Disciple of War (Art of the Adept Book 4)
Page 43
Eventually the man continued, though he hadn’t been given express permission. “One of the sergeants under my command has your name, and I’ve been told you were his closest relative. He never really talked about it, but after consulting with Sub-Marshal Nicht, I’ve been told he was in fact your cousin—”
The room began to spin, and Will took a quick step back to sit down before his knees buckled. “You’re Eric’s commanding officer?”
The captain nodded. “I had that honor, sir. Eric was an exemplary soldier in every respect. You should—”
Will barely heard the rest of the sentence, as a horrible groaning sound rose up in his chest and pressed against the inside of his skull, blotting out the world in a moment of intense pain. When he opened his eyes again, he was surprised to see that Veness was still talking. Apparently, his inner torment had been silent. He held up one hand, while trying to keep his breathing even. “Could you repeat what you just said, Captain?”
The captain nodded. “I just wanted you to know that you should be proud. Sergeant Cartwright was one of the best men I’ve ever fought alongside. His bravery, integrity, and strength of character were of the sort that many aspire to, but few succeed at achieving.”
The pain in his chest was so intense that Will was certain that if he looked down, he would see his heart bleeding a river of blood onto the ground beneath his tent. Despite the sincerity of the captain’s words, they were almost unbearable. “When did it happen? How?” asked Will, cutting the man’s litany of virtues short.
The captain answered, and Will was shocked to learn that it had been several days ago, when the First had suffered their devastating defeat and taken massive casualties. Why hadn’t he checked sooner?
“—as everything went to hell and it looked as though everyone would rout, my company wound up directly between the oncoming press of the Darrowan assault and the wounded Field Marshal’s wagon. If Sergeant Cartwright and a few others hadn’t held the men together, they would have walked over us and would likely have killed the field marshal…”
The world had gone mad. Will stared at the captain, listening with ears gone numb. His cousin had died defending Duke Lustral’s unconscious body. The same man I murdered just a few days later. Eric had died defending a man he had despised, the same man who had probably put them in such a terrible position to begin with.
There was no justice.
His first thought was that he wished Lustral was still alive. Will wanted to kill him again, but this time in ways that would repay the bastard for the pain he now felt. Captain Veness was still talking, but Will wasn’t really listening. He could feel a scream beginning to bubble its way up through the center of his being. He cut the captain off, “If you’ll excuse me, Captain. I need some time.”
“Yes, of course, sir.” Captain Veness left, and Will was finally alone, but despite his pain, no tears came. He stared at the wall of the tent, and his mind’s eye showed him different things, visions of Eric mainly, but another face also appeared frequently—Sammy’s.
She’d already lost her younger brother and her mother. With Eric gone all she had left was her father and her aunt. And me, thought Will, the worthless cousin who sent her brother to die as a diversion.
Standing abruptly, Will strode quickly to the side table and picked up the wine there. Then he put it down again, afraid to drink it. A dark abyss was swirling in his heart, and he wasn’t sure what he might do if he lost control. He’d killed hundreds, maybe thousands just the day before, without even quite realizing what he was doing.
Lieutenant Renly entered without warning, and Will stared at him with haunted eyes. Before Will could respond, he said, “There were a few more waiting to see you, sir, but I’ve sent everyone away. I’ll make sure you aren’t disturbed any more tonight.”
He was gone again before Will said a word, and for the first time he thought he might not dislike his assistant quite as much as usual.
Chapter 48
It took forever for sleep to come. If he’d been able to cry, things would have been different, for tears always seemed to bring an emotional exhaustion that favored sleep. Dry eyes didn’t help, though. Instead, his pent-up emotions simply increased his irritation, anger, and sense of impending doom.
Maybe that was why people so often turned to drink during times of tragedy. Will finally drifted into fitful slumber sometime in the wee hours of the morning. He hoped Renly’s compassion would extend to a late morning wakeup, but that turned out to be a moot point.
“Please, Master!” said a strangely familiar male voice.
“Another word and I’ll unmake you. He’s obviously exhausted. Let him rest,” responded a different man, his voice smooth and strangely accented.
Will’s heart began to pound, bringing him fully awake, though he kept his eyes closed for the moment. Strangers were in his tent. Not only was the camp warded, but Will had warded his own tent separately with a ward that would alert him if anyone other than Lieutenant Renly entered.
The ward hadn’t alerted him, and although his eyes were closed, Will could still feel the faint, silent hum of the ward’s ambient turyn nearby. It was still intact and functioning. As far as Will knew, only a wizard of significant skill could bypass a ward without tripping it.
As far as Will knew, he was the only such wizard currently extant.
That’s not quite correct, though, he realized. He was the only human wizard of sufficient skill currently in existence. Aislinn was a wizard, though she was no longer human, and she was certainly capable of the feat. There were other possibilities, as well, though none were human and all were probably evil in the extreme, beings such as Alexander, the master vampire wizard he’d slain the year before.
“He’s awake,” said the first voice in a sibilant tone.
Will felt a sudden surge of turyn as a spell was released. Rolling off his cot, he opened his eyes while simultaneously activating an iron-body transformation he’d kept prepared. His eyes adjusted to see in the dim interior half a second later, and he spotted two male figures within the tent, one standing and the other writhing on the ground in silent torment. A spell he didn’t recognize was systematically ripping the man apart internally, while leaving his skin intact.
Acting immediately, Will sent a force-lance at the standing man’s torso, but it was met with a point-defense shield. Will continued the assault with a rapid-fire succession of similar attacks, while simultaneously gathering his turyn to release the other spell he’d kept ready. Without allowing his opponent time to do anything other than defend, he charged the spell and then released a wind-wall with enough power to destroy the tent and everything within fifteen feet of him.
The enemy wizard couldn’t block his force-lances and the elemental spell at the same time, so Will expected the man to either switch to a force-dome or be torn apart. Instead, the newcomer did neither. Will’s wind-wall expanded explosively, but it stopped less than a foot from his body, as the air beyond that seemed to be incredibly dense and nearly impossible to move.
No, I lost control of my turyn once the spell began to expand, he realized with a flash of insight. It was a similar effect to what he’d done to sorcerers in the past, though it had failed to stop his spell entirely. Still, it meant his foe had greater control of the turyn around them than he did.
Without missing a beat, Will shifted tactics, trying to use his new talent to convert the turyn of the spell killing the man on the ground into a sonic burst that would hopefully disrupt the unknown wizard’s concentration.
That attempt failed even more spectacularly. It wasn’t physical, but he could feel the other wizard’s will as an almost tangible force, locking all the turyn around them into place. Outside of force-spells and perhaps the foot or so of space closest to his body, Will was effectively helpless.
He summoned his rapier from the limnthal and used his third spell, a silver-sword enhancement. White flames erupted from the blade, and Will stepped forward to attack.
Will paused, and then his eyes fell on the man dying at their feet. It was his old school friend, Rob. “Stop hurting him.”
The man’s face remained perfectly still, utterly lacking expression. “Are you certain? It might be a blessing if I release your friend from his blood curse.”
“Stop or we won’t be talking at all,” warned Will. He wondered whether anyone would hear if he shouted for help. With his talent suppressed, it was unlikely, especially if the other man had prepared for such an eventuality.
The stranger nodded, and the spell turning Rob’s insides into jelly vanished. Staring down at Rob, he admonished the young vampire, “I warned you not to say another word. Your friend just stopped me from erasing your miserable existence. Next time I won’t be so lenient.” When Rob tried to reply, nothing but black fluids escaped his lips, and the newcomer turned his nose up in disgust. “Finish healing before you speak to me, and even then, remain silent. I have no need to hear you beg.”
“Who are you?” asked Will.
The man seemed surprised. “I thought you’d recognize me. Most would in Darrow, since there are paintings in every church.”
Will waited impatiently.
The stranger sighed. “I am Alan Trent, the current Patriarch of Darrow. You didn’t even bother to look at one of my portraits before you invaded?”
“The Patriarch is human.”
The man laughed. “Very astute of you. How did you know that I am not human?”
“Because you’re obviously a wizard, and I’m the only living, breathing wizard left,” said Will.
The stranger blinked, the gesture oddly alien in a way Will couldn’t quite identify. “It’s true then, your master is dead?”
Will waited a second, then nodded slowly.
The man seemed genuinely sad. “Do you mind if I sit?” Without waiting, he took a seat in one of the folding chairs nearby. “That’s a shame. I liked Arrogan better than most of his contemporaries. He had true passion. There weren’t many like him, but then, there never are. Most are content with mediocrity.”
“Who are you?” Will asked, repeating his question.
“I already answered that. Why don’t you sit down?” The stranger pointed at one of the other chairs. “Your tense stance is distracting. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I don’t trust you,” said Will, then he added, “Arrogan never met the current Patriarch.”
The other man nodded. “That’s true, though he and I did meet once, though it was long before I took this identity. In fact, it was long before Darrow was split into two separate nations. You remind me of him, not your looks particularly, but your demeanor—angry and distrustful.”
Will glared at the man. “I prefer to talk to people when I know their names.”
“I doubt my name would mean anything to you. It was lost long ago, unless your teacher taught it to you, which I doubt. He would have preferred to leave me forgotten.”
“Try me.”
The other man smiled. “How about a test then? You just finished your schooling at Wurthaven, so you probably enjoy tests, no?” He glanced down at Rob, then asked, “Your poor wretch of a friend is my servant, not simply because of misfortune, but because I created his kind, though I am not one of them. Who am I?”
A cold chill passed over Will as he realized who was sitting in front of him. His lips formed the name before he could help himself. “Grim Talek.” The creator of the Drak’shar was a lich. Formerly human, in a time before current recorded history, Grim Talek was the only wizard known to have ever successfully transformed himself into the theoretically ultimate undead being. Not only was he virtually unkillable, but Aislinn and Arrogan together had once been forced to abandon their attempts to rid the world of him. Leaving aside the gods themselves—Temarah, the Mother, and Marduke, Lord of the Dead—there probably wasn’t another being more powerful than the lich within the world that Will could think of.
Or more perfectly evil.
“You really should sit down. Have some wine if you need. It would be much more relaxed. I tend to be easily irritated in tense situations, and I think you’d prefer not to irritate me, yes? If I wanted you dead, you’d already be dead.”
Will glanced at Rob, who was staring up at him with wild eyes. He still appeared to be in considerable pain as his vampiric flesh tried to heal the extensive internal damage. Worse, he looked hungry, an inevitable consequence of such healing.
Not that Will was afraid of his friend, not so long as he kept him in sight anyway. Crossing the room, Will claimed the other chair and moved it to sit some distance away, where he could easily see both of his visitors. “We’ve been introduced,” said Will as calmly as possible. “Now let’s talk. Are you merely impersonating the Patriarch, or have you replaced him?”
“Introduced? Hardly. It would take more than a couple of names for that to be true, but I do appreciate your adaptability. Rather than saying I replaced the man, it would be more accurate to say I invented him.”
“Then it was you who ordered the attack on Barrowden a few years ago,” said Will carefully, his eyes hard.
“The one that killed your aunt and young cousin? I suppose that’s true, though I wasn’t particularly interested in going to war.”
Anger and fear warred within Will’s heart. Anger at the admission, and fear because it was obvious the creature he was talking to had been studying him for some time before appearing in his tent. “If you were the Patriarch, then it was you who made the decision.”
Grim Talek laughed at that. “Say that to me again after you’ve ruled Terabinia for a few years. Politics is never so simple, not even for a monarch such as your King Lognion. The war was the inevitable result of the more bloodthirsty factions within the Church of the Prophet.”
“You’re far too powerful to be forced to do anything by a human.”
“I’m immortal, yes. No one could harm me, definitely. I am also quite capable of killing every single person in Darrow, or Terabinia for that matter. Does that count as ruling? I could kill every individual person alive today, and by the time I got to the last one your race would have already fucked your way to having more people than there were when I started. Killing is not power, merely a tool that can provide it to some degree.”
Will’s curiosity overcame him. “Then why did you take the Patriarch’s place? Why seek to be a ruler? What could you possibly need here?”
“Company,” answered the lich frankly. “Even for a lich, loneliness becomes unbearable. You have no idea what a burden simple existence can become. Politics is an interesting game to relieve the tedium.”
“And the vampires you unleashed on Cerria? Was that also a game?”
The entirely human-appearing lich smiled, showing pearly white teeth. “I owe you for that. I never agreed to it. Alexander had started thinking too much of himself and he acted on his own. The fact that you so handily removed him from the playing field was a useful reminder to my other servants. They’ve been much more agreeable since then.”
“Why not remove him yourself?”
The lich leaned back in his chair and then rubbed his chin. A second later he answered, “How easy do you think it would be for me to kill you?”
Will’s heart sped up, but Grim Talek forestalled his reply with one hand. “No need to tense up. I was speaking hypothetically, so let me finish. Obviously, I could have killed you easily a few minutes ago, but let’s assume you were awake and aware of me, or even that you had time to prepare. Even as young as you are, and with your oh so fragile flesh, it might be a difficult chore. Now imagine that you have centuries of skill and experience, as well as a body with the strength, speed, and resilience of one of my Drak’shar. How easy would it be, even for me?”
“You’re suggesting he was your equal?”
The lich clucked his tongue i
n annoyance. “Not at all. But at my age I rarely do anything if I can have others do it for me.” Grim Talek studied him for a moment. “Shouldn’t you be asking more pertinent questions, such as why I am here?”
He’d dealt with several flavors of immortal already, and in his current state of mind, his own mortality didn’t seem very important. Losing Eric had left him feeling numb. Will shrugged. “You said that names were a poor introduction. I’m trying to understand you better before you start trying to convince me I should join your elite monster club.”
Grim Talek began laughing again, and this time it lasted longer. “You’re really quite amusing, William. I suppose I should have expected as much from Arrogan’s last pupil. He had quite a personality himself.”
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
“Take it as a compliment. Humor is usually a sign of intelligence. Plus, you’ll need it to keep from losing your sanity after the first century or two.”
He was beginning to feel hopeful, for it seemed the lich really didn’t want a confrontation. “Are you suggesting I’ll live that long?”
The lich raised one brow. “Perhaps. That depends on you. If you do expire, it probably won’t be because of me, unless you come knocking at my door.”
“You aren’t angry that I’ve defeated your armies? Once Myrsta falls, Darrow and Terabinia will be united once more.” Will braced himself as he made the declaration, expecting anger, but Grim Talek remained calm.
The lich shrugged. “It was a fun game. You won. I can always do the same somewhere else, or raise a new empire from dust. However, since you mentioned Myrsta, I may as well come to the crux of the problem.”
Will waited, refusing to be baited.
“I miscalculated while calling in assistance for our friendly little war,” admitted the lich. “Or perhaps it would be better to say I didn’t manage that assistance closely enough. Some of the Shimeran priests were completely insane, and by that I mean that they really believed the bullshit teachings of their Book of Iron.”
He frowned. “By definition, aren’t all demon worshippers insane?”