by K. J. Coble
Barzen blinked and glanced at the comely woman at his side, old enough to either be his daughter or his mistress. “Zerron...the wizard, right?”
“That’s right.” Jayce bowed. “If I might trouble you, what’s happening here? We’ve had no news.”
“You were with the Expeditionary Force, weren’t you?” Barzen asked. He was a portly man with triple-chins that quivered as his excitement built. He clenched Jayce’s arm in fingers shivering with anxiety. “Is the army returning?”
“No,” Jayce replied, “we are just the three of us. The rest have had no orders to return.”
“No orders...” Barzen again glanced at his companion, brows furrowed in confusion. “By the Gods, why not?”
Jayce shook his head, frustration mounting. “What’s happened here, sir?”
“You haven’t...” Barzen cut himself off and seemed to gather his wits. “Candolum is under siege by a force of goblinoids out of the south. Stories are spreading; they say there are thousands of them, a horde!”
“What?” Jayce shot Danelle and Illah a look of shock.
“That’s right! Strategos Vennitius has ridden out with the Legion to face them, but what can they do against that, without the Expeditionary Force?” He gripped Jayce’s arm harder. “Why has no one recalled them?”
Jayce unlatched his arm from the other man, flexing his fingers to restore the circulation. “I don’t know, Master Barzen, but I assure you, I am going to find out.”
“Forget that!” Barzen blurted. “Get out with the rest of us! We seek passage to Threshold, if we can find it, or at least as far north as Andenburgh.”
“Good luck to you, then,” Jayce replied coldly, wondered what safety the man sought, if he could not find it behind the walls of the largest city in the Valley.
Barzen and his woman hustled to the fore of the mob trying to force passage aboard the Flitter. Jayce led his trio down the pier to the shore, only stopping once they were clear of the scene. He turned to Illah and Danelle.
“What now?” Illah asked.
“We need better news than the bleating of panicked hucksters,” Jayce said. “I will seek an audience at the Imperial Palace.”
“And I will come with you,” Illah replied.
“What of your Order?” Jayce asked. “Should you not seek them now?”
Illah shrugged. “If any have filtered in, they would have gone to the Palace, as well. It’s as good a place to start as any.”
“Very well.”
“What if they won’t see us?” Danelle asked.
Jayce smiled without humor. “Between two wizards and a Yntuil, I’m fairly certain we can see to it that someone will talk to us.”
LONADIEL STRAINED TO breathe in air gone caustic with the ash and heat of burning Candolum. He leaned against the breached gateway of the Temple of Reniburn’s inner wall and watched as a party of Blood-drinker hobgoblins swung a crude battering ram fashioned from a wrecked building’s support beam. The head of the ram crashed against the temple’s double-doors, the stout oaken planks shivering to the impact, but not giving.
Groon Blood-drinker and a block of his heavily-armed kin waited further back, ready to charge when they did. Goblin archers lined the top of the inner wall, shortbows held taught, eyeing the windows above the entrance for movement. Defenders showed themselves rarely now, dissuaded by the inevitable storms of archery that had already claimed many of their number.
Lonadiel felt a familiar tug within his mind and turned. Satayebeb waited near her wyvern pet, stroking the beast’s shoulder as it feasted upon a gory mass Lonadiel didn’t let his eyes linger upon for too long. He left the gateway and strode towards his mistress. Smoke from the blazing town blackened the sky above, a sharp contrast to the backdrop of inferno below that lit Satayebeb’s features in demonic glare. Tightness lingered about her eyes, though, showed in brief quivers of tensed jaw, as if she strained against a terrible weight.
“My Mistress?” Lonadiel whispered as he came to stand before her.
“What is taking them so damned long?” she snarled.
“It won’t be much longer,” Lonadiel answered. The battering ram thundered against the doors again and he offered her a shrug. “Those trapped within have offered to parlay, asking only for their lives and for the sanctity of the temple.”
Satayebeb cackled, a hard, brittle sound that further betrayed her tension. “No. I want this place desecrated! I want the blood of its clerics painted onto the walls with warnings to any who would raise this hovel as a shrine to false saints again!”
Lonadiel bowed. “That is why I offered them no reply.”
“Kill them all, my love,” Satayebeb said, her voice trembling. “And bring this hateful structure down to the foundations. Its very existence—” she shuddered “—repulses me.”
Lonadiel noticed Brathug Foulstench scurrying towards them, the goblin chieftain slowing as he neared the wyvern. That the monster was sated to its full on the victims of the sack did not apparently occur to him, the bow-legged little brute holding back and waiting. Lonadiel waved him forward.
“What is it?” Satayebeb asked without turning.
“Your Unholiness,” the goblin said as he joined them and dropped to all fours, “I have word from our lookouts.”
“Speak.” Satayebeb’s gaze remained on the hobgoblin storming parties.
Foulstench rose back to his feet. “By signal fires my scouts to the north report signs of human riders on the highway. They are still a half a day out, but will have seen the smoke from the town.”
“Legion outriders,” Lonadiel said. “They would have been dispatched as soon as word reached Eredynn of our approach on Candolum. They will be no more than a day ahead of the Legion main body.”
“Which gives us until sundown to have this rabble on the road again to meet them,” Satayebeb said. She met Lonadiel’s gaze. “Can it be done?”
Lonadiel nodded without hesitation, knowing to do so might stoke the ire of the demon-goddess. “The town is played-out. Those that broke through first have stripped its rather meager resources already to the bone.” He glanced at smoldering wreckage, thought he heard a girl screaming and forced himself to ignore it. “Most of the army hasn’t even made it into the walls, yet. They’ll be sore at missing out on the plunder and hungry to get moving on to more.”
“Not before we finish here,” Satayebeb growled, nodding towards the temple. “I’ll not leave Old Reniburn grinning at my back.”
As if in response to her words, the air crackled with the sound of shattering timbers.
Lonadiel turned and jogged to the gateway in time to see the twin doors of the temple buckle. The hobgoblins gave the ram another swung and they toppled inward. The battering team dropped their instrument to grip swords only to flop backwards, scythed down by a volley of crossbow quarrels from within. Defenders reappeared at the windows above to drop stones and furniture. Goblin shortbows twanged, speckling the spires above in a swarm of arrows. At the same time, Groon Blood-drinker roared an order and his formation of shock troopers shuddered forward at a steady trot, front ranks with shields to the fore, those behind with shields raised against the storm from above.
Lonadiel unsheathed his blade, for a moment considering joining the assault. But the Blood-drinkers were already disappearing into the entryway, swords and tulwars flashing in the gloom. The scream of women packed into the temple erupted, a wild, harsh racket of cornered beasts that quickly drowned out the ring of steel and the thud of falling defenders. Lonadiel returned his weapon to its place and turned to trudge back to his mistress.
He had enough blood on his hands; he felt no need to stain them further.
TO ILLAH’S SURPRISE, they had no trouble gaining an audience in the Palace, though how much of that was due to Jayce’s magic—the occasional murmurs under his breath, coupled with hidden hand gestures when he confronted administrators—she didn’t want to speculate. The real trouble, she saw quickly, was not getting a
n audience; it was getting anything worthwhile out of it.
Vennitius’ lackey, Kodror Aigann, met them in his superior’s office, leaned back in a plush chair and idly fingering a quill while his eyes wandered across stacks of documents. Initially, he’d been a storm of outrage that they’d been admitted, but had settled into a petulant disinterest like a child forced to endure the lectures of an adult he didn’t respect.
“We have word from the streets that Candolum is threatened,” Jayce said.
“Then from those same trustworthy sources you must also have heard that the Strategos rode forth this morning with the balance of the Legion to deal with it,” Aigann replied.
“How many?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business, wizard,” Aigann said with a triumphant little smile.
Illah glanced at Jayce, saw the man’s fists clench at his sides. “People are talking about thousands of goblins, Procurator,” Jayce said.
Aigann waved it off. “There has been a lot of crazy talk.”
“Well, someone is taking it seriously.” Jayce pointed to an open window. “You’ve got half the city clamoring to evacuate. Perhaps an Imperial Proclamation should have been issued to settle peoples’ nerves.”
“I thank a good citizen for his concern, Master Zerron, but if rumor-mongers want to waste their gold on an ill-conceived flight, that is hardly my problem.”
“What about preparations?” Jayce asked, his voice taking on an edge Illah had only heard in a crisis. “Shouldn’t someone be making contingency plans? Shouldn’t someone be organizing the City Watch?”
“The last time I checked, you were a back-country magician, and I was left in charge here!” Aigann shot up in his seat with voice high and eyes wild. “The responsibility lies with me! Me!”
“Look...” Jayce’s hands came open and Illah noticed the flutter of his fingers, noticed Danelle’s sudden tension as she picked up on it, too. “With due respect, allow me to rephrase things.”
“No, we’re done talking!” Aigann barked and gestured at Jayce’s opened palms. “And don’t think to try your tricks on me, wizard! I know that’s how you got past those slack-jawed brutes Vennitius insists on employing here.” He clenched a charm dangling from a necklace, his fist shaking. “I have some protection against your dark arts.”
Feeling the confrontation on the edge of a real eruption, Illah stepped to Jayce’s side with a hand on his arm to steady him, saying, “Procurator, I have a question.”
“If you seek to ‘advise’ this office, as well, Lady Illah,” Aigann said with a sneer, “I’ll call in the guards.”
“A loyal ally to the Empire would know not do that,” Illah replied calmly. As with any kind of battle, only calm could triumph, she knew. “I wanted to inquire after any wayward members of my Order who might have filtered in since we’ve been gone. There were none when last I tread these halls; I had hoped one or two might have turned up since.”
Aigann leaned back into his chair, casting a venomous glance Jayce’s way before shaking his head. “No, there have been no Yntuil here.” Some of his agitation passed, he offered a shrug. “I am sorry.”
Illah nodded without animation, felt something die inside her with a pang like a lone water drop in water-starved chasm. Then I am truly alone, she thought. Hope withered to bitter ashes in her mouth. She felt drawn away, as she often had, these last few weeks, saw herself standing on an open, fire-swept plane, staring across the waste at one other.
Lonadiel...
“Someone must contact the Expeditionary Force,” Jayce started up again. “Gods, man, they have no idea what transpires here!”
“No!” Aigann shrieked, upright and stiff like a cornered snake. “I have no orders to do that! Don’t you think the Strategos would have recalled them, himself, if he felt there was a need?”
“There are men on the other side of the lake with family here,” Jayce persisted, his voice trembling with the effort to keep it under control. “Don’t you think they have a right to know?”
“I don’t think you have the right to tell me anything!” Aigann hollered. “What’s more, if you think to contact any of them with your little spells, I will find out and have you imprisoned. Do you understand me, Zerron?”
“Jayce...” Illah reached for Jayce’s hand.
“No, it’s all right.” Jayce swept his hand away in bitterness Illah knew wasn’t directed at her. “We’re done here.”
“You’re damned right you are,” Aigann shouted as they turned to go. “Get out!”
No words passed between the three as they swept out of the Palace. Outside, striding down the Ereydnn Way to the city square with the sky crimsoning to dusk above, Illah noted windows being boarded up and mothers collecting children from the streets as a wave of quiet settled over Eredynn. A hush deeper than the coming of night should have brought.
“Damned fool,” Jayce muttered, coming to a stop at last to glare back uphill at the spires of the Palace.
“What are we going to do now?” Danelle asked.
“We’re going to check in at the Loving Imp, see how things are going there, see if we can get any more news,” Jayce replied. “Then I’m going to contact Vohl.” He chuckled without humor. “I hadn’t thought he would get to use his ‘gift’ so soon.”
“Do you think that’s wise, Master?” Danelle asked, clasping his forearm.
“I don’t think our good Procurator, despite his bluster, has any real way to know.” Jayce shook his head. “Someone has to warn Vohl, and through him Dodso and the others.” He sighed, then met Illah’s gaze. “So...is it on to Whisper Pass with you then, my lady?”
Illah chortled. “And leave you in all this? No. I stay with you.”
“As much as I’d like having you,” Jayce said with a sad smile, “this really isn’t your affair any longer.”
Illah pressed her lips into a tight line, thoughts of Lonadiel whirling behind the tense mask of her face. “I think it is. In fact, the longer I have had to piece things together, the more I think the darkness behind the barbarian uprising didn’t die with their destruction.” And more, maybe other things didn’t...
Jayce stared at her, eyes crinkling in thought. Finally, “I fear you’re right.”
“What then?”
“We head south and see for ourselves.”
Danelle looked back and forth between them. “So, we’re not staying the night?”
Jayce glanced at the girl then looked to the dirt beneath his feet. “You are.”
“What?” Danelle speared Illah with a look of undisguised hate. “Master, I must go with you. You will need me!”
“I will need you here to greet Vohl and the others when they return and prepare them.”
“No!” She screamed. “I won’t let you leave me again!” She grabbed his sleeve, tugging as her tone went desperate. “Master, please, listen to me. It’s a trap. I can feel it. She doesn’t understand!”
Again, Danelle’s eyes flared over Illah and she saw finally, with a cold stab of recognition, what fired the rage in the girl’s heart. Oh...you poor thing...it is you who doesn’t understand. Lamely, Illah said, “Danelle, he’s right. You must listen.”
“I don’t have to listen to anything you have to say!” the apprentice wailed. “You don’t know. Everything was fine until you—”
“Enough!” Jayce barked with a loss of control that rattled even Illah, made her ashamed to be somehow a part of its detonation. He gathered enough control to rasp, “You will do as I say, pupil.”
Danelle’s lower lip quivered as her eyes glassed over. She whirled away, speckles of tears glimmering until lost in the dust as she scurried downhill towards the Loving Imp tavern.
“Ah...damn it,” Jayce said with a sigh, watching her flee.
“Let her go,” Illah said, placing her hand on his shoulder. “She will come around, once she’s had time.”
Jayce glanced at her, his silvery eyes stilling to a bleak near-grey. “T
ime is something I fear we’re running out of.”
VOHL...
“What?” Vohl looked up from his mug of ale at Muddle.
They sat before a fire at the edge of the army’s camp, thrown together before their drinking had gotten out of hand. Reclined side-by-side, they had let first wine stolen from Dodso’s tent, then ale stolen from the Eredynn contingent soften the pain of hard words neither had meant.
The half-breed sat up and frowned at Vohl. “Huh?”
“What did you say?”
“I said you’re low,” Muddle replied with a crooked, toothy grin and emptied his mug into Vohl’s. He turned and tapped the spigot on the confiscated Eredynn keg he’d carried single-handedly to this spot. A steady rivulet of ale spilled into the dirt before a curse steadied his hand under the stream. His mug refilled, the half-breed chuckled. “How long before our ‘donors’ come looking for this, do you think?”
“That’s your problem,” Vohl said, pointing at the keg. “I couldn’t have carried that. You’re the culprit. I’m an innocent hostage to your crime.”
Muddle guffawed. “You always have an excuse, don’t you?”
Vohl wasn’t certain if there was an edge to that comment, drowning the thought away with another pull of ale. Warmth and well-being flooded his nerves. It was good being like this, warning their feet by the fire, drinking, insulting each other, reminiscing about the good old days that weren’t really all that good. Vohl glanced up at stars beginning to speckle the sky and offered up his mug in mute toast. “The good old days...”
“Indeed,” Muddle sighed. “Maybe we ought to invite Dodso?”
Vohl chortled. “If he’s not still mad at me for almost-leaving.”
Vohl...hear me...
“Damn it, Muddle, I can hear you fine!”
The half-hobgoblin glared at him, one batwing ear perking up quizzically. “That wasn’t me.” Faint, blue-white light picked out the craggy details of the side of his face. He glanced behind them, where their packs lay half-opened with eating utensils and the mess of dinner scattered about them.