A Sea of Skulls (Arts of Dark and Light Book 2)

by Vox Day

  “I wish you well, little friend,” the elf told the bee solemnly. It buzzed off, first to his left, then circled around again towards his right before disappearing behind a tree. He smiled, and traced the path the small insect had taken in the air with his finger. The dance of the bees was not impenetrable to him; centuries ago he had cracked the code of their voiceless communication, but now he lacked the wherewithal to comprehend it. That he could no longer fathom their purposes did not perturb him in the slightest; he still took pleasure in seeing them go about their vital business in their striped uniforms.

  How sweet life had become as his last days drew nigh. At last he understood, truly understood, the fierce urgency that drove the race of Man to build empires and sow its seeds and send its armies tramping in every direction, north, south, east and west. Even the furious rage of the Orc made sense, burning all the brighter and intense for the shortness of its years. More importantly, it had given him insight into the roots that underlay the decadence of Elvenkind, the insidious weakness that had reduced the once-great race that ruled Selenoth with a cruel and haughty hand to its present straits.

  There, too, lay temptation. It stirred in him, the desire to wake up his people, by force if necessary, and compel them to again take up the greatness that was their ancestral right. It lay within his power, if only he would reach out his hand and accept the mantle that fate offered him. But no, he would not forswear himself, nor would he forsake the God for whom he was walking, ever more haltingly, this painful path that would soon lead him to the grave. He smiled again, pleased that he had once more mastered the seductive ambitions that fluttered, unwanted, through his mind.

  O Grave, where is thy victory? O Death, where is thy sting? At this point, so near the end, he feared the little bee’s sting more than that of the Black Harvester. Not that he had ever feared it much; an accomplished necromancer, he had spoken with the dead on too many occasions to be persuaded by the fear-filled fancies of those who declared that there was but one life, after which came either the Void, the Eternal Slumber, or the Ever-nothingness, depending upon the philosophical school.

  He found that he was rather looking forward to this next adventure, to walk through the one-way door and discover what lay waiting on the other side. Not for him the eternal battles of the savage Men of the North, or the endless orgies of rape and slaughter of the even-more savage Orc. His idea of Heaven was to experience Truth, to see it in its fullness instead of the mere glimmerings he had been fortunate to glimpse from time to time over the last six centuries.

  And if he was also vouchsafed the opportunity to discuss what he learned there with the likes of dear Father Waleran, so much the better. Though the years had passed, it seemed as if it had only been yesterday that he’d been sitting in front of the fire with his old friend, drinking that wretched Man wine as they plumbed the unknown depths of Creation with their minds. Smiling, he closed his eyes and turned his face towards the sun, drifting off as he recalled a long-ago argument with the Man who had preceded him through the last door so many years ago.

  Even if he hadn’t closed them, his eyes were too dim with age to have spotted the distant speck in the Western sky that was growing larger as it approached his solitary domain.

  “Bessarias! Bessarias!”

  He blinked against the blinding brilliance of the sky, and raised a hand to shield his sun-dazzled eyes. Someone was shouting at him. Why were they shouting?

  “Bessarias, wake up!”

  It was a voice he recognized. A female voice. He rubbed his eyes, and sat up to see Caitlys Shadowsong standing over him. She was wearing her flight leathers, and behind her loomed the giant figure of her warhawk. “Why are you shouting, my dear? And why are you calling me by my former name. I left it behind when I came to this place, as I expect to leave everything else behind, if God is willing.”

  “Don’t be such an old fool, Bessarias.” There were very, very few elves in Elebrion, and none at all in Merithaim or Kir Donas, who would dare to speak to him in such manner, but the princess of the House of Shadow was one of them. She was of the royal blood, a Collegium-trained sorceress in her own right, and perhaps more importantly, since her return she had taken on the responsibility for seeing to his provisions here on his isolated aerie. One need not be overly polite to those one can starve at will, however lofty their past reputations. “I come at the High King’s command. He requests the honor of your presence and he requests it at your earliest convenience!”

  “That hardly sounds like a request.”

  “It isn’t. He’s being unnecessarily polite to an addle-pated sorcerer in the hopes that you’ll stop killing yourself and take up your magic again to aid your people in their hour of need.”

  Bessarias sighed. “And what is it this time, Caitlys? Orcs, Dwarves, or Men?”

  “Don’t make light of it. There are over one hundred and fifty thousand orcs gathered under a single Great Orc, and most of them are moving on Elebrion!”

  “Most of them?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “I merely found it interesting that you thought it important to inform me some of them were not involved in the march south. What are the rest of them doing?”

  “That’s the part you found interesting?” Her face was a portrait in perfect exasperation. “The scouts say about twenty thousand were marching on the Man lands to the West.”

  He smiled. “You see? That is interesting. Tell Mael he should investigate the reason behind the division. I imagine he will find it profitable.”

  With that, he nodded pleasantly to her, closed his eyes, and leaned back again in his reclining chair.

  A moment later, he felt two small fists grasp the lapel of his robe. Unperturbed, he opened one eye. She shook him roughly before pulling him towards her so that her nose was very nearly touching his own.

  “Bessarias, if you don’t get up and find something warmer to wear so you don’t freeze to death on the way, I swear by the Wyrms of Mount Pelinothassas that I will get on Vengirasse’s back and he’ll carry you to the High King in his claws!”

  She released him and he fell back.

  “There was a time, my dear, when no elf would have dared to lay hands on me so rudely.”

  “That was when you were Magistras Gnossi of the Collegium Occludum. And that was before I was born! Without your magic, what are you, Bessarias? A withered husk! A dessicated corpse! Don’t you understand? We need you as you were! We need the sorcerer, not this time-withered follower of a dead Man-god!”

  “You sound disturbingly like Mastema,” he told her. “Are you certain he didn’t put you up to this? He usually wears the body of a cat, his preference is for grays, but he has been known to take other forms.”

  “I haven’t spoken to your damned familiar!” Caitlys snapped. “And he certainly didn’t put me up to it. Aren’t you listening? The High King did!”

  “Ah, yes. Of course, it is a matter of long-standing tradition that the Magistrae of the Collegium do not answer to any of the seven kings.”

  “You’re going to try to hide behind the Collegium when you won’t even do magic anymore!” she shrieked. A murderous look entered her bright green eyes. “Get dressed, Bessarias. Now!”

  He sighed. “Is there nothing I can say to convince you to leave me here in peace?”

  She bared her teeth and he raised his hand.

  “Very well, my dear. But I assure you, it will serve no purpose. The king will in nowise be inclined to heed my words. Neither he nor his father ever has before.”

  “Things change, Bessarias. Given enough time, even kings may change their ways.”

  Or given sufficient desperation. He smiled. The lady had a point, he had to admit. Did he not know an exceedingly prideful sorcerer who had changed his ways? He reached out for his staff, once a thing of might, now nothing more than a support to help him walk, and grunted as he rose unsteadily to his feet. “Very well, Lady Shadowsong. As a humble
servant of the High King, I shall mind the summons, and perhaps we shall see if this miracle of which you speak has, in fact, taken place.

  Mael, High King of Elebrion, was visibly shaken by the sight of Bessarias’s appearance upon the sorcerer’s entrance. Unlike Caitlys, the king had not laid eyes upon him for decades and was unaware of his rapid descent into decrepitude. The Elven king now towered over the ancient sorcerer, whose back was stooped with age.

  “What in the Nether Hells have you done to yourself, Magistras?”

  “I merely go the way of all flesh, Majesty. I highly recommend it as an efficacious antidote to overweening pride.”

  “Overweening or not, the pride suited you considerably better, Bessarias. Now, as your king, I command you to stop this nonsense and restore yourself to a reasonable state at once. You cannot possibly expect to serve the Three Kingdoms in your current condition, and I have need of you and your particular powers.”

  Bessarias glanced at Caitlys, who had accompanied him to the chamber in which the king had received them, which appeared to be the heart of the High King’s martial preparations. Even the guards had been excused; this was not a conversation to which even the most loyal ears could be privy. The king’s niece-by-marriage had closed her eyes and was shaking her head slowly in dismay. She, at least, understood that he was not to be commanded.

  “Perhaps you do and perhaps you don’t. That is not for you to say, my dear Mael. You may bluster, and you may issue orders to your heart’s content, my friend, but you know perfectly well that you do not command the Collegium or its members. Perhaps more to the point, you may not tell me to do anything at all. I’m too old and too near death to be impressed by your splendid crown and your royal visage. Let us talk, rather, as one friend to another, of these troublesome orcs I am told are of concern to you.”

  The High King looked at Caitlys, who shrugged. “I can’t help you, Majesty. I only managed to bring him here by threatening him with an involuntary ride under the bird.”

  “At least you’re not in a hurry to commit suicide, at any rate,” the king said sourly. “Very well, old friend, let us talk of these orcs. They trouble me indeed. One might even say the problem they pose is vexing.”

  He beckoned Bessarias towards the large oaken table in the center of the room, upon which was displayed a map of eastern Selenoth. Scattered around the map were a number of figures carved from wood and ivory. It did not take a military genius to see straight to the heart of the problem; the squat wooden pieces considerably outnumbered the eight slender ivory ones.

  “You hardly need me to perform basic mathematics for you. It would appear there are around thirteen, no fourteen, of them for each of yours. Difficult, I suppose, but hardly odds you have not faced before.”

  The king smiled grimly. “That would be true were you not incorrect by an order of magnitude. Each of those ivory figures represents a company of knights, not a regiment.”

  “There are only eight hundred knights in all of Elebrion?”

  “Other than the twenty-four in the Kingsguard, yes. And we have another three hundred combatants of one form or another, raiders, scouts, and sorcerers.”

  Bessarias shook his head. “I warned your father after the war with the Witchkings. We’d lost so many knights, we were down to five thousand then, half the number of when your grandfather ruled over the Seven Kingdoms. How could you let it come to this, Mael?”

  The High King’s white face flushed momentarily and he looked away. “Our numbers always seemed sufficient,” he said stiffly.

  “Sufficient? For what purpose? You relied upon the Magistrae and fear of the Collegium’s magic!”

  “Yes, well, it seems that is no longer enough to dissuade this particular orc.”

  “Why not?” Bessarias eyed the king suspiciously. “Mael, don’t tell me you tried to bluff them!”

  “The Council of Magistrae agreed! What else were we to do?”

  “What did you do?”

  “I sent out three mages in the robes of the Magistrae, with an honor guard of 33 knights under the command of Prince Lelwithas, to confront them. I thought… well, the scouts told me they slew more than five hundred orcs, including more than thirty-five gwrachod, before they fell.”

  Bessarias sighed. Now he understood why he’d been summoned. There was one thing, and one thing only, that he and no other mage or magistras of the college could do. There was a single spell he had reserved for himself, one that he had arrogantly refused to share with his fellows of the college. And he knew very well that it was a secret that remained kept, for the unleashing of the power held locked within the calengalad was not a spell that one could cast without leaving evidence behind. A considerable quantity of evidence, as it happened, as Dasaltha-Muran still testified mutely today, hundreds of years since he’d cast the spell. Dasaltha-Muran, the ruinous waste now better known throughout Selenoth as the Glass Desert.

  “I have given up my magic. You can see that, Mael. I am hardly going to break my vow and take it up again so that I can re-enact my greatest crime. Of all my sins, and over six hundred years there have been many, that was by far the worst! And you ask me to repeat it?”

  “It may not be necessary–”

  “If it wasn’t necessary you would not have dragged me here. No, Mael. I warned you a century ago that we could not proceed in this manner. How many children have been born in the last year. In the last decade! You ask me to forswear myself on behalf of a people who are too sunk into decadence and self-absorption to marry, let alone bear and raise knights who will defend the kingdoms in the years to come? There is nothing to save! We are a dead people and you reign over a white and barren kingdom of bones!”

  “How many children did you have, Magistras?” the High King, his face coldly furious, replied.

  “I, too, am to blame. I do not excuse myself from this charge. There may have been a few elves more decadent than me, but certainly none more arrogant or self-absorbed. At least you and the Queen fulfilled your duties in that regard. It is as a king, not as an elf, that you have failed, Mael.”

  “What was I to do?”

  “Whatever was necessary. Your responsibility was, your responsibility is, to the Elven race, to all the peoples of Elebrion, Merithaim, and Kir Donas. To protect them and ensure that they not only survived, but thrived! But if a people does not thrive, they will not survive long.” He pointed to Caitlys. “How old are you?”

  “Eighty-seven,” she said, her voice wary.

  “And yet you remain a maiden untouched, more wedded to your magic than you will ever be to an elf.”

  “How dare you!” Her green eyes flashed with feminine rage.

  “How dare I speak the truth? Had you married at your majority, you might have born one, two, even ten sons by now. Not all of them would be old enough to bear a sword yet, but what about your cousins, your aunts, to say nothing of your nonexistent sisters?”

  “That’s not fair–”

  “It is the truth! Look at your young sorceress there, Mael. In her virgin womb, in the virgin wombs of every sorceress in the kingdom for the last five hundred years, is your army. Did you ever drag them here to your castle and make of them the demands you now make of me? Did you ever tell them, even once, that it was their duty to their king, to their people, to their very race, to give Elebrion the warriors she would one day need? Or do you think to make warriors of them now, to see virgin bellies never swollen with child raped with spears and swords instead?”

  The High King looked at his niece and sighed. “What’s done is done, Bessarias. There is no point in engaging in recriminations of past errors. See, I will admit it. You were right. Does that give you joy, to know that your proclamations of doom are upon us at last?”

  “Even now you seek to shirk your duty! You inquire as to my feelings? The only feeling of mine that needs concern you is my answer! It is no! Absolutely and unequivocally no! All the abuse of my accursed powers will buy you is time, and what use is a few
more years to a king who has wasted centuries? No, Mael, the Collegium will not save you from your misrule this time; better you humble yourself in the sight of the Most High God and perhaps the King of High Kings will grace you with the wisdom you require. I have a higher allegiance than you now, and I will not betray it as you betrayed our race!”

  If the king’s face had been crimson before, it was deep scarlet now, filled with pure, unadulterated rage.

  “I could have your head for that!”

  Bessarias laughed. “Look at me! Look at this broken body! Do you think I fear death?”

  “I have not failed our race! Not yet!”

  “Have you not?”

  The furious High King locked eyes with the decrepit Magistras, and it was the king who looked away first. There was a long moment of silence, and when the king finally spoke again, his voice was subdued. If it was not humble, it was at least conciliatory.

  “If you will not serve me with your magic, then perhaps you will consent to serve me with your wisdom, Bessarias. Our need is dire, and I do not exaggerate the danger. The day that you foresaw is now upon us, and so perhaps you will be able to see another answer, one that I cannot.”

  “Wisdom?” Bessarias snorted dismissively. “I have none to give. But I will do for you, and for our kind, what conscience allows, Majesty. And my first counsel is this: do not give into despair, my friend! Elebrion is not the Elves. If the Elves must flee the White City, then you must be at the forefront of their flight. Fly to Merithaim, or to Kir Donas, and over the seas to the lands beyond if need be. To preserve and protect your people is your first and foremost duty, High King. Do not let pride or shame tell you otherwise. Ignominy is not death, it merely feels like it to one who knows nothing of death’s cold touch. You were right to say that what is done is done. There is no need to dwell upon the past. All that matters now is what you do next.”

  The High King nodded absently. His eyes were unfocused, as if he gazed upon something distant in time as well as space. Then he blinked, and stepped forward to take Bessarias’s hands in his own. “Forgive me, old friend. You speak truths that are hard to hear.”