by Dylan Doose
Ahead of us, his back turned, was a man in a suit of absurdly massive golden armor. Its intricacy of design was unlike anything I had ever seen; a cape of white silk flowing to the floor behind him.
We were about to receive a contract for more than just a beast. And we were about to receive that contract from the Patriarch.
—Excerpt from the manuscripts of Aldous Weaver
* * *
Chapter Nine
Requests
A dome of golden glass covered them. It amplified the stars and moon in the cloudless space of night sky above. The lusterless white stone floor was empty, but for the giant of a man in magnificently crafted golden armor standing as still as a statue at the far end of the chamber, offering his white-cloaked back to them.
He turned around.
Theron could not help but admire the beauty of his armor, with its breastplate sculpted in relief, four golden arms encircling the man’s torso. The absurdly large shoulder pauldrons had smiling-faced suns with blazing-sharp rays protruding in all directions.
Theron glanced at Ken, who stood at his right, and muttered, “This man has a penchant for smiling golden suns, and sons. What does that reveal?”
“A smile can hide much,” Ken muttered back.
“And disguise what is hidden beneath,” Theron agreed.
“But why are they smiling?” Aldous asked.
“Oh, Aldous. Because they are blessed.” Though they spoke in whispers and the chamber was large, Theron suspected the giant could hear them, though he made no indication of it.
The Patriarch—for Theron had no doubt this was the identity of the golden behemoth—held a scepter, a short staff with a sphere at the top. His left hand was empty, his arm extended out to his side, and he held his open palm upward to the golden dome and the sky. The domed ceiling of golden glass not only amplified the view Theron had of the skies above, but its shape, or perhaps some magic, condensed the moonlight into a single unnaturally strong beam that reflected off the shimmering plate.
It was meant to be beyond surreal, higher than a dream, a holy vision, a message, such was this moment’s design. But Theron Ward could not be awed so easily by a wizard’s tricks. Did he not have a wizard of his own?
“I do apologize,” the golden giant said in common speech, his accent not Brynthian, not Romarian. Theron could not place it. His voice was deep, and it reverberated in the dome, the voice of a man who gave sermons. “Return to these hunters their weapons, Chevic. And then leave us to talk, alone. Allow no one access to the sun tower.”
Theron cocked a brow at Kendrick and Ken just gave a slight shrug.
Some ruse, giving them back their weapons. Or is he just that confident in his skills…alone against three hunters, surely three of the best killers on the continent? Perhaps just a show of good faith.
“Yes, your holiness,” Chevic said, and snapped his fingers. There was a shuffle of footsteps, and one of the smiling-masked rangers in his green hood handed Theron his claymore and his sister’s short sword as others returned Ken and Aldous’s belongings.
The Golden Sons faded from the room.
“Young wizard,” the Patriarch said. “The sun smiles and my sons smile because we are all blanketed in the light of the Luminescent.”
Theron wondered if the Patriarch’s “all” included the women and children in the villages his men burned.
“To get to the point, Theron Ward,” the Patriarch said. “You have already been made aware of my needs by Chevic the Cheery. You will have more gold, and gems and all manner of artifacts—and, of course, what I think interests you most…more weapons, masterful weapons and armor than you could carry in four northern long ships. Indeed, I will present to you enough loot”—the word was laced with contempt—“to make a northman swoon. If you are successful in completing your contract.”
“Loot,” Theron echoed, and offered a smile as bright as any of the golden masks. As if loot was what drove him, what gave him purpose. But he said nothing to the great golden fool before him.
The Patriarch stepped closer, his hulking golden armor creaked, and Theron swore he saw blue sparks around the joints, like small bolts of lightning. The man was massive, true, but still the armor looked impossible for any man to move in with such ease.
“Magic?” Ken glanced at Aldous, and Theron, too, waited for the boy’s reply.
“Yes…” Aldous began, his eyes rapidly shifting from the Patriarch back to Theron and Kendrick. “He is a wizard. Far more powerful than I. I think even more powerful than the Emerald Witch.”
“I am,” the Patriarch agreed, not sounding offended that they discussed him so openly.
Theron met his gaze. His eyes were inhumanly gold. The very same gold as his armor.
“More powerful than the Emerald Witch,” Theron said. “So why do you need us? Why not kill Dammar yourself?”
The Patriarch’s golden eyes narrowed but a fine fraction of an inch, searching Theron’s eyes a moment. He placed a massive golden-gauntleted hand on Theron’s shoulder, yet it felt weightless, comforting, almost, and he smiled before pulling away his touch.
“Romaria has been torn asunder by civil war since the days of your grandparents—”
“We’ve already had the history lesson from your man Chevic,” Ken interjected, and the Patriarch only smiled as he allowed Ken to continue. “So answer the question.”
A moment’s silence was broken by the sound of Aldous swallowing, then the quiet returned. The Patriarch’s and Ken’s eyes were locked. The Patriarch smiled and Kendrick smiled back. A smile Theron had seen only once before, when they first met in the dungeons of Norburg and Ken was free to do as he would with his torturer. It was a sickening smile, filled with contempt for all humanity.
Theron and Aldous exchanged the quickest of concerned glances.
“Dammar will be here tonight,” the Patriarch finally said, turning away from Ken and addressing Theron directly.
“How do you know?” Theron asked.
“I know him. I’ve known him for a long time. Have you ever had a nemesis?” the Patriarch asked. “Any of you?” He waved a hand. “Your Emerald Witch was no nemesis, merely an enemy. I have a true nemesis, one who knows me better than any man or woman ever has, knows me perhaps as well as the Luminescent.”
His voice was even and sure. There was no change in expression or tremor in his limbs. But he was afraid. Theron was sure of it now. The most powerful man in the nation was afraid. And that was why he would not kill Dammar himself.
“And I know him. He comes tonight. I have received reports of dark gatherings.”
“What type of dark gatherings?” Aldous inquired.
“The type that result in the forming of a great horde. A vast pagan horde, roused from their caves and forest hovels to come and try to snuff out the light of truth and progress.” The Patriarch’s voice deepened and he raised his scepter. “They gather to see the Luminescent and all his children forever wiped from this land and its history, and they march in the thousands. It is the will of the Luminescent that they be stopped. It is the will of the Luminescent that you kill the demon.”
“Have you asked your god what sign he plans on giving us to point out Dammar in the crowd?” Ken asked.
“Before he takes on his true form, that is?” Theron asked with a shit-eating grin that caused a minor twitch in the Patriarch’s left eye. A crackling blue bolt of light circled his golden iris.
“Finding that out is tasked to you, hunters. That is why you are here.”
“That sounds like an impossible task,” Theron said. “If I had weeks…months to investigate, to question potential suspects of demonic possession, to brew elixirs and prepare rituals that may…and I stress may be strong enough to reveal Dammar, then perhaps… But you are giving me hours. It is night now, First Night before First Morning, when the city streets will be packed with thousands—” Theron cut himself off and shook his head.
“Why don’t you seal the cit
y gates, call off the festival?” Aldous asked.
“That would be to surrender. To give up prayer and the holy worship of the Luminescent. This is a fate I will not place upon the Enlightened.” The Patriarch’s tone suggested the boy was plagued with lunacy for even entertaining the idea.
“You’d rather have them get massacred in the streets?” Ken asked, calm and distant. This was a man Kendrick wanted to kill. Theron was certain of that, but not certain of his reasons. Despite the fact that the Patriarch was clearly a wizard, a powerful one, Theron would have wagered on Ken, his axe, and his iron fist. But Ken was not a man to make choices with a hot head, and there would hopefully not be a reason to make that wager. Not now, at least.
“Glory will be to the Luminescent, even in the face of a demon and all his swarm of festering maggots. In the storm of chaos, the Luminescent’s light will impale through the clouds and show the devoted to salvation.” His voice rose, as did his hands at his sides, scepter in one hand, open palm of the other. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, as if he were basking in that ray of light that very moment. Then he dropped his arms and slowly shifted his gaze over each of the hunters.
And Theron knew him for the fraud he was, not a benevolent and pious overseer, but a mad tyrant.
“I don’t know how I feel about accepting a contract from a man who follows such a path of reasoning,” Theron said. “Regardless, with the dearth of information you have provided, we will not be able to find the demon in the crowd. Whoever Dammar has possessed, your words imply that this individual will have been taken willingly. They’ll not be fighting it at all, and so Aldous will not be able to sense any magic. There will be no pulse. It will be dormant until it is too late. You know all of this. You cannot possibly see this ending in anything other than complete catastrophe.”
“The only complete catastrophe would be when that devil has killed every last man and the era of the beast returns, and not a moment earlier.”
“I do not share your definition of catastrophe.” Theron tried speaking over him, but the Patriarch was booming now. Beside him, Aldous was trembling. But he was proud of the boy, that he held his ground.
“No loss of life is too much. No sacrifice too great to see Dammar’s death achieved on this night. All that matters is that Dammar is destroyed, that he dies before the eyes of those who worship him.
“The time for choosing to remain uninvolved is over, hunters. At this very moment the streets fill and flow to the courtyard in the city center beneath the Basilica’s southern balcony. The pyres are even now being prepared. And beyond the walls, the pagans are amassing. The two opposing herds await their gods, both of which are already present, both of which are ready to finish the war.
“Either the pagans will burn in the light or the Enlightened will be smothered by the dark, but either way, it will be decided tonight.”
The Patriarch stalked past Kendrick then, and with his back to them he added, “I have taken your horses. They are guarded under lock and key. Servants will be waiting at the base of the tower. They will provide you with nourishment before the battle… If you choose to turn back on this contract—”
“Turn back on it? When did we ever accept it? We came here to hear you out,” Theron interjected.
“Do not speak false. If you turn back on it,” the Patriarch continued, “you will burn on the pyres. The wizard first, while you watch.” He paused. “Or you pick a side, you pick my side, and when the demon is dead, anything you want in this city, including the rest of your years in the master chambers of the Basilica, I will give to you. I will hand to you, prostrated at your feet. I have lived a long life. I have seen more, I have killed and loved and been broken more than the three of you combined… You will learn what it is like.”
The Patriarch turned back around and looked directly at Aldous. His voice changed, eerily calm and quiet, as if the words used him as a conduit and were not his own. “You will learn what it is like to live a score of lives. You will be destroyed over and over, only to rise again. One day you will be done. You will grow tired of rising. You will want it all to end.”
The chamber was preternaturally silent.
And then Aldous spoke. “I have been told many times by old men who I am and how my life will be. You are not the first or the last. And though you would like me to believe your words are prophecy, I do not believe, not in your words or your cause.”
The Patriarch hammered a golden-gauntleted fist against his elaborate breastplate; the impact sounded like thunder, and bolts flickered around his fist before dissipating. “You will help me see this done. Then I will give to you anything within my earthly empire. But tonight you will hunt in the Luminescent’s name.”
There was a sudden flash, and bolts of electricity whipped out from the Patriarch and into the ceiling, where they broke and rippled across the golden glass like water, before fading. Theron felt his hair—all fifteen or so inches of it—rise and stand directly upright. The Patriarch marched past them toward the stairs that descended into the floor.
“We will kill the demon, Patriarch, but know it won’t be in your name or your god’s,” Theron said to the man’s back. “I am Theron Ward, monster hunter, and I will hunt the monster.”
The golden giant stopped. “You still don’t understand. None of you do. Everything is for the Luminescent.” He paused then continued, “When the sermon is done, the gates to the Basilica will open. At this point only select guests, those of status in church, politics, and economy will be granted entry. Dammar will be among these guests, and if I know the demon as well as I do, the fiend will strike at midnight. The theatrics of a pagan. That will give you an hour to prepare. Chevic will lead a group to the gates as reinforcements to the men stationed there. Dammar will be able to cast stronger spells with each moment he is manifested once he leaves his host. When he dies, the pagan army will break. He must die.”
Then the three of them listened as the Patriarch’s massive boots thumped down the stairs.
“Theron?” Aldous asked. It was the first time they were alone to plot anything since they had been taken.
Theron breathed deeply and winced as a bolt of pain flashed through his head. The ache of the day had become a blinding pain with the night.
“You all right, Hunter?” Kendrick asked, noticing Theron’s cringe.
“My head,” Theron said with his eye closed. “Still aches from when I hit the tile of the breaking square this morning. I’ll be fine.” He opened his eye and nodded to his companions. Aldous looked nervous. Theron put a hand on his shoulder and clasped it. Just as he had when he first met the boy in a cell in Norburg where he promised to keep him alive. “I’ll be fine,” he said again. “We’ll be fine.”
“What’s the plan?” Ken asked.
“We split up,” Theron answered. “Kendrick, you go with the Golden Sons to secure the gates, see what is coming our way. Return here, where we will regroup. In the interim, I will become a sleuth and search the Basilica for some clue as to who the Patriarch really is. Dammar is a demon, and so he must die. This is certain. But Brasov was not financed by the Church of The Luminescent. Even they could not afford this, not so far from the Imperial City. Something else funds the Patriarch.”
“Leviathan,” Aldous whispered.
“Leviathan,” Theron agreed. “Aldous, enter the chapel, get a vantage point, and watch the guests. The very moment the demon manifests, set it ablaze. Kendrick and I will be upon it. If it strikes at midnight, we best have it dead by ten past.”
* * *
Day 72:
Every day I spend existing in these two remarkable states, the more I learn of them, and the more questions arise. In regards to the state of undeath cast upon me by the lord regent, I have come to understand through my squabble with the eclectic group of bandits—whom I crossed a fortnight ago when following the trail of my targets from Brynth, east through the long marshes into Romaria’s western territories—that if I die here, it does
little more than slow me down.
I cut down four of the ten and left three more of them well maimed. They stabbed me through the belly, thrice, and slit my throat. I bled out as one of them kicked my skull in with an iron boot. I was aware of all of it. I felt all of it, until the darkness came.
When it passed, when I could once again see, the bandits were gone. The vegetation around me had grown to suggest I had been dead for near two weeks. I had my guts inside me, and my skull and brains were intact. I felt no pain, and when I stared at the decaying corpses of the men I had slain, and saw that beasts had come and fed on their bloated guts, I pondered as to why I had not been fed upon as my body repaired.
Perhaps because to a ghoul or lycan, feeding on my flesh would have been the same as feeding on one of their own?
Since my second reawakening, I have been plagued with a horrible hunger…and I fear I understand the implication.
—Gaige De’Brouillard’s Journal
* * *
Chapter Ten
Progeny
It wasn’t just the walking pace of the carriage or the volume of feet and hooves and voices beyond the curtain that assured Dalia that they had finally reached Brasov; it was the sound of the cheers from a crowd of thousands upon thousands who were watching in fanatical awe as the Patriarch performed his miracles.
She had seen these miracles before, many times, and in her mind’s eye she could picture the man’s face and hear his voice as he called upon the Luminescent for his power and his strength. That had been years ago, a time she could hardly remember. Indeed, she remembered almost nothing from her youth but her lover’s face and the man who took him from her. Her father, the Patriarch.