Wrath of Lions

by David Dalglish

  “However, I must point out, my Lord, that he did end the life of the Lord Commander. Should that sort of insubordination be rewarded? What if every underling who wishes to be rid of a pesky superior does the same to achieve a higher station?”

  Karak stared at him in disappointment. “You should know better than to ask that question, Velixar. None will rise up that way, for I reward my children with titles as I please. If I were to take the lowest delinquent in the dungeons of Veldaren and place on him the mantle of Lord Commander, the men would treat him with just as much respect as they do you. Do you understand why?”

  “Because you were the one who named him,” he said, lowering his head.

  “Correct. As a god, my title was neither earned nor given to me. It was a station I was created to hold, and none can strip it from me.” His eyes blazed. “I, on the other hand, can strip any man of his title, deed, and even life if I so desire.”

  Mine as well, Velixar thought, but kept it to himself.

  Karak continued: “While the death of Lord Commander Crestwell is indeed unfortunate, Gregorian believed, with all his heart, that she had turned her back on me.” He pointed to her face. “You made mention of her different appearance earlier, and you were correct. Look closely at her eyes and mouth, Prophet, and you will see it: the lines of age, the withering of skin on bones. She was no longer ageless.”

  “Is aging a sin, my Lord? Only a select few have been blessed with agelessness, and even those who denied that gift were not cast aside. Vulfram was mortal, and you never once expressed distrust in him…at least until the end.”

  “They were different people, with different ways of thinking. Vulfram was a man who balanced the love of his family and his dedication to me. He was objective. Avila was not. Her beliefs were strident, singular. If she grew to love that girl more than me, as she visibly did, it would only have been a matter of time before she deserted me.”

  “I see. That does, however, beg one question, my Lord.”

  “Which is?”

  Velixar wandered toward the bodies again, poking his finger inside Avila’s gaping chest.

  “This wound,” he said. “I have seen none like it, burned the way it is.”

  Karak joined him, peering down into the scorched cavity.

  “Faith and power are interchangeable, Prophet,” the deity said, lowering his voice to a soothing whisper. “And occasionally faith can manifest itself as power in times of great need, leading to greatness. I have observed it time and again throughout the journeys my brother and I have embarked on, though this is the first instance I have seen the phenomenon here on Dezrel. It makes perfect sense that Gregorian, the only man to survive my Judges, would perform such a miracle.”

  Velixar frowned, mulling it over.

  “So his belief in you gave him strength and power beyond himself?” he asked.

  Karak shook his head. “How disappointing that you do not see the truth even now. The universe is fickle, and that which is given always requires payment. Gregorian’s faith was a conduit for power…my power. He was in a dire moment of need, with order hanging in the balance, and his belief reached through the ether, borrowing a small piece of the fire that burns within me.”

  “The same as with my own abilities? All of your followers’ power must come from you?”

  “Correct.”

  “So without you, we would merely be human.”

  “Without me, none of you would exist.”

  Good point, Velixar thought. “Did you feel it when it occurred?”

  The god laughed. “The energy he borrowed was tiny, like a single blade of grass in a field hundreds of miles wide. I felt nothing.”

  “How much power do you have at your disposal?”

  Karak glanced away, raising an eyebrow.

  “It is finite,” he said. “For now, that is the only answer I can give.”

  Excitement hummed through Velixar’s veins, and on reflex, he searched for writing implements. The space was empty but for the two slabs and the bodies that rested on them. With a pang, he remembered what had been stolen from him, and he curled his hands into fists, breathing heavily. A disgusted grunt left his mouth.

  “You are fretting about the book,” Karak said.

  “It is not just any book, my Lord. All of the knowledge I have gleaned since you and Ashhur created me is written within it. There are passages of great power in there, ones that may be used against us if your brother recognizes the journal’s worth, which he most certainly will. Should that occur, any advantage we have may be lost.”

  “The journal may not be on its way to Ashhur,” Karak said. “Your certainty in Patrick DuTaureau’s thievery is unwarranted.”

  “Who else might have taken it?” Velixar asked. “The book vanished that very night, while I was away from my tent. I can think of no other reason for the mutant’s presence in our camp. Besides, Ashhur knows of the journal, as do many others in this godsforsaken land. It would not surprise me in the slightest if your brother were the one who sent Patrick after it. And if he knows of my plan with the demon…”

  Karak looked at him sidelong, a glance Velixar returned.

  “Darakken, my Lord. I have studied his memories, and within the elven tombs I found many secrets, some showed to me by Errdroth Plentos, some of which he would have preferred I never discovered. The spells to banish the beast are complicated and cannot be remembered, but I did find them in writing. Over the past months, I’ve worked to reverse the spell, to resummon—”

  Karak shook his head, interrupting him, and he seemed strangely undisturbed.

  “Once again, Prophet, you forget your place. Why would I, a part of the deity who originally created the beast, require a book written by you to make it whole again?”

  “You know the spell?”

  Karak laughed. “There is no spell, Prophet. What these hands created, these hands can bring back once more.”

  Velixar stepped back, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  “Ashhur lied,” he whispered.

  “My brother is incapable of lying, Prophet.”

  “He told me resurrection is impossible. He would not bring Brienna back to…would not bring the elf girl back for Jacob.”

  “The elf was not his creation.”

  “But if I were to perish, he could have brought me back? You could do the same?”

  The god pursed his lips and squinted. After a few moments of silence, he replied, “It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “Think on it, Prophet. The demons were cast away from this dimension by Celestia, their bodies destroyed while their essences were trapped in nothingness. Yet there was one demon who perished in the great war with the elves, was there not?”

  “Yes. Sluggoth.”

  “You brought back the other two. Why not him?”

  Velixar closed his eyes, thinking back to the moment when his entire life had been obliterated into something new.

  “I couldn’t,” he said. “I reached for it, but it just wasn’t…there.”

  “It was killed, not banished,” Karak said. “And as time passes, the essence continues on to its final resting place. It populates the abyss below Afram, a ghost among ghosts. The longer it is there, undisturbed, the greater the difficulty. To bring it back to mortality? A soul can be separated from a body, but it must immediately be trapped or placed within another. The moment the soul transcends the barriers between this world and Afram, bringing it back becomes near impossible. Perhaps Ashhur could have brought back this Brienna, but it would have only been a shadowed form of her, disjointed and in a body doomed to rot and break. Either that, or she could have been brought back as a ghost, barely able to hear or understand the sight and sound of you. I am surprised that you did not realize this in all your wisdom.”

  “I am sorry to have disappointed you,” Velixar said, dropping to one knee. Again, he’d been shown that he was lesser than he thought himself to be, yet instead of letting it frustrate
him, he let it remind him why he had sworn his life to Karak. Better to think on that than to relent to thoughts of Brienna.

  The god dismissed his apology with a wave. “Enough. Stand up.”

  With that, Karak stepped up to the two corpses and placed his hands on them. Both burst into layers of raging black flames. Their dead flesh charred and melted off their bones, and then their bones caught fire as well, succumbing to the flames’ hunger until the slabs contained nothing but two human-shaped outlines in ash. Velixar drew back from the scene, remembering a similar one that had taken place many months before, when the lifeless form of that beautiful elf had been handed the same fate by Ashhur.

  Velixar cringed, his heart sinking once more.

  “Do not be dismayed,” the god told him, misreading his expression. “Fret not about Darakken, Prophet. If what I plan comes to pass, we will have no more need for the creature. But I need you, Velixar, the swallower of demons. No matter what your failings, you are still my greatest disciple. I handed you the medallion and named you High Prophet for a reason.”

  Velixar bowed, taken aback by the uncommon espousal, but the taint of his failure was still like a festering boil on his soul. No matter what his god told him, no matter how strongly the pendant pulsed on his chest, he could not let it go. He wanted to discuss these matters with someone other than his deity, wanted to talk with someone like Roland, a receptive ear with a desire to learn, only one who would not turn away from him.

  That man exists, he reminded himself. I will seek him out tomorrow, and perhaps I will ride with him all the way to Mordeina.

  “Now go get your rest, High Prophet,” Karak said. “Tomorrow we march, and victory will not be very far behind.”

  Come high noon the following day, after fifteen thousand men packed up their belongings, donned their armor and weapons, and joined their formations, the new Lord Commander gave the order to advance. Line by line they marched over the bridge, armor clattering, horses plodding, banners floating limply in the stifling summer air.

  Velixar remained at the side, watching man after man clomp onto the Wooden Bridge. Nearly six hours had passed by the time the wagons that took up the rear, including the one that had housed Lanike Crestwell, bounded onto the bridge’s sturdy slats. Velixar sat tall on his charger, fingers tapping Lionsbane’s hilt, his lips tightening into a thin white line of concern, before he finally shook his horse’s reins and guided the beast to follow the rest.

  He had spent the morning searching for Boris Marchant, questioning the young soldier’s superiors and even those who served in his platoon. None of them knew Boris’s whereabouts, so Velixar had resigned himself to carefully examining every soldier who crossed the bridge. Still, he had never once seen Boris’s face. He concluded that the young man must have fallen prey to one of the wolf-men’s claws. He shook his head, feeling foolish for his sorrow. There were other capable students here, young men who would serve him just as well. When all was said and done, he would find another.

  CHAPTER

  36

  The dark became a living thing, pressing in on Laurel, wrapping her in its ethereal arms, suffocating her. In the blackness she had no concept of the passage of time: she might have been down in the dungeons for a day, a week, or perhaps even a lifetime.

  With no outside stimulus, her mind retreated inward. Whenever she rubbed her eyes, the bright flashes that lit her vision became faceless loved ones calling out to her from a distance. She saw her mother and father, her sisters and dead brothers—even Mite and Giant, their wrappings glimmering with the phosphorescent light of inner space. The stinking corpse beside her became a dozen different monsters and hateful people, and she cowered in the corner, as far away from it as possible.

  Formless voices stalked her in the darkness, growing ever closer with each passing moment. You are as worthless as a whore.…You have turned your back on your god.…You deserve your fate.…There is no more hope. She screamed in protest against them, but they did not stop their assault. Day and night, through the indistinguishable margin between sleep and awareness, their accusations stabbed at her, driving her further from sanity.

  She almost wished for the Final Judges, the new rulers of Veldaren, to come for her and end her suffering. Almost.

  It was Guster, her father figure in Veldaren, who helped her hold onto the final threads of sanity. As she lay suffering, the old man’s calming words, imagined though they were, echoed throughout her skull, pleading with her to uphold her end of the bargain. I put my faith in you, his voice said. You are the key—you who were not a slave to blind belief…you who learned the errors of your ways…you who love Karak despite the Divinity’s obvious lack of love for you…

  Laurel began laughing.

  “I am mighty!” she shouted, sobs wracking her every other word. “I am strong!”

  The blackness closed in on her yet again, and she felt the ground shift beneath her. Creaking noises pierced her ears, as well as the scrape of stone ground against stone. It wasn’t only the darkness that was alive, but the dungeon itself. She sat up, pressed the heels of her palms against her ears, and rocked back and forth. She pictured her god in the months after the creation of man, long before her birth. In her mind’s eye, she saw him pounding the earth with his fists, digging deep into the land, and shaping the walls of this very dungeon. He lifted his glowing eyes, smiling wickedly at his children as they gathered around the rim of the crater he had created, Laurel among them. If you turn away from me, his voice said in her mind as his stare burned through her, you have turned against the light of order. Let the shadows of chaos embrace you hereafter.

  “I will not,” she whispered, defiant. “I am Laurel Lawrence, and I am strong.”

  “Yes, you are, my lady.”

  Laurel ceased her rocking and glanced up. All had gone silent; even the rats seemed to have stopped skittering. She drew a breath into her lungs and held it, in the grips of an even greater terror. She then heard the sound of breathing—not her own, but someone else’s—and the soothing male voice spoke again.

  “Laurel, I am here for you.”

  “Karak?” she murmured.

  A soft, kind chuckle was her answer.

  “Not Karak, my lady. Not even close.”

  Her world suddenly assaulted by an explosion of brightness, Laurel kicked herself backward, screaming. It was as if she had been hurled into the sun, its flames roasting her flesh and melting her eyeballs in their sockets. She flopped over and cried, arms held over her head, waiting for the rest of her to be set aflame until even her ashes were scorched to nothingness.

  The gate to her cell creaked open, and a new sound hit her ears—footfalls sloshing over wet stone. Her body was not on fire. Laurel swallowed her tears and glanced up.

  Two figures stood over her, a man and a woman, lit from behind by flickering torchlight. She focused on the man, a handsome, slender sort with a dark complexion, kind hazel eyes, and a head of curly black hair. Her eyes traced the strong outline of his jaw and curly locks that bounced above his shoulders. She knew him, even though he was wearing a buttoned-up cloak rather than the armor of the Palace Guard.

  “Ca–Captain Jenatt?” she said.

  The man squatted down, holding out his hand. “Pulo,” he told her. “There are no titles needed. None exist any longer.”

  Laurel hesitantly grabbed his hand, and Pulo Jenatt, former captain of the Palace Guard, helped her to her feet. Beside him stood Mite, crouching low, her covered head swiveling. Laurel hovered unsteadily, her knees shaking, and then looked down at herself. The elegant dress that Lady Connington had given her was a torn and sloppy mess, covered in a slimy black substance so thick that none of the original turquoise could be seen. Most of the gems that had been stitched to it had broken free. Strangely, the fabric seemed to be moving. She glanced to her left and caught sight of the rotten corpse, the trail of maggots that had wound its way into her corner.

  “Get them off me!” she screamed, pushing
herself away from Pulo while desperately tearing at her dress. It came off in clumps, as if its threads were as decayed as the corpse. She felt the maggots writhe against her and came close to vomiting.

  “My lady, it’s all right, Let us help.”

  Feminine hands were on her in an instant, shoving her against the wall. Laurel braced her hands against it, leaning forward and wheezing as her clothing was torn from her body. The drenched material slopped against the stone floor, leaving her naked as the day she was born, but she didn’t care. A damp towel was then run over her from head to toe, cleaning away the filth. She began to gag. Something was pressed into her hand. Laurel looked down and saw a small burlap sack in her palm.

  “Place it over your nose and mouth,” said a youthful female voice. “To help with the smell.”

  Laurel did as she was told, and the nauseating stench of decay and feces was muted by the fresh smells of hyacinth and lilac. She took a deep breath, her nerves stilling with a final shudder.

  “Thank you,” she said through the sack.

  Mite nodded and backed away from her, joining Pulo. The realization struck her that Mite had broken her vow, and Laurel’s mouth gaped beneath the sweet-smelling bag.

  “Come now, Miss Lawrence,” Pulo said. “We haven’t much time.”

  Her wits slowly returned to her. She lowered the sack and asked, “What is happening?”

  “Not now. I’ll explain on the way.”

  She looked down again, feeling suddenly modest. She crossed her arms over her bare breasts, even though Pulo seemed not the slightest bit interested in her nakedness.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Lawrence,” he said, seeing her reaction. “We will find you something to cover yourself with once you are safe.”

  Mite grabbed her hand and gestured to the opened gate with those soft blue eyes of hers. For the first time, Lauren noticed something oddly familiar about them, but she had no time to question it. Before she could even get her bearings, the diminutive Sister was yanking her into the corridor. Pulo had snatched the lighted torch from the wall and was holding it out in front of him as he ran forward, leading the way. Laurel’s feet ached as they slapped against the hard stone floor, and the air burned in her lungs. She pleaded with her saviors to slow down, but Mite’s grip was firm, her drive unstoppable. They passed cell after cell, the stench of decaying bodies overwhelming. Laurel brought the sack she had been given to her nose once more.