Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3)

by Bartholomew Lander

  Annika scoffed. “Oh, is that so? Is it just a coincidence your Plan B happens to coincide with your new, well-stated goal of destroying the spider cult?” Her hand went to her side, hovering just over her holster.

  “If you doubt us,” Silt said, “then you are free to work on your own. If you will not utilize Nexara, then the Yellow Dawn holds the only remaining keys. Unless you no longer see the danger of the Dawn, the fact remains that the final Helixweaver must be destroyed and the remnants of his cabal erased. With that fact fresh in your minds, consider what incentive there is to lie about their capabilities.”

  Mark nodded slowly. “Very well.”

  Annika turned to him, startled. “Mark, are you sure about this?”

  “What other choice is there?” He forced himself to smirk at her.

  She eyed him cautiously. Her lips betrayed her concern, but also a hint of pride. At last, she grabbed her shoulder and groaned. “Fine. But if you want me to go with you, you have to give me something in return.”

  Mark frowned at her. “Name it.”

  “I’m tired of wasting my effort on these semi-spiders of yours. It feels like whenever we’re in spitting distance of those damned moving goalposts, somebody fucks up and throws it all away. So what I want you from you is a promise.” A weak, almost maternal smile came upon her lips. “No more little bitch Mark Warren. No more second-guessing. No more moral boundaries. No more holding back. No matter how high the cost, promise me that you’ll save that stupid girl, by any means necessary. Promise me you’ll end it this time.”

  The implication swelled and rose like a mirage from the burning asphalt. Mark felt the weight of the request on his heart, but he was too far gone to even think of declining. “Very well. I promise.”

  Chapter 36

  All Hope Abandon Ye

  Beyond the valley of ashen bone, whose terminus they scaled with little further difficulty, Arthr and Spinneretta once again found themselves far above the blinding fog. From the mountain pass, the acidic-smelling sea of death below seemed somehow tranquil, innocuous. With their escape, the dead would once again have peace.

  The pass continued as it had before, weaving between the sheer cliffs on either side. The path through the mountains would have been contiguous had it not been for that great gorge—and it most likely had been, before the war that saw the original Vant’therax off to extinction. What could have created such an epic divide in the geography, however, was a question Spinneretta did not linger upon long.

  Another two hours passed as they trudged on. The uneven footpath wore upon their fatigued bodies with a quiet relentlessness. At last, just as Spinneretta was about to recommend a break to rest their raw feet, the path opened just ahead. The walls slumped abruptly toward the ground, and a wide slope grew from the hewn pass. The sight of the sky-scraping peaks vanished, along with the stone rises on either side. And when they at last crested that final hill, they both stopped dead in their tracks, gasps falling silently from their lips.

  Below them unfolded a sweeping plain that dove away from the hills and mountains. Miles away, upon a shoreline eaten into jagged cliffs by an endless turquoise sea, a monolithic structure stood. It rose from the mists like a primordial god. Built from black and red stone, the fortress utterly dwarfed all concepts of scale Spinneretta had ever known. The towering bastions and crumbling terraces were carved deep with shadows cast by the sinking star. From near the base of the citadel, a number of mammoth ramparts extended in all directions. Constructed of the same extraterrestrial black-red stone, the ramparts stretched to all corners of the plane and the mountains surrounding them. They resembled—perhaps intentionally—the spokes of a gigantic spider web. Some sections of those weather-beaten walls had crumbled to dust in aeons past, leaving fields of titanic rubble where their majesty once reigned.

  Between those megalithic walls, of which Spinneretta could make out seven in all, deep shadows obscured nearly all the land. Of those hazy parts yet visited by traces of the star’s dim light, there were no hard details—only the suggestion of harsh geometry growing from the barren wastes. But as her eyes focused on those regions enclosed by the unfathomable walls of omen, her brain began to process the minute differences in hue and shading into tangible shapes. Her breath escaped her once more as the amazing scale of the broken kingdom became apparent.

  Concentric rings, barely identifiable as anything more than random visual noise, raced across the land like ripples in an ocean of madness. Minarets, spires, faceted trapezohedrons grew from the fog and dust. Tangled, interlocking cuboids and crisscrossing grids hugged the earth. Towering, asymmetrical things that, despite their tiny visual magnitude, must have been hundreds of feet tall at the very least. Rubble. Ghost-ridden ruins resembling little more than flaking paint in a monochrome mosaic.

  “Jesus Christ, what is that?” Arthr asked, breaking her trance.

  Staring down at the crumbling city in the distance, it was hard for Spinneretta to maintain her calm. Her heart raced, and her lungs drank in a huge gulp of the foul air. “There it is. The heart of the spider kingdom. Th’ai-ma, the great fortress city of the Yellow King.”

  Home. At last.

  Startled, she scrubbed the thought from her mind. And yet she couldn’t deny that voice’s sentiment. Beneath the awe of the majestic city, there was a familiarity. Indeed, it felt like coming home after a long journey. Those buildings and temples hidden beneath the shrouds of darkness cast by the ramparts—were they not meant for her to rest her weary head? A chill crept along her shoulders and neck. For some reason, that thought was altogether too alluring.

  Arthr was speechless. He stared at her, and then back at the imposing monolith on the shore below. “The Yellow King. You said he’s the cause of all of this, right?”

  Another deep breath. She focused on keeping her muscles rigid to hide her nervousness. “Like it or not, we can’t escape our birthright. We are the children of the spider. We have to take responsibility. I have to, in any case.” She started down the slope, with a greater sense of purpose than ever before. Her feet hurt, but she no longer cared. Only five hundred feet below, one of the spoke-walls ended in a ruined bastion tucked up against the hillside. “We’ll climb that,” she said, pointing one leg toward the structure. “We can get up onto the walls from there, and then it should be a straight path.”

  Pangs of recollection, ghosts of memories. The structure’s demise left the slope around it littered with bloodstone bricks and strange metal ingots that looked to be made of concentrated rust. Had time wrought such devastation, or had war? The voice in her head did not answer her, though she was certain it knew.

  “Jesus God,” Arthr muttered. “This is nothing at all like I thought it would be. It’s huge!”

  Spinneretta ignored him. She was distracted by the faded image of the fortress as it appeared against the teal of the sea. That sea. It was a beautiful, dark, shimmering teal that stretched all the way to the black horizon. The mists clinging to its shore seemed to froth and ebb with the pounding of silent waves. Her heart felt at ease when she looked at it. Comfortable. But comfort was a luxury they had no time for.

  Her steps quickened. The thundering pulse from the citadel slammed into her like the beating of a colossal and silent drum. Beyond these time-worn plains, in the last remnants of his kingdom, he awaited her. The blood burned hot in her veins. Her muscles ached, but the knowledge that the end was at last within reach kept her moving as they neared the half-toppled wreck on the hillside.

  And high above, where no clouds dared intrude upon the sacred capital, the strands of the Web bowed and glowed in the pitch-black sky, welcoming her home to Th’ai-ma.

  Mark trudged through the sands of the alluvial fan, Annika only a few steps behind him. The sun had set, and up ahead the peaks of the Calicos rose against the deep purple sky, a row of jagged teeth hungry for further victims. Where the bonfires of the previous night had blazed, now only darkness remained. It was a foreboding dark, th
e likes of which he had not seen in many years.

  Far behind him, the Vant’therax followed in invisible shadows rolling across the dunes. Had their yellow robes been sighted at a distance the entire hive would have buzzed to frenzied life, for sentries surely hid along the ridges and peaks. In the light of Y’rokkrem’s waning gibbous, a sunken crater dug into the dunes at the mountain’s foot gradually appeared. Crude standing torches, down to mere embers, lined the path to the mountain’s face, where a black rectangle—a doorway—stood alone. Mark felt his heart pounding in his temples and forehead; each beat was a painful reminder of the situation’s urgency. He hastened his steps, eyes focusing on the black portal.

  “It’s been too long,” Annika said, her voice breathy. “Last time you denied me the chance to fight alongside you. Not again. I’ve been waiting so damn long for an encore of Dougary Row.”

  Mark said nothing. The ground beneath his feet began to slip downward. The temptation overpowered him; magic filled his eyes, and his vision flashed for a moment to the inside of that door. The room illuminated in infravision. Three hunched figures before a large, stonewrought gate. He extinguished the spell and was rewarded by a needling behind his eye. “Three guards,” he said over his shoulder. “Armed with what look like stone spears.”

  “Stone spears? Seriously?”

  “If this cult is made up of the remnants of Repton’s original congregation and their descendants, that means they have lived the last decades as troglodytes. They are practically a tribal civilization.”

  “Which explains why they’re so eager to bunk in earth, I suppose.” She chuckled. “God, this is going to be easy.”

  As they neared the worn entrance to the mountainside fortress, Mark’s steps slowed. He began to creep forward, conscious of every noise stirring over the sagebrush. The groan of the Vant’therax swimming through the night vanished between the winds. A soft metallic click came from behind as Annika chambered her revolver with fresh bullets. His hands were sweating; the musk of damp earth and ash flowed from the doorway. He stopped completely when he was ten feet from the stone threshold. There was only unmoving darkness beyond.

  “Any chance they’re not hostile?” Annika asked.

  “I’d put the odds at zero.”

  “Then let’s get the show started.” She snapped the cylinder shut, pulled back the hammer, and took aim at the black beyond the door. “Wake up, motherfuckers!”

  A cry of thunder shattered the quiet. Though he expected the shot, Mark still jumped. The drone of the wind morphed into an infernal ringing. A moment later, the inside of the door stirred. Three thin and lanky men emerged, clad in rough rags and straps of pale leather. Their backs were hunched, their near-translucent skin stretched tight over protruding ribs and joints. Between their meatless fingers, each clutched a stone-tipped spear fastened onto uneven wooden shafts.

  “Who comes?” spoke one, eying the two of them with his spear outstretched.

  Mark stared down the point of the nearest weapon. They were just obstacles between him and the Helixweaver. It was hard to contain his desire to obliterate the three of them right there.

  “Let us inside,” Annika demanded, her revolver trained upon the tallest of the creatures.

  The men—the Websworn—appeared not to understand her, for their milky eyes just stared back. They seemed particularly interested in her revolver, a device they may have never seen before. “Are you of the Dawn?” snarled the short one in the back. “Or have you come to bring war against Urn-ma Nemo?”

  “War.” Annika pulled the hammer into position again. “Now step aside, or become numbers in a future textbook.”

  Looks of hungry fury came upon the faces of the Websworn. “A-hai, Urn-ma Nemo!” they cried as one. The three charged forward, brandishing their spears.

  Annika swept her revolver and fired thrice. Two of the Websworn recoiled, dropping their spears and clutching their chests. The last stumbled over one of his allies, flailing his spear as he lost his balance.

  Mark dashed forward. Magic permeated his muscles, and he threw a single punch that glided across the last Websworn’s jaw and shattered it. The last of the three went down in a heap, leaving a ringing pain in Mark’s knuckles and forehead.

  Annika sauntered over to the final Websworn, who now lay writhing on the ground. “This is what they guard their sanctuary with? I feel so insulted.” She dropped her booted foot into his chest, and he answered with a groan. “Wanna finish off the other two while I have a little chat with Glassjaw here?”

  Mark stared down at the trembling bodies on the ground. The sand beneath them was beginning to turn red, and one of them clutched handfuls of loose soil in desperation. He felt his mouth go dry, tongue tingling. “These people are young.”

  Annika shifted her boot, drawing a cry of pain from the third Websworn. “Yeah. And?”

  He shook his head, a hollow feeling coming over him. “This isn’t their fault. They had no choice in the matter.”

  She gave him a sidelong look. “Don’t tell me you’re feeling guilty now of all times.”

  “Annika, they were born into this. Into the cult’s beliefs and dogma. They’ve never known anything else.”

  “Not unlike yourself.”

  The thought paused his remorse.

  “Where would the clan of Arbordale be with that attitude?” she asked. “Surely you’re not suggesting there’s any reason to let these creatures live beyond their usefulness to us.”

  “I know that there isn’t,” Mark said, unable to quiet the strain of disgust that screamed through him as he looked upon the helpless, wounded animals. “I know we can’t. But all of a sudden it doesn’t feel right.”

  One of the glazed-eyed Websworn gaped up at him, hand groping blindly toward where his spear had fallen. “A-hai, Ur—Urn-ma Nemo.”

  “Look into their eyes, Mark. There’s no reason in there. Just hunger and blind faith. You will never convince them to lay down their arms. As you said, this devotion is all they’ve ever known. You of all people should understand: mercy comes at too high a price.”

  She was right. The loathsome things squirming on the ground were nothing if not enemies. He pulled power into his hand, trying to ignore the pain drilling into his skull. “May you be reborn under more favorable circumstances.” He swiped his hand through the air, and a single blade of magic tore through their necks. Blood gushing from their severed throats, the two Websworn gave a final pair of spasms before their thrashing died along with them.

  Annika let out a low sigh as she watched. “Now, as for you.” She turned back to the Websworn trapped beneath her boot. “Unless you want to meet the same fate as your friends, you should tell us something interesting.”

  The Websworn squirmed, groaning in pain or fear. Blood flooded his mouth, where teeth leaned and tilted from gaping holes in his gums.

  Annika leaned downward. “Hmm? Can’t hear you. Try spitting first.”

  He turned his head to the side and coughed. Blood and broken teeth splattered to the twilight-painted sand. “A, a-hai. Urn-ma Nemo.”

  She growled and aimed her gun at his head. “Try again.” She pulled back the hammer with a soft click.

  Mark started, eyes drawn to the dark of the doorway. He recalled the shape of the gate, and the strange mechanisms that surrounded it upon the walls. “Annika, wait.”

  “Hmm? This better be good.”

  “There’s some kind of sealed stone gate inside. If you kill him, then we may not be able to get through.” Not without too much magic use, anyway.

  She blinked at him. “Ahh. Good call. Alright, listen up you little shit. How do we get through the door? I’ll give you to the count of two to start talking.”

  Instead of answering, the Websworn just turned his head to the side and spat another mouthful of blood.

  Mark walked up beside Annika. “If he’s not talking, then allow me a chance.”

  She shrugged and stepped off the man’s chest.


  Mark filled in the gap at once and crouched down to look straight into his enemy’s face. His hands snaked out and took hold of the man’s neck. “Now,” he said, “show me what you know.”

  Mark extended the thought tendrils from his own eyes into the Websworn’s. Everything went white, and the strands of knowledge unfurled before him. Glowing, interwoven fabrics of experience and thoughts. He saw their own approach through the dark of the night. Further back. He saw the sealing of the gate, gear mechanisms turning rapidly as the heavy barrier fell with a clang. Those mechanisms were the key. He followed the strand to the opening and discovered the method of raising the gate. The answer was numeric, and it was all in base-eight: third on the left to twenty-one, then twelve, thirty-one in order. The right side mirrored the first with the digits swapped. The last two were aligned to the sums of the opposite side.

  The spell flickered out, and Mark let the Websworn’s head hit the ground again. He grabbed his own head, cringing and wobbling as he stood back up.

  “Well?” Annika said. “Figure it out?”

  He nodded. “It’s complicated. It’s a numeric puzzle with the four gears on either side, like a bank vault. You’ve a good memory.”

  “Photographic.”

  “I need you to remember some numbers before I lose them.”

  “Let ‘em fly.”

  He closed his eyes. “Two, twenty-one. Three, twelve. Four, thirty-one. Seven, forty-two. Six—” He was cut off by a creaking from within the doorway. Stone groaning against stone, metal grinding at its ancient housing. Peering into its depths, he found the gate rising of its own accord.

  Annika whistled a low note. “Voice-activated stone doorways? Fancy.”

  Yellow fabric rustled within the chamber. The gate rattled, banging against its frame as it completed its retraction. “Come,” Silt bellowed from the doorway. “We haven’t time for sitting around.”