by Tim Mathias
“He would have. Without a doubt.”
“I almost betrayed you, Vahr.”
“You could have, but you didn’t. You could have left me there to die; you could have left all of the others behind and tried to save yourself. It would have been the easiest to right then, but instead you did the hard thing. Integrity is only seen when the hard choice is taken over the simple one. I said nothing after, but I did wonder if the others would have made the same hard choice.”
“They would have,” Tascell said. “I’m sure they would have. Can I ask… was Turald a hard choice?”
“What? What are you asking me?” Zayd shifted uneasily where he stood. His lieutenant looked him in the eye, though he could tell it was not a question he pursued easily.
“I don’t know exactly what was said. It seemed like they were about to kill Daruthin, then you spoke to them, and they left Daruthin alone and killed Turald instead. It looked like they made you choose which one of us would die.”
“Do the others think this as well?”
“I don’t know… not that I know of. They’ve said nothing of it.”
Unsure of what to say, Zayd balled his fists a few times and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He searched his mind for the words a leader would say, something to placate, but the only words he could grasp formed the simple and ugly truth. “They did make me choose. I tried to dissuade them, but there was no changing their mind. I could even have told them to kill me, and I think that brute would have done it. It rightly should have been me – I’m the one who warned Talazz.”
“Why did you choose Turald?”
Zayd hesitated. “I don’t think you want to know this as badly as I don’t want to say.” Tascell did not look away. “It couldn’t have been Daruthin or you; you are too valuable to me as lieutenants and too close to me as kin. And Turald said he had no family. For those two reasons, it had to be him.”
Tascell finally looked away, gazing at something past Zayd, far off in the distance or in memory. “How often do you think like that?”
“What do you mean?”
“Reducing your soldiers to a currency... the value of their utility.”
“I really can’t say, Tascell. Not often, but still too much. It’s the worst thing that commanders are forced to do: to look at lives as unequal…… being more or less worthy. It turns you into something else… something monstrous.”
“I’m glad it was you, then. I may have made a hard choice, vahr, but I can’t think of one harder than the one you made.”
Chapter 20
The morning brought something familiar. It was not the regimented drills and rigid structure that Zayd had expected. What was familiar was the chaos that the Tauthri had thought they finally escaped; two soldiers had been beaten bloody in the final hours of the night, and it had been Talazz who had done the beating.
Commander Walrend questioned Talazz in the barracks since his officer’s quarters were too small to accommodate the En Kazyr. Walrend hand-picked a few soldiers to remain in the barracks with him, presumably to dissuade the giant from any further belligerence, though a number of soldiers mumbled the obvious truth that it would take a good handful more to send a convincing message.
And even though Walrend had had the barracks emptied before he began questioning Talazz, it was not long before rumors began spreading through the fort by hushed voice to captive ear, rumors which reached Zayd well before the questioning had finished.
“They said that these two men, Bailern and Vard, were lashing horses to the carriage that was brought in… because there is a great slab of gold, taller than a man and three times as wide, just sitting there!” the soldier spread out his arms as wide and enthusiastically as he could. “By the Beacon, you were marching along with the damned thing. Did you even know what was there?”
“I knew. We all did.”
“Marinus’ mother… what I would give to see it. Just to see.” Zayd tried not to curl his lip; it could have been innocent curiosity, but the soldier’s eagerness could just as easily have been the seed that turned curiosity into mutiny. “But the commander chose Bailern and Vard to stand guard nearby. Not to guard the carriage, mind you. He didn’t tell them what was there.”
“Maybe one of them looked.”
“Not a chance,” the soldier said, shaking his head emphatically. “Them two… loyal as they come. They follow the order to the letter. Add to that, they’re not bright… not enough imagination between the two of them to tell a dirty joke. They wouldn’t have gone looking.”
“And yet… they did?”
The soldier nodded, still staring in the direction of the carriage. “That they did… as if they were going to take it somewhere. Where would you even go with something like that? It’s the strangest thing. So… they’re tying up horses, slow as molasses, like they’re drunk or something…… and along comes the giant, who gives them a proper thrashing. The odd thing was, the two of them kept trying. You’d think if you were scheming and all of a sudden you’re about to be found out, you’d try to… I don’t know, get away with it somehow. Not so. They went at the giant, blades drawn, but that big bastard just kept putting them down. And they just kept getting back up.”
“What… Bailern and Vard?”
Another emphatic nod. “A blow to the head from that beast would put any man down, I should think. But somehow, these two… someone said Vard was still trying to stand after the giant broke one of his legs.”
Zayd felt his stomach turn. His skin went cold.
Cohvass.
It was exactly what Zayd had seen happen with Cohvass.
“Apparently, they don’t have a single tooth left between the two of them,” the soldier went on. “Hey, where are you off to in such a rush?”
“It’s still happening, Sera.”
The prisoners were kept in a small wooden building originally intended for surplus supplies, but had been altered when the fort had taken on the Dramandi and Praene and his mutineers. It was completely dark inside, which was nothing for Zayd, but his voice startled Sera, who, like the rest of the prisoners, was tied to a wooden post that had been driven a foot deep into the dirt floor.
“Who speaks?” she whispered.
“Zayd. Sera, the phantoms you saw by the gold… and what happened to Cohvass… it’s happening here, too.”
“I told you before that you need to rid yourselves of it. Put it back underground. Deep underground.” A few other Dramandi voices whispered to Sera, but she silenced them with a hush.
“I don’t think that will happen. No one would willingly give up such a treasure.”
“Tell whoever commands you. Tell him that this treasure is plagued.”
“It wouldn’t matter; our general has given the order to have them sent to our capital. The commander here does not have the rank to do anything but obey.”
Sera leaned forward as much as she could. “Then what has happened will continue to happen. You know that there is something they are after… something they want. But they are beholden to the object, so as long as there is someone close by, they will try to manipulate them, to take control.”
Zayd ran a hand along the smooth side of his head. Beads of sweat had begun to form even though it was a mild day. It was this revelation that caused him to sweat, caused his heart to beat faster… caused his skin to crawl. There had been that feeling the first time he had seen the gold monolith, the dread of looking upon a secret that was too vast and too terrible to fully understand, yet even the glimpse was enough for him to realize that he did not want to know. The vague impression of the thing was still too much to bear.
“Your priests won’t be able to cleanse the gold, either,” Sera continued. “This is what they do, yes? They cleanse the traces of shadows, of spirits. They break the connection so there is no more bridge to this world. What I’ve told you to do is the only thing you can do. What happens when one of them takes hold of your giant?”
“It would take
thirty men to take him down,” Zayd said. He shuddered at the thought of Talazz enduring the scale of injury that Cohvass had. Would thirty men even be enough?
“Your capital city… is this where your emperor is?”
“Yes.”
Sera said nothing further. She knew he could see her purse her lips as one does when they are holding back dreadful words. Could one of these phantoms take hold of the emperor? Zayd thought not, but failed to assert a reason why. What if one did? Suddenly, the entire Empire would be at the whim of this evil that, even now, rested with its vessel in plain view. Surely then, whatever aim it had, with the resources of the Ryferian Empire at hand, it could carry it out.
Unite the keys...
Take the portal to Velskotahn… Across the ocean.
The cryptic phrases began to align. Was the monolith the portal that was spoken of? And the keys… how were they to open it? That must not be possible – it was still a single, solid piece of gold.
“You’re denying it,” Sera said. “Don’t think that because something is unbelievable that it must be impossible.”
“How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”
“Because I know that I would be thinking it, too.”
Then there was only one thing to do, Zayd thought. Walrend had to convince Vaetus to give new orders: to have the monolith buried. And so Zayd must convince Walrend of what he knew, to make him believe the unbelievable.
“Thank you, Sera. I know now what to do.”
“What is to become of us?” Sera asked, just as Zayd stood to leave. He knelt again.
“I don’t know.”
“If they’re going to kill us… we would like it to be here. On our land. Our home.”
Zayd knelt again. “You can still save them… those that can still be saved. Make the sacrifice that I made, Sera. The sacrifice my people made. It runs deep, but we still have each other, and we still have our memories. Whatever you think of it, it’s better than the nothingness you’re running towards.”
“That won’t happen,” Sera said. Her tone for the first time carried the weight of regret instead of the defiance that had always been there until now.
“Because of the Raan Dura.”
Sera nodded. “Do you know… is it here?”
“I don’t know what it looks like, so I wouldn’t even know if I was holding it.”
“It’s a thing of beauty, but not the kind of beauty that men and women of this world could create. It is made of the purest silver… like no silver you have ever seen before. Simply by looking upon it, you would know in your soul that it is an object too perfect to have been created by mortals. It is a circular, with small circles set atop one another until, at its zenith, a jewel, black and flawless, like the night sky in which Aulvennic, the Guiding Star, made his home.”
“Sera, why didn’t you tell me this?” Zayd asked. The seer’s smile faded.
“Why does it matter? It is gone.”
Zayd looked at his feet, not sure of what to say. He had seen it before.
And it was with them in the fort.
Walrend had ordered a small dais constructed for the next day’s executions. The questioning of Willar Praene and those of the Ninth Regiment who were deemed to be complicit in his mutiny – which was everyone – had been swift and brutal. Muffled screams were heard throughout the fort all afternoon and into the evening, and even though there was no sympathy for traitors amongst the soldiers of the Fourth Regiment, hearing the proof of torture was enough to put them all into somber spirits. Soldiers hammered planks of wood into place without speaking to one another, wondering, as they drove the nails home, if similar tools were being employed against the warriors of the Ninth.
Once the dais was finished, everyone seemed to ignore it. Soldiers walked wide around it. No one looked at it. The screams were enough of a reminder; they did not need another. The interrogation stopped at nightfall, when the fort slumbered. It nearly elicited a smile from Zayd, how predictable it was, when he thought about it: of course Walrend, not one to disobey his own rules, would stop maiming the Ninth at nightfall.
Still, though, standing at the base of the dais, with the only sound coming from the wind caressing the forest outside Ten Tower’s walls, Zayd thought he could hear screaming. He shook his head, trying to jar the echoes loose.
He looked around the towers of the fort, seeing his men silently patrolling the walls, going from one walkway to another, or stopping in a watchtower to relieve whichever Tauthri was there, who then took a turn on the walkways.
In the night’s quiet, bereft even of the sounds of forest creatures, Zayd knelt at the foot of the dais and prayed to Xidius for guidance. He thought back on his encounter with Walrend that day, after he had spoken with Sera.
“New orders?” Walrend had asked, stupefied, striding eagerly towards the makeshift prison where the Ninth were being held, unaware of what approached. The commander was flanked by his lieutenants, who seemed just as eager to begin interrogating the mutineers. “New orders to do what?” Zayd tried his best to keep pace with Walrend, and jostled alongside him, much to the annoyance of the lieutenants.
“To put the monolith underground,” Zayd said.
“Put it underground,” Walrend said, as if repeating Zayd would make his request more reasonable.
“Yes, sir. To bury it.”
“I see no reason to do that. Is there a reason, captain?”
“It needs to be cleansed, commander. By a cleric. There is something within it that has an especially strong link to the Beyond. It’s the reason your men, Vard and Bailern, acted out in such a way that the En Kazyr had to –”
“The answer is no. If it needs to have a cleric purge its link to the wickedness of this place, then that is what will happen, but it will happen in Lycernum. Not here. The general is a patient man, but I will not test that patience by further delaying his wishes. Least of all, I will not give the impression that I am the same sort of man as Praene, who looks upon shiny treasures and suddenly starts dreaming of ways to make them my own. No, indeed. There is a supply caravan arriving tomorrow, and they will take the monolith the rest of the way, and I will be rid of it and happier for it.”
Zayd had felt the same sinking feeling, the distinct sensation of failure, while he watched the commander walk away as he had felt when Cohvass – or whatever inhabited him – had betrayed their presence in Praene’s camp. Walrend’s mind was made up; what else could he do? He certainly could not stop the monolith from being taken.
Finishing his prayer and rising to his feet, he could not help but look over to the north-western wall of the fort where the laden carriage sat next to the stables, awash in the light of nearby torches. From a distance, three guards watched the carriage from the edge torchlight, standing half in darkness.
Canvas still covered what Zayd knew to be underneath, and as he became aware that his glance had become a stare, he felt a cold wind at his neck and saw it rustle the covering, taunting, threatening to pull it back and expose what was underneath. He pulled his attention away, focusing again on the dais in front of him, on the wooden block, a grisly altar, that would tomorrow be soaked through with blood.
Zayd walked towards the guards who saluted him as they approached.
“You’re relieved,” Zayd said, returning the salute.
“Doesn’t seem that we’ve been at it that long, sir,” one of the guards said.
“It’s true, we didn’t start long ago, I don’t think,” another agreed.
“You can stay out here for longer, if you like,” Zayd said, “but the giant will be out for his watch soon. Any moment, really.”
The guards shot each other quick looks.
“Bloody Beyond, I’m not going to get in his way. You two can stay out here, but I’m not keen on having any of my bones broken tonight!” The guard walked away at a brisk pace, followed closely by another.
The third went to follow but stopped and slowly turned back, as if he thoug
ht he had heard something incredible.
“Are you here to serve?” the guard asked, his voice hoarse and quiet. Zayd stepped towards him.
“Get out of there!” he hissed, trying to sound as threatening as possible. But the guard, a young man with round features and big eyes, simply smiled. It was a grotesque sight, an expression made by something that had never made it before. “Why not me?” Zayd asked. “Why not use me as your vessel?”
The guard, still smiling, tilted his head to the side. “There is no need. You are to serve. Unite the keys. It is Velskotahn’s will.”
Zayd nodded. “Very well. I will serve… I will unite the keys.” His heart pounded. Zayd flexed a hand, ready to draw his blade. But the guard turned and began to walk again, taking a few unsteady steps before stopping and looking around once more. Zayd could tell the young man’s senses had returned… and that something had left. Shaking off his confusion, the guard jogged off into the darkness.
Zayd exhaled and slowly looked back towards the carriage, imagining the invisible evil which he knew surrounded it. He imagined ghostly fingers at his neck and hollow eyes watching him…
If they had not stumbled upon the monolith, maybe Praene would never have been tempted as he was. Much would be different. Gavras might still be alive. Barrett might still be his enemy. But wish as he might, he could not undo what had been done, and thinking that Praene could be something other than what he was would not save him. Whether it was the presence of the monolith that stirred something already within him or if it brought him to treason all on its own made little difference; it did affect men somehow. Zayd was certain. Thinking of the danger of the monolith and its phantoms reaching Lycernum, Zayd approached it, a blade in hand and intention in his mind.
The sounds of supply wagons and orders being shouted carried through the forest for everyone in Ten Tower to hear, and Zayd drummed his fingers anxiously against his leg. Several soldiers lifted the large crossbeam – a roughly hewn tree trunk – out of its rests so that the north gates of the fort could swing open.