Dawn of Chaos

by Tony Donadio

  “If we fall, there must be those who will survive. To carry the fight, and the word of the Light, into the future. The legacy of the Covenant in Carlissa must be preserved, Augustus. Do you understand me?”

  He nodded reluctantly, and then signaled with one hand. His attaché stepped forward to his side, a look of surprise and confusion on his face.

  “I do. The order is ancient, and it has not been given in the memory of the Church since the end of the Grim Times. But we have maintained the tradition despite its age and seeming irrelevance. The roster still exists. Those on it know what must be done.”

  Elena nodded.

  “Good. We will draw their forces after us. Our retreat to the palace will give them time and cover to carry it out.”

  The attaché’s face paled as he finally understood what was happening. “The Diaspora?” he gasped.

  Darren turned back to the King. His face was tortured.

  “I head the roster,” he said slowly. “If the order is given, then I must withdraw from the field to join my brethren. I cannot do so unless you release me from my service to the Crown.”

  The King looked at his wife. “Are you sure of this, my love?” he asked.

  “You know it must be done, Danor. We’ve already set it in motion ourselves.”

  He glanced toward the far end of the city, and the tower of the Silver Star Adventurer’s Academy. He nodded.

  “Augustus Darren,” he said loudly. The heads of the nearby officers turned abruptly at the sound of his voice.

  Darren straightened to attention. “Yes, my liege?”

  “You are ordered to execute the Diaspora of the Children in the Kingdom of Carlissa.” An uproar of gasps met his declaration, but the King’s powerful voice rose easily above it. “You will begin immediately. Do you understand and accept this obligation?”

  Darren nodded. “I do.”

  “Who is senior commander after you?”

  A tall, powerfully built woman in silver armor with a winged helm stepped forward.

  “I am, Your Highness. General Vala Orleans.”

  Darren looked at her. She knelt before him, laying her sword at his feet. His voice was stone when he spoke.

  “Rise, Vala Orleans, Captain-General of the Order of Light.”

  She did. Their eyes shared a long, silent moment. Then Darren turned and, without another word, strode over to his horse. Several dozen of his knights fell in behind him. In moments they were galloping back toward the Cathedral, away from the field of battle.

  “We will miss his aid in what is to come,” Danor said.

  Elena smiled. “We will. But I also cannot imagine a better man in whom to entrust the future of the Children.”

  Vala turned to face the King. “What are your orders, Your Highness?”

  Danor sighed in resignation. “We retreat to the palace,” he said. “We will make our stand there.”

  Chapter 14 - Treason in the Palace

  The Ward

  Palanad Lantar stood on a high balcony of the Wizard’s Tower. To his right, a small group of mages was struggling to load a large red crystal into a rotating mount affixed to a hastily erected stand.

  He pointed to the east. “There!” he said. “Do you see it, Cyrus?”

  Lord Cyrus Rugon squinted. Clouds and driving rain hung low in the sky, obscuring the view from the tower. There was a sudden flash of lightning. The councilor blinked, trying to clear the afterimage from his eyes.

  “It’s hard to make anything out through Elena’s storm,” he said tentatively. “And my vision isn’t what it used to be. What am I looking for, Palanad?”

  The court mage was quiet for a long time.

  “The Queen’s isn’t the only weather magic at play here,” he said at last. “A bank of clouds is surrounding the city. Outside the line of the bluffs. It’s nearly complete now.”

  Lord Rugon turned to face him. “Is it a danger?”

  “I don’t know. The casting is very skilled. It’s so subtle that I didn’t sense it until just a few minutes ago.”

  The councilor frowned. “What could it be for? Does Zomoran plan to strike at us with a storm of his own?”

  Palanad shook his head. “Emil is no match for the Queen’s command of the elements. And he knows it.”

  Lord Rugon turned to look back out over the valley. “Perhaps this demon lord that the King told us of is responsible.”

  A flash of red erupted in the sky to the east. They saw it clearly despite the driving rain. The crimson glow lit the clouds surrounding the city, and reflected brightly from the surface of the firth at the edge of the valley.

  Lord Rugon started. “What was that?”

  The court mage was already running from the balcony. He went down a short corridor and entered a wide laboratory on the top floor of the Wizard’s Tower. A handful of mages still worked there, conjuring feverishly at enchanting tables around the room, struggling to prepare a variety of magical devices for use in the battle.

  “Dragons incoming!” he cried. “Across the firth!”

  Exclamations and oaths rang out as Lord Rugon came running up behind him. The old councilor’s face was filled with dread.

  “How many?” one of the wizards called out.

  “Not sure,” Palanad responded. “But it’s a lot. You can see the glow from their flame breath through the clouds all the way from here. It must be at least a couple of dozen.”

  He spun to face one of the wizards. “Lester!” he barked. “Get out there and help with that crystal cannon. If it’s not set up to fire in ten minutes it’ll be too late.”

  The mage went racing out the door to the balcony.

  “If they attack the tower, can we defend against them?” Lord Rugon asked.

  Instead of replying, the court mage turned to a young woman in a green apprentice’s robe.

  “Aria! Get to the library and bring back Bouthan’s Dracono Incana. It’s a big book with animated flames on the cover. There should be a spell in it to set up a ward against dragons. The rest of you drop what you’re doing and help her prepare a circle to cast it.”

  Lord Rugon nodded. “I’ll go down the tower to warn the soldiers. And I’ll need to tell the council what’s happening as well.”

  Palanad fell into step beside the old councilor. “I’ll come with you,” he said. “Much as I hate to admit it, I’ll need Darden’s help to spell the tower.”

  Lord Rugon’s face distorted in anger and disgust.

  “Couldn’t the prince help you?” he asked. “And shouldn’t we warn him, anyway? About the dragons?”

  Palanad shook his head firmly.

  “My orders from the King are explicit,” he replied. “No one ascends to the Sky Chamber or tries to disturb the prince. Not for any reason, on pain of death. The stairs have been locked and spelled against entry.”

  “What kind of magic could he be working?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t sense anything at all from up there.”

  They reached the enchanted elevator. Palanad touched the magical controls and the platform began to descend toward the great hall. Lord Rugon grimaced.

  “I suppose Danor must have a good reason for this secrecy,” he said. “Whatever the prince is doing, it must be important.”

  Palanad nodded.

  “No doubt. Besides, I can’t imagine that he doesn’t know about the dragons already. With the tower ward he should be able to see the threat better than any of us.”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence. When the platform stopped, they got off and walked quickly through a heavily guarded door behind the tower stairs. They began to follow it down a long, narrow stone passageway.

  “Will Salmanor help?” Lord Rugon asked at last. “With casting your anti-dragon ward?”

  Palanad shrugged. “I don’t know. Refusing to help the King against a demon attack, and this peculiar fixation with defending the council to the exclusion of his other responsibilities … I can’t understand what’s
happened to him.”

  “Do you think he can be trusted?”

  “Not the way he’s behaving. But we have little choice. This spell is extremely difficult to cast. As far as I know no one’s even tried it for hundreds of years. My wizards are all skilled, but none of them command the kind of raw power that it needs. I might manage it on my own, but if I failed …”

  “You think it’s too risky to try without him, then.” It was a statement rather than a question.

  Palanad took a deep breath, and nodded.

  “Unless the Queen returns or the prince comes down from the tower. But he has to help. He’s the high priest, Cyrus. It’s his duty to the Covenant. He must see that.”

  They came to the end of the passageway. Another group of guards stood there, on either side of a heavily barred door. Portal and frame alike were set deeply into the surrounding rock and reinforced with bluesteel plating. An intricate rune at its center glowed with a soft white light.

  The court mage touched his staff to the rune. There was a sound of heavy metal bars moving, and then the door swung slowly open. He stepped quickly into the room, Lord Rugon close behind him.

  They found themselves in a chamber of modest size, surrounded entirely by walls of solid granite. Cots and chairs were scattered around it, their arrangement evidence of the haste with which it had been furnished. Most of the High Council — with the exception of a few like Lord Rugon, who had insisted on joining the defense of the palace — sat or lay nervously on the haphazardly placed settings, whispering together in small groups. Much of the palace’s civilian staff was gathered there as well.

  The councilors rose swiftly and came toward them as the pair entered. Baronet Kuhl, head of the Carlissan Trade Guild, pushed himself to the front of their line. His face was red with anger, and his voice sputtered with frustration and outrage.

  “What is happening?” he demanded. “Why are we being kept here, in the dark?” His face turned toward Palanad. “The council demands to know what is being done to defend the city from these demons, Mage Lantar.”

  Palanad returned Kuhl’s hostile gaze with a look of cool patience. “I answer to the King, not to the council,” he said.

  “And the King left me in command of the palace,” Lord Rugon added. His voice was less cool and less patient. “And I am senior member of the council here. You would do well to remember that, Baronet, and to temper your peremptory tone. The city is under attack. We cannot afford the time for political posturing.”

  “It is as I told you,” another voice said. The councilors parted to reveal Salmanor Darden standing at the back of the group. The serving maid from before still clutched his arm, staring at him with a mixture of terror and adoration.

  “They keep you here, holed away in a stone prison,” he continued, “hiding their failure from us, and their treason to the Light.” He nodded to the councilors around him. “You, who truly serve the people, and not the petty interests of a dynasty that has failed them.”

  “No one is ‘holing you in here,’” Lord Rugon replied, heat rising. “The King ordered that you be given sanctuary from the attack. But I won’t deny anyone who asks the right to stand with the rest of us in defense of the battlements.”

  Darden shook his head. “Empty lies, and treason to the Light,” he said airily. “The Killravens have led you to this disaster, and you must all now pay the price.”

  “If you want to speak of treason —” Lord Rugon began hotly.

  “We came to ask for your help, Salmanor,” Palanad cut in, speaking over the councilor’s angry retort. “Zomoran has brought dragons against the city. We need your aid to ward the palace. There’s no one left strong enough to help.”

  Lady Rayne started, her eyes going wide. “The Queen? The prince?”

  “The Queen is at the King’s side, leading a charge against the demons in the High City,” he replied. “And the prince is sealed in the Sky Dome performing an important task for the King. They can’t help.”

  He turned to the Inquisitor, eyes pleading.

  “We only have minutes until they arrive, Salmanor. You know the spell we need to cast. Without it, they will reduce the palace to blackened rubble.”

  The high priest shook his head. His eyes were hard.

  “It will be a fitting end to this corrupt regime,” he said flatly. “And life under the Dark a fitting penance for those who served it.”

  The court mage’s eyes went wide, and the councilors surrounding him turned to stare at him in shock. Lord Rugon’s mouth worked uselessly as he tried to form words and failed.

  “You can’t mean that, Your Grace!” one of the councilors cried.

  Kuhl’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the inquisitor, but there was a hint of shrewdness in his gaze. “You counsel surrender?” he asked cautiously. “Making accommodation with the Dark?”

  Darden waved a hand. “Those who remain loyal to the Light will be saved. The rest will be conquered and enslaved. It is what they deserve.”

  The serving girl looked up at him, eyes adoring. “You will save the rest of us, Your Holiness,” she said simply. Her voice was filled with faith and conviction.

  The high priest looked down at her. He patted her hand, still resting on his arm, and nodded. There was a dreamy, faraway expression on his face as he responded.

  “I will,” he said.

  There was a long silence. Palanad and Lord Rugon exchanged astonished glances. Some of the councilors did the same, moving slowly and furtively away from the high priest.

  Palanad studied him carefully. The fevered look in the inquisitor’s eyes clashed with the strange calmness of his mien. When the court mage finally spoke, there was a tone of dawning comprehension in his voice.

  “His mind is broken,” Palanad said firmly.

  Lord Rugon turned to him in astonishment. “What?”

  “His sanity is gone,” the court mage said. “It’s like he’s caught in a dream or fantasy of personal omnipotence. He’s convinced that this is all happening to others, but not to himself.”

  The high priest laughed. There was a distant, almost disconnected quality to the sound.

  “The Light will preserve me, and those who follow me. For the rest of you, it is already too late.”

  Infiltrator

  Palanad frowned. Something was wrong. It was certainly plausible that an invasion of demons might tip a struggling mind over the edge into madness. But while Salmanor Darden was a zealot and often a fool, he had never been so weak of will. For him to have snapped so subtly, and with so few warning signs, didn’t make sense. If he weren’t the high priest, whose magic was among the strongest in the Church, he’d suspect that he’d been enchanted.

  But that was impossible. As a full magus, Palanad was extremely sensitive to the flow of magic around him. He could feel only traces of it now: resonances from his own earlier conjuring, the casting of his colleagues in the tower, and the more distant spells from the battle in the city, coming slowly closer. To wield a dweomer strong enough to twist and break the inquisitor’s mind, and to veil it from senses as strong as his, would require incredible skill and power …

  Icy realization seized him. Instinctively, he reached for the Magic. There was little time for subtlety if what he suspected were true — and fortunately, he didn’t require it. Veils tended to be fragile, relying mainly on those they were cast against not knowing to look for what was being hidden. An enchantment that strong would surely betray itself under an active divination …

  He sensed it almost immediately. To his spelled sight it appeared in the form of a set of restraints binding Darden’s body: manacles on his wrists and ankles, a band around his waist, a spiked collar on his neck. Heavy black chains were attached to them, their lines all running off to his side.

  Even as the apparition took shape he began to hear a constant murmur of whispers. He couldn’t quite make out the words, but they seemed to be part of the vision that his divination was showing him. It was almost as
though the whispers were pulsing along the chains and into the high priest’s shackled form. They had a soft, seductive sound — reassuring but insistent, and unrelenting.

  His eyes followed the line of chains to where they joined together. They met in what appeared to be an iron haft, so that the high priest’s body seemed almost to be ensnared on the hooks of some hideous cat-o-nine-tails. It was held with a loose, casual arrogance, in the hand of a figure that stood at Darden’s side.

  Palanad’s gaze flashed from the hand up to the holder’s eyes. It was the serving girl.

  Her other hand rested on the inquisitor’s arm, as though leaning on him for support. To his diviner’s sight the fingers appeared as if tipped with long, black claws, digging cruelly into the flesh of his blood-soaked arm.

  He knew at once what he was facing when he met her gaze. Her eyes stared into his, glowing with an evil red light. And they knew that he had seen them.

  Succubus.

  Palanad reached for the Magic again, this time in desperate panic. What a fool he had been! Thinking the palace secure, at least for the moment, he had erected none of his magical defenses. The demon stood only a few feet from him, and he was completely exposed to her veiled power.

  Even as he realized his vulnerability he saw the tendril of a new chain lash out from the cat’s handle. It wrapped itself around his throat with the sound of a snapping whip. He tried to open his mouth, to cry out a warning to the others around him, but nothing happened. He found himself unable to speak or move, and the Magic began to slip from his grasp. He could only stand there, paralyzed and helpless, at the demon’s mercy. He was beaten.

  His thoughts hardened as he fought the sudden despair that ran through his mind. No, he was not helpless, he told himself harshly. That couldn’t be his own mind speaking. They were whispers, suggestions, coming to him from his enemy through the chain that now bound his throat. Even as he realized that he began to hear their seductive sound through his divination.

  His mind raced, searching for an escape.

  He could see that the chain around his neck was thinner than any of the others emanating from the succubus’ grasp. Her hold on him was much weaker and more tenuous, then, than the enchantments with which she had bound the inquisitor. Her disguise had likely given her days to cast those, with the slow subtlety needed to ensure that the high priest suspected none of what was happening to him. And that disguise had been perfectly chosen to take him off his guard, exploiting his well-known weakness for piously innocent maids.