by Heath Pfaff
Our immense speed allowed us to maneuver with often lethal precision, but one side effect of such speed was the amount of momentum one's body accrued. Once moving at full speed, it became very difficult to change the direction of motion effectively. Part of a Knights training was in dealing with that limitation of motion, but knowing how to work around the problem, and completely eliminating the problem, were not the same thing. The spears that snapped up in front of us as we desperately dove away from the arrows were a perfect defense against the Knights, because they forced us to slow our pace in order to avoid skewering ourselves.
I was forced to fall back, Silent at my side. Malice, however, charged forward, her sword twisting through the air with such precise skill and speed that the line of spears broke against her wrath. She seemed able to see a path through the enemy weapons that I had not even thought possible. The way cleared, I followed her into the maul of death.
Malice bypassed the six legged monstrosity entirely, aiming her blows for the yellow skinned enemies that followed it. Her deft attacks turned every weapon aside with seeming ease, and she followed each deflection with a lethal counter-point strike. The six legged beast reared up on its hind most legs, exposing four legs with heavy claws ready to slash. It moved far faster than those that had muzzled it, and it was only inches away from ripping Malice in half when I slammed into it with my full weight.
My sword pierced its body, though with far more resistance that I had anticipated upon first seeing its seemingly thin hide. I began to pull my blade free, but the creature spun in place, snapping around with such incredible speed that, had it not been muzzled, I surely would have taken a fatal wound. However, instead of biting into my neck, the leather muzzle struck me hard and threw me backwards, my sword ripping from my hand as I flew. I used my slowed perception of the world to right myself in the air before I reached the ground, and I came to land on my feet, sliding backwards on the stone floor, but poised to spring again.
The monster was focused on me now, its eyes tracking me with a responsiveness that said it could see me well enough to be a threat, despite my quickness. My sword still hung from its body, wedged through its flesh and bone like some grotesque ornament or trophy. I willed my claws sharp, and pushed forward with my legs, launching myself through the air in a deadly arc. Four sets of claws reacted almost immediately to my attack, slashing through the course of my path. I deflected three of them, and locked the fourth in a solid grip before my full weight had even arrived at its destination. I barreled into the monster. The momentum carried us head over heels across the floor, and through the line of battle that had been joined by both Malice and Silent.
I must be faster. I told myself, and I was. I rammed my clawed hand into the joint of one of the beast's many shoulders and tore with all my might. The creature's head lifted to howl in pain, a sound I could not hear through the void of distorted time, but the distraction was all I needed. I lashed out again and again, attacking the creature's dangerous arms with every blow, and though it tried to respond, I was moving too quickly for it to follow. Finally, the beast lay broken and bleeding upon the ground, and I let the world slip back into normal speed.
Behind me, the sounds of battle were finished. I grabbed my sword from the beast, and severed its head with one final blow. It had fought well, and did not deserve to suffer a long death. I turned back to Silent and Malice, who were wiping the blood from their weapons and replacing them in their scabbards. I did the same.
So many questions were going through my mind, but I knew we were not in a good place to stop and speak. I saw that Silent had taken a rather impressive wound to his upper torso, a deep gash stretching from below his right ribs to the top of his left shoulder that was seeping blood freely. I knew it was not a fatal wound, and that given our kind's ability to heal, he would be fine. Malice seemed unharmed, and I too had taken no more than slight scratches in the course of the battle.
"They fight like they know us." Malice said, as our group came back together and fell in behind Silent.
"They learn fast, and they've had the advantage of fighting others like us in the past." Silent replied.
"Others like us?" Malice asked.
Silent shook his head. "Not right now. First we get out of here. If we survive that, I'll give you what answers I have to offer. There is much you need to know, things that happened in the two years after you left the lands of men, and more that has happened in the four years you have spent in the dungeons of. . ."
"Four years?" I asked incredulously. I could hardly believe that so much time had passed. I mean, it had felt that long, longer even, but to have lost so much of my life. . .
A sense of despair fell over me. My daughter had lived more life without me, than with me. That was, of course, if my daughter still lived. I shook my head at that though. That was something I was not willing to accept.
"Four years." Silent said, but he offered no more. He simply led on through the oppressive murk of the castle.
The passageways changed from familiar to strange as we progressed, with Silent taking exceedingly more obscure routes through the giant stone structure. Though, for all the twists and turns, my internal senses told me that we were maintaining a consistent direction of travel.
Many times we passed dangerously close to other things moving within the walls of the castle, but we did not encounter the Hungering again on our way to Silent's secret escape route. I suspected that he traveled though lesser used hallways and passages to get us to our destination, but I knew far too little of the castle's layout to be certain.
Our final goal, it seemed, was a small storage closet sealed by a heavy wooden door. Silent approached the door and withdrew a key he had tucked away somewhere hidden. In a minute he had thrust the key into the lock and swung back the heavy door to reveal what appeared to be a normal closet full of linens and supplies for the houses cleaning staff, such as straw brushes, and buckets. It struck me as strange that such a door would have a proper key lock, but other than that, the small room seemed to be exactly what it appeared, a closet.
Silent sheathed his weapon and gestured for Malice and me to enter. We did, sheathing our weapons also, as between the two of us, there would barely be room for Silent himself to move about once we were all piled into the small space. Silent followed us in, pulling the door shut, and sealing us in the dark. I heard the sound of the lock being re-engaged, and then the relatively small Broken Sword was pushing himself between us to get toward the back of the closet. It was a difficult maneuver, but we managed to change places in the darkness, though Malice and I were pushed tightly together against the door. I didn't know how she felt about it, but I found myself reminded of how pleasant it could be to be close to my beautiful green-eyed friend. I decided it was probably best to keep that thought to myself just then.
There was an audible click from the wall in front of us, where Silent was doing something impossible to identify in the dark, and then the sound of stone grinding against stone filled our small chamber. It was not a loud sound, but louder than any we'd made in a long while, and that made me nervous. Attracting attention could get us killed. I found myself holding my breath in anticipation of an attack that did not come.
Silent moved, and suddenly Malice and I had space to separate. I felt her pull away from me, though she seemed to do so slowly, as if hesitant to end that moment of closeness. In any other circumstances, I might have reached out and pulled her back. I had been alone for a long time, and she was welcome company. Our circumstances, however, did not allow for such comforts.
Malice followed Silent through an opening in the wall at the back of the closet. I was close behind. After I stepped past the threshold of the stone entry way, I heard the sound of the stone sliding closed behind me. It was unnerving to have the door move of its own accord. We were cast into complete blackness.
The darkness around us was so pure that my eyes could not pick out a single piece of the scenery into which we'd stepped. Fa
intly I could see the outlines of Malice and Silent when they moved, a trick my rare eyes could manage whenever there was movement, but the rest of the world was swallowed by a depthless void. I probed the area with my feet and found that I was on a stairway leading downwards.
I saw Silent reach out a hand, the colored blur of the motion the only thing standing out clearly in my field of vision. His hand stopped on something, the wall I guessed, and a moment later light began to appear around us. There was a complex etching of symbols on the walls near us, and at the black-eyed warrior's touch they began glowing in a dull red color. The effect was eerie, but at least there was enough light for us to see by. With our Uliona eyes, very little light was necessary. I noted, bleakly that it seemed the runes were destined to provide the minimal lighting required.
Silent lead us downward. The stairway did not go far before leveling out into a straight corridor, also completely covered by the strange red runes. It had an arched ceiling, barely tall enough to clear my head, and the tunnel was not so wide that I could have stretched my arms out to my sides. We walked in single file down the dreary path for what felt like hours before we reached the end of the tunnel. It stopped at a small iron portcullis, barely large enough for a single man to fit through.
There was a crank for the gate on our side, and a release for the crank on the opposite side of the gate, but there was no crank on the opposite side. The gate had been designed to be usable only in one direction. The area beyond the gate, other than a few feet past the iron bars, was dark.
Silent spun the crank to raise gate until it locked into place, and the way forward was opened. We all walked through the metal archway and found ourselves in a small room with a blank stone wall facing us. Suddenly I felt claustrophobic. With the bars at my back, and the stone wall in front of me, I felt as though I were walking directly back into my prison cell. Silent hit the release on the gate, and the metal portcullis fell closed behind us, finalizing the illusion. However, Silent was within the apparent cage with Malice and me, and I doubted that it was the prison it appeared. Even with that knowledge, I could feel panic welling up within me.
Our black-eyed guide walked into the darkness in front of us, until he reached a point where, if I concentrated, I could just make out the lines of a wall. Indeed, the runes on the walls of the path down which we'd come were getting dimmer by the second, the darkness around us becoming more complete.
Silent's hands passed over the stone, pressing in different places, and I was reminded of my escape from the villa, after finding Kyeia, six years before. The wall, I realized, had a similar locking system to the secret passage in the villa. In fact, the two systems had probably been crafted by the same designer. Had it been Tyvel? He'd claimed to have been the designer of the villa. Was he also the designer of the secret passageway we had just used to escape the castle?
I had accumulated so many questions that I knew I would never be able to speak all of them. They would take too long to ask, and I doubted if any one person had all the answers. The most important question, and the one I intended to have from Silent as soon as it was feasible, was "Where is Kaylien?" It was really the only question that mattered anymore.
The wall before us groaned, and moved aside. Beyond it, the light was surprisingly bright. I squinted my eyes, and followed Silent through the new opening. My vision adjusted quickly, and I saw that we were exiting into a windowless room, lit by four torches with a great fire burning in a hearth. There was a table in the room, and supplies had been set out, but the room was otherwise deserted. Distantly, mostly muffled by the walls that surrounded me, I could hear screams, and the sounds of fighting. I wondered where we were. It wasn't far from where we'd started, I knew. The sounds of battle confirmed that.
"We're not safe yet, but we have a few moments. It's time we talked." Silent said.
I merely nodded my agreement. It was indeed time to talk.
"You should start, since you're obviously the one in the best position to explain what is happening." Malice said. Her voice held a rough edge. She did not trust Silent, and I couldn't blame her. I didn't trust him either. He had long been a friend, but the dynamic between us had changed, and it wasn't for the better.
"I was sent by the king to recover you both from the dungeon before the castle fell entirely to the Hungering. He believes you will be an important asset to us, and that we are better off keeping you alive." I could tell by the inflection in his voice, that Silent did not share the king's opinion. I could only guess as to why Silent seemed to hate me, but I was certain that my guess was close to the truth. When I had killed Brutal, I had created a chasm between myself and Lucidil's forces. Silent believed in Lucidil's cause absolutely.
"So you're doing the king's dirty work now? I'm surprised you can still play that line with how many times you've switched sides over the years. Certainly your usefulness as a spy is growing thin." I said, and though I phrased it harshly, I thought the question apt. Silent had been a spy for Lucidil for many years, but he had left his post with the king last I'd known. In doing so, he had given up his cover.
Silent smiled, and it wasn't an altogether pleasant expression. It was the smile of someone who was in on a secret that could possibly be damaging.
"There is no conflict in me working for both the king and Lucidil. In fact, there hasn't been a conflict in such a position since they started working together five years ago, and the problem has lessened even more since the old king was killed, and Lucidil was crowned in his place. King Lucidil, you see, remembers his friends . . . and his enemies." The small black-eyed warrior's words were aimed like arrows, and each new revelation struck with resounding force, until his last pointed phrase was nearly a physical blow.
I had not known that the king was working with Lucidil, and it came as an even greater shock that the king had died and Lucidil had taken over in his stead. What could have happened in the world to bring on such a profound change in politics? Lucidil and the king had been waging a brutal war, intent upon killing each other.
"How did this all happen?" I asked, trying not to sound as shocked as I was, but Silent just shook his head.
"After you betrayed us, killing one of Lucidil's most trusted men, and abandoning the cause you'd sworn to fight for, Lucidil was crushed. I had only recently returned to the camp myself, having nearly died in the frozen ocean before being washed ashore, badly injured. I went home, eager to report on the creatures that had attacked our boat, expecting to find you and Brutal at the camp."
Silent shot a look at me that was full of daggers. "When I heard that you had killed Brutal, I begged to be allowed to dispatch you myself, but Lucidil forbade it. He called our armies together, and we fell into a slump, trying to determine what our next course of action should be. At the time, we believed the events at sea were an isolated incident.
"Months passed, and we received word that two more of the dragon ships had been reported. In both cases port towns were wiped out entirely, and news only arrived by pure luck. In truth, once a team was sent to investigate, six such towns were found. Lucidil was worried, but he was too clever to let such a situation pass without taking advantage of it. He drafted a letter to the king and had it dispatched to the capital. It wasn't long before we received a reply. It seemed the king was also worried about the black ships.
"The king met with Lucidil, and together they formed an alliance to fend off the threat from the sea. They pooled resources, sharing research and forces. The king, in a last ditch effort to expand his elite fighting force, began the implementation of his Black Patch Brigade. You've no doubt come to know them quite well. They wear black cloaks, and are composed mostly of Fell Beast, though they have human volunteers stitched into them, allegedly keeping them in control. I believe some of them paid a visit to you. . ."
A growl of rage escaped me. "So it was the king who. . ." I began, but Silent stopped me.
"No, it wasn't the king. He didn't care about you one way or the other. Lucidil says
he underestimated your value. It was Lucidil himself who sent the Black Patch Brigade to your home." Silent said, a smile at the corners of his lips. "Of course, the Black Patches are strictly conditioned so that they can only follow the orders of the king, so we had to slightly break the minds of the ones we were using, so that they would serve us without the king's knowledge. We heard that they did the most amazing things to the woman you left guarding your daughter."
I would have struck him, perhaps even killed him, if I had not been so deeply hurt by the callous way which he delivered his message. Silent had once been my friend, but he now seemed only a twisted caricature of the person I'd known.
"Wisp was a good person." I said, rage and sorrow waging a war within me. From the corner of my eye, I could see Malice's form wound tightly within her cloak. If Silent wasn't careful, she would kill him before he even knew she was angry.
"Oh yes, I heard from some of the men that she was quite good. . ." Silent said, a snide laugh following his words.