Rubin touched the pocket where the letter had been. He had not yet told the benefactor about what Aemon had done. Why? He could not say. It was not like Aemon did not deserve to have assassins hunting him down.
Clearing his throat, Rubin said, "He was seen in the Temple of Sacred Lights with a harlot who claimed she was the scion of—"
"Scion." There was a short pause. "Then I saw right. Did this woman wear something around her neck?"
Rubin's stomach cramped. Curse this indigestion. "The letter never said."
"How long ago did they arrive at the temple?"
Rubin considered lying, but thought better of it. "I received the letter weeks ago."
"So he has been there for weeks with the scion? What has the Order done? Have they detained her?"
He was about to say he had no idea, but then he remembered the rest of the letter. "I guess they did nothing with her. As the agent informed me, Aemon went with the woman into the Great Dark."
Rubin heard a thumping noise again. It sounded like a knight in full plate stomping around on a concrete floor. He waited for the benefactor to say more. When he had not heard anything for over five minutes, he sighed. In the future, he should have a chair brought down here to sit on. If the benefactor was going to make him wait—
A hissing sound filled the room. Rubin backed away hurriedly, ignoring the pain shooting up his spine. The door— the door was rising!
He held his breath and watched in amazement as a figure stood in the gloom on the other side of the threshold. Hooded in a great black cloak, only its face was visible, rounded bright-yellow eyes staring at Rubin. "What. You. Who." He could not form words.
The benefactor walked forward, his feet clanking on the ground. "The time is upon us. I must leave and go to the temple with all haste. The one you called the scion will have need of me. I have waited countless years for this moment." He pulled the hood low over his face until Rubin could only see his glowing eyes. "My love, I shall light your path."
With that, he strode past Rubin and ascended the stairs two at a time. Rubin stared after him for a long time. What had just happened? Should I have stopped him?
A beeping sound from beyond the door drew Rubin's attention. He peered into the room and was surprised at how small it seemed. There was no bed, no latrine, nor any kitchen for food preparation. The only thing inside was a chair and... Narrowing his eyes, Rubin hobbled forward.
Hanging from the wall were monitors—dozens, each displaying different locations. Cities, towns and even the Halls of the Priest King. Rubin paled when he saw his own office. He has been watching me all this time... watching all of us, for centuries.
Who was the benefactor? How had he survived so long?
Rubin studied a monitor displaying a large metal rampart with soldiers manning it, unleashing pots of burning oil at something in the distance. He leaned his staff against the wall and lowered himself into the chair. Then he bumped his staff and it fell sideways, hitting one of the monitors.
"Fifteen coppers. What an outrage!" a male voice snapped, causing Rubin to start in surprise.
"I'm sorry, but with the war, my stock is hard to come by." The second voice was a woman.
"I'll pay no more than five coppers, you thieving rogue."
Rubin frowned at the monitor his staff had knocked, which appeared to show a female shopkeeper and a man haggling for a sack of potatoes. Somehow his staff hitting the monitor had made the sounds come out of the speaker hanging from the wall.
Out of interest, he tapped the monitor displaying the battle at the Flowstone Gates. "Burn em all," a man shouted as a catapult flung a pot of burning oil into the distance.
Cameras. Like the Order used. But these were everywhere. How had nobody seen them?
Another monitor showed the Priest King's own chambers, the leader of Stelemia presently sitting in a great iron chair and gazing out over his vast dining table filled with food, his features hidden behind his mask. Then Rubin saw a smaller display, with scrolling numbers running across it. Taking a closer look, he found the numbers to be social demographics, including a figure for the entire population of Stelemia.
If the numbers were at all accurate, the current population trajectory of the kingdom was in terminal decline. Rubin leaned back in the chair and stroked his chin as he watched the population number trickle down, one at a time. The fighting at the Flowstone Gate drew his attention as that screen lit up brightly. An explosion, from one of the enemy projectiles.
From the information Rubin had received from his agents over the years, he knew much of the capabilities of the technologies of Ibilirith. These sorts of advanced weapons did not exist in Stelemia. They were clearly from the ancient world, when the divines had still been mortal and humans had forged technological wonders, long since ground down to dust.
He glanced at another monitor showing the Temple of Sacred Lights. Why had the benefactor had everything under surveillance? Why had he left?
Rubin shook his head as he watched the merchants at the market plying their wares. The profit the bank could have made with surveillance and demographical technology such as this...
A bright flash filled the Flowstone Gate monitor again. When it dimmed, Rubin saw several broken bodies and a jagged hole torn through the metal gate. He touched the monitor, and it zoomed in. Blinking, he touched it again, this time keeping his finger pressed to the screen.
Then he saw a glimpse of the enemy and moved his finger away. Their bodies reflected the flames burning all around them, but the intense heat seemed to have no effect on them. It was difficult to tell how big they were, and none seemed to be carrying any weapons in their hands. At least none Rubin recognized.
"What are you?" He leaned closer. "Why are you here?"
Rubin sat and listened to the voices on the monitors for a long time. When he left hours later, he climbed the stairs, feeling the walls close in around him, the sacred lights barely seeming to hold back the gloom.
The ache of his indigestion had grown worse as the hours had worn on, but the grim certainty of the bleak future weighed most heavily of all on Rubin's aging joints. The benefactor, the heart of the bank, was gone. A mysterious enemy had destroyed whole cities and fought to gain entrance to the Stelemian Cavern, the center of civilization. Worst of all, his most able protégé, Aemon, had gone into the Great Dark with the one who called herself the scion.
The harbinger of doom.
CHAPTER 1
AEMON
Kara was gone.
She was gone. She had left him.
Why? What did I do? I was trying to help.
As much as Aemon understood thoughts like this would get him nowhere, he kept thinking them. He knew it had not been Kara who had struck him across the face, nor thrown him down the ramp. It had been someone else. It had to be!
Aemon followed Erinie and Minard as they raced along a moss-covered corridor. With every step they moved further and further away from where Kara had left him. He had only gone several hundred feet when his legs gave out from under him and he collapsed face-first into the green mossy growth. Erinie slid to a stop. "Wait! He's fallen over; we have to help him."
Minard stopped and looked back. Aemon tried to stand, but his left leg no longer held his weight. When Kara had thrown him, he had felt something crack somewhere in his lower leg. The pain was excruciating, but he had put it aside as he beat on the door, hoping Kara would open it and let him go with her. Then Semira had arrived, and they had fled.
Aemon gritted his teeth, his bloody nose throbbing. He took a deep breath and prepared to put his weight on his injured leg. "I... I can get up, just give me a moment." He went to stand, but a sharp stab of pain made him collapse again. No. Come on, you stupid thing. I need to find Kara!
Erinie and Minard raced over to him. "What's wrong? Is it your leg?" the librarian asked.
He nodded, sweat pouring from his face. Erinie lifted the bottom of his pants and ran the tips of her fingers across his
limb. "There's swelling and bruising, but it doesn't appear broken."
"The bone might be cracked," Minard suggested, leaning the torch against the wall.
Searching through one of her bags, Erinie took out a long bandage. When she had unwound it, she said, "I'll wrap this around your leg to keep the bone in place. But I'm warning you now—it will hurt."
Aemon nodded his head.
Minard held him down as she wrapped the bandage around his leg. He cried out in agony, the pain tearing at him like claws. Then it was over and he fell back, breathless.
A distant scream echoed along the moss-coated tunnel. The monk snapped his head up. "That sounded like Kahan. Maybe he finally succumbed to your poison gas."
Erinie shrugged. "We need to keep moving. The scion is gone and there's nothing we can do to help her right now."
The monk gave her a scathing look. "She wouldn't have gotten away if you'd let me kill her. I promised her I would if she became a threat."
"I didn't come all this way so a stupid choir boy could turn on us at the last minute. We have to trust in Arden's vision. The scion will save us."
"I'm not going to trust a hereti—"
Erinie put a hand on the hilt of her dagger. "Don't you dare say that word."
Aemon moved his hand toward his mace. If she and Minard came to blows, he needed to be ready to support her.
The monk did not reach for his staff. "I won't fight you, Erinie. You can hate me all you want, but it's not going to change anything." He grimaced. "I'll never trust in a vision spoken by a man who didn't live under the sacred lights. I'm sorry."
A flicker of pain crossed her face. "I'm one of those people you despise, as were my friends and family."
Minard stared at her as if lost for words. Aemon sat up as he heard a shuffling sound. The other two continued to stare at each other, evidently not hearing it.
Minard finally spoke, "You saw how she was talking, the way she looked. She wasn't the same scion we left the temple with. I'm not sure what happened to her, but at some point she changed."
"How could you let the Dark Brother convince you to betray us?" Erinie shook her head. "I told you what he did to us."
"Shush," Aemon said. "Listen."
Erinie and Minard slowly turned their heads. "What's that noise?" the monk asked.
"Why don't you go find out," the librarian snapped under her breath, folding her arms across her chest.
The sound drew closer. Erinie instantly changed her demeanor and reached for her alchemical components. Aemon held his hand out to Minard. "Help me up."
When he was on his feet, he leaned on the monk for support. "We need to find you a walking staff," the monk whispered. "Too bad the scion dropped hers."
By now the noise was on the other side of the doorway, fifty feet back along the corridor. They could not see what was making it, for the torchlight did not carry far enough. Something loomed at the edge of the light—something that towered over all three of them. They backed away.
The form entered the torchlight, and Aemon became mesmerized. Before them stood a walking flower, its petals perfectly formed and the color of blood. There the similarity to an ordinary flower ended. This thing stood ten feet tall, its scarred stalk thick and corded like muscle. The most horrifying thing of all was the human-like face staring at them from the center of the flower, green veins pulsating around its eyes.
And it spoke. "Net ognya." Then it bared its teeth and came at them in a frenzied, undulating dash.
"Ibilirith, protect me," Minard gasped.
"We need to get out of here." Aemon tried to step on his injured leg but cried out as searing pain shot up it.
Erinie stared at the approaching monstrosity, her hands motionless in one of her bags. Minard was busy staring too. Aemon slapped him on the back of his bald head. "Come on!"
To his relief, Minard started to move. "Let's go, Erinie. If we're ever going to finish our fight, you need to move."
As the librarian ran, her hands frantically mixed ingredients into a small pouch. Even with only bearing part of his weight, Aemon's leg throbbed with every step. The flower was less than two dozen feet behind them, calling out in its strange language.
They had only gone a hundred feet when Aemon's leg collapsed under him. Minard held him up and all but carried him along.
Erinie completed her concoction, spun to run backward, and hurled the pouch at the approaching creature. Fire erupted as it struck the flower dead in the face. An all-too-human scream erupted from its maw as it ran around, consumed by flame.
Aemon winced. The sound was almost as bad as when the soldiers had burned at Celestial Rest.
They ran on until the wail of anguish ended. When they stopped to see what was left, Aemon expected to find only a blackened mass of petals, but instead found the entire tunnel alight. The fire was burning the moss growing on the walls. As he watched, the flames raced along the tunnel toward them.
"Get moving," Erinie screamed as she hurried past them.
Minard's arm muscles bulged as he lifted Aemon off the ground and carried him in his arms. Like a monster in pursuit, the fire rushed after them as they sped along the tunnel. The heat grew intense, and the roar of the raging inferno was near deafening. "Any idea where we are going?" Aemon yelled to Erinie.
"Just keep running," the librarian replied, her voice barely audible over the cacophony.
They ran into an antechamber and slowed their pace. The chamber was overgrown with trees and plants of varying colors and sizes. Several human-like faces stared at them from the undergrowth. More of the walking flowers stood around, pouring water from buckets into the wild growth.
Half a dozen green-lipped mouths opened at once. "Ogon. Ogon!"
Erinie gestured toward a door on their left. Minard stumbled toward it. Aemon groaned as his injured leg bumped against a tree trunk. A wave of fire burst into the room, instantly engulfing the front ranks of plants. The walking flowers screamed and ran around like children until the inferno engulfed them too.
As they sped along this new tunnel, more of the flowers ran about, their voices panicked, each crying out the same words as those back in the antechamber. "Ogon. Ogon."
Three emerged from a doorway as the companions ran past. Aemon studied them. One was a taller flower who stood protectively over two smaller orange-petaled plants. The taller creature said something to the smaller ones behind it and they retreated into the room. Were they a family? A mother and her two children? Yet more poor creatures altered by genetics?
The flower made eye contact with Aemon as it receded behind him. There was intelligence in its eyes, and perhaps something more. Sadness?
His chest clenched. What if the initial creature had not meant them harm but had been trying to speak to them? Would Erinie's alchemy kill them all?
There was nothing he could do but watch the fire pursue them along the tunnel. As the flames roared up behind the mother flower, Aemon closed his eyes. He did not want to watch her burn.
THEY STOPPED TO REST in a storeroom. In the distance, they could still hear the roar of the flames burning through the green tunnels. Whatever the flower-people were, they had not spread their gardens to this part of the Dead City, for it was a gray, still and silent ruin.
The three of them stared at one another, faces blackened with soot, breaths slowly returning to normal. Aemon's thoughts turned to Kara. Where was she? Was she all right? Why had she left him behind? Why had she changed?
Too many questions, with no way to answer them. I will not leave this city until I find you. I love you, Kara.
"We should get moving again," Erinie said, getting to her feet.
Aemon pushed himself up on an elbow. "Can you use your map device to help us find another way to Kara?"
She shook her head. "For some reason, the city isn't mapped. I can see the edges of it, but not the tunnels within."
Aemon and Minard shared a look, and then the monk asked, "So what do you plan on doing? Ar
e we going after the scion or do you want to leave?"
"No, I'm not leaving the city." Erinie gazed into the distance. "The scion said there was a library here and I want to find it. There might be something there that could help us fight the war back in Stelemia."
"What if you can't read what's there?" Aemon asked, remembering the strange writing on the doors. Clearly, the people who had once lived here had not spoken Stelemian.
The librarian narrowed her eyes. "Then I'll try to learn their language or find something else that can help us. I already told you, dangerous things are hidden within this place. Perhaps we could turn one on the enemy."
"I think we should find Kara first," Aemon said. "She might need help." He hated that Kara was alone and not herself.
"I agree," the monk said, clutching his staff. "Who knows what she's up to."
Aemon reached for his mace. "I will not let you kill her."
The monk rounded on him. "So you'd let her unleash something that will destroy us all?"
"Let's not argue about this right now." Erinie's hands were on her hips. "If we find the library, there might be a map of the city. We can use it to find another path to the scion."
Minard shouldered his equipment, then picked Aemon up. "What if we run into something even worse than those flower-faces?"
"We let it eat you, while Aemon and I run away," the librarian snapped.
The monk looked hurt by her retort, but he inclined his head toward the door. "Let's get a move on."
Heading out the door, they made their way along the tunnel. This section of the Dead City was far more intact than the area where they had entered. The ravages of the war waged in other parts of the city seemed to have spared it.
They arrived at a colossal warehouse, their torch a bubble of light within a world of darkness. Metal crates sat on huge shelves, some large enough for fifty people to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in, while others were smaller, no bigger than the length of a man's arm. Many had rusted through, their contents spilled across the floor. The three made their way through the mess of items strewn everywhere.
The Lost Sun Series Box Set 1: Books 1 and 2 (Lost Sun Box Set) Page 44