "Quickly! They have taken him to the river."

  We rushed up the stairs. Even before we left the keep, we heard the sound of melee outside.

  Carrock's How had come to the Riverkeep—or so it first appeared.

  Vines writhed along the overgrown streets, and a pair of fiend-touched treefolk directed a mob of wolves, satyrs, nymphs, and dryads to attack our guards and steeds.

  Bastiel whinnied and reared protectively before the horses. Urno split the skull of a leaping wolf. The beast writhed in agony for an instant before its moss-stained fur thinned, its body convulsing as it transformed into the figure of a hairy man and lay still.

  A trio of satyrs charged. Erastus put an arrow in one's throat. Another sprouted two of Gemma's daggers from its shoulder and chest.

  We fought with all our might and courage. For every dryad or werewolf we felled, another seemed to take its place.

  When we briefly gained the advantage, I ordered the crusaders to mount. Once controlled, the horses were no longer a liability but an asset. With their greater mass, they pushed back the monsters that had overwhelmed us while we were on foot. Bastiel and those horses best trained for battle crushed the skulls of werewolves and satyrs under their hooves. We wet the overgrown streets of Storasta with the blood of demon and monster alike.

  And still they came.

  As we fought, I looked to Dragomir. Tears streaked his face as he turned his head to look back at the West Sellen. Like the rest of us, he must have realized all hope of recovering his comrade was lost.

  As if to spite our mourning and the battle before us, loathsome creatures emerged from the river. River ogres and grindylows crawled toward us, driven by the command of a sodden hag who then withdrew, cackling, into the rushing waters.

  Pinned between equally horrid foes, our choices narrowed to defending the keep, which we already knew to be indefensible, or to break free to the west.

  "Follow me, escort formation."

  They did not need me to tell them who we escorted. Jelani and the archers took the center. Erastus and Naia sheathed their swords in favor of their bows. Standing in their stirrups, they took turns shooting arrows into the mobs from the forest and the river.

  Deadly though they proved, the archers could not match the carnage of Jelani's flame. Her searing magic destroyed the creeping vines and sent the treefolk lurching to dip their flaming crowns into the river.

  We fought our way westward through the ruined streets of Storasta, pausing when we could, fleeing when we must. Aprian and I unleashed the radiance upon the shambling dead who dared close with us. Others, their faces dusted with yellow pollen, we could not turn with holy light. Instead we cut them down with blessed steel.

  In the shelter of the ruined buildings of the Rushwaters, we won respite for half an hour, but our foes sought only to encircle us as we caught our breaths. Rather than let them surround us, we pressed farther westward.

  Our steeds pushed through herds of plague aurochs milling along the muddy streets, but the brutes would not be shooed away. They turned on us, and we found ourselves fighting a third battle.

  To escape the infected beasts, we cut through the river mob and won another brief pause until the forest horde reached us once more. We fought until our limbs became numb, fleeing for another respite whenever the opportunity presented itself. There we healed the most grievous wounds and braced ourselves for the next onslaught. We fought until the sun began to hide its face from the carnage we left in our wake.

  As darkness approached, the Ray of Lymirin blazed its hatred for the wretched fiends who lumbered down from Stormont Isle while we continued to fend off werewolves,
satyrs, nymphs, and river ogres. Soon we fought not for the crusade, nor for our fallen comrades, but for survival.

  We needed a wall to put at our backs, a door to shut against the constant attacks from all directions.

  And then we saw the sign.

  Golden light blazed within the unfinished tower standing on the farthest spur of land beyond the Rushwaters. It could only be Nekrosof Tower, the second site we wished to explore. Six black pits surrounded the stark prominence, illuminated by both the last rays of the setting sun and the sudden golden radiance from within the cathedral.

  That steady warm light was not cast for Pharasma, the Lady of Graves, to whom the cathedral was dedicated before Storasta's fall. Her followers preferred the flicker of candles. It was a sign from Iomedae that we should seek shelter.

  "Follow me!"

  I raised the Ray of Lymirin as my banner and led the crusaders toward the open doors of the cathedral, ever watchful for pursuit.

  None of our foes followed. At first I thought they were wary of sanctified ground, but then I thought again about the pits surrounding the tower. They were not pools, nor were they fashioned for storage or defense. They appeared like gaps left by some great objects removed from the earth.

  Inside the cathedral, the light was so bright that it took our eyes a moment to adjust. When it did, we saw the golden altar to Iomedae, and it did not stand unguarded. Robed choirboys stood in ranks to one side.

  Behind the altar stood Saint Lymirin herself.

  A full head taller than a tall man, the eagle-headed woman raised her golden wings in a benediction as we entered. On her left, a blonde girl dressed in raiment of gold and white greeted us. "Welcome, crusaders. Here you shall find succor from the tainted land."

  On the saint's right, a girl with ginger hair said, "Welcome, champions of the glorious crusade. No evil shall follow you here."

  The saint lifted a talon to indicate an open area where pews once stood before the nave. "Shelter your beasts within these walls, and no harm shall befall them."

  I feared a trap, but then a sudden impulse made me cast away my doubt. "Come in," I told my troops.