by D. P. Prior
For a fleeting instant, hope soared, but it was short-lived. It hadn’t been Silas’s wrist at that point. It had been stolen by someone else. Nils had seen Silas’s head collapse and pass into the Void. He’d seen what had emerged and taken over the wizard’s headless body: the flaming skull that grew its own skin, even as he watched. Blightey, Nameless had called it—the creep who’d written Silas’s book: Otto Blightey, the Lich Lord.
The hand grabbed him by the collar and pulled him free with a plop. Wind ripped around him, and icy rain beat at his face. The squid-like creatures that had held him separated and wriggled toward the trees, but they weren’t fast enough.
Blightey lifted Nils effortlessly high above the forest, even as hundreds upon hundreds of gray shapes swarmed over the squid-things, screeching, rending, and baying for blood.
Nils gawped down at Silas’s rain-spattered boots, which were planted upon a hovering disk of shadow. The wizard’s long coat flapped like washing drying in a gale.
Everything told Nils it was Silas; everything but the unnatural strength.
He craned his neck so he could see once more the imposter’s face sat atop Silas’s neck. Blightey’s coiffed hair was a wild tangle in the gusting wind, his bloodless face a study in concentration as he looked at the scene below, all the while holding Nils like he might have held a used handkerchief.
“Gurrgh,” Nils said. “You’re choking me.”
“Yes.” Blightey’s voice was a lisping whisper, detached and utterly unconcerned. “Savor it. There are few experiences to rival that of asphyxiation. Some even find it pleasurable.”
The Lich Lord’s pupils were pinpricks of flame that never left the monsters gorging upon the squid-things and turning their hungry stares upon the trees of the black forest.
“My feeders are so beautiful, aren’t they?” Blightey said, his grin almost lipless. “Besides the shark, what better example of nature’s inherent cruelty have you seen?”
Nils had an answer to that, but he couldn’t breathe, let alone speak, and he didn’t reckon he was in any position to tell the shogger what came to mind. He tried to focus on the slaughter below, where the death cries of the squid-things were drowned out by the ravenous screeching of Blightey’s feeders.
Nils’s vision was a blur. All he could make out were gray shapes like tall skinny humans with elongated fingers, only three on each hand. He squinted, but his sight was already darkening. He was sure they had no eyes, no facial features at all, save for gaping mouths that looked like they could swallow a head whole.
A voice niggled away at the back of his mind. You’re a useless tosser, boy,” his dad said. It was a memory, he knew, of the time he’d been caught burgling the house of Senator Jarus. Right bloody embarrassed me, you did. He winced at the recollected slap. Cold tears rolled down his cheeks, and then he heard his mom sticking up for him like always. Hit him again and you can sling your hook, Buck Fargin, you lowlife piece of scum.
Nils found himself chuckling at the memory. He’d always been her favorite. The chuckle quickly turned to an anguished rasp, and he knew he’d never see her again.
Nameless swam across his mind’s eye, which was funny, seeing as the dwarf couldn’t swim. He was yelling something at Nils and gesturing with his hand. Nils obeyed on instinct, reached for the hilt of his sword.
“I once caught an enormous dragonfly,” Blightey said, as he continued his rapt study of the feast below. “Over a foot long it was. Its wings were a kaleidoscope of colors, scintillating flashes of greens and purples. Magnificent creature. Sterling.”
Nils slid the blade an inch or so from its scabbard, careful not to let the slightest rasp interrupt the Lich Lord’s speech.
“Beauty is always counterpointed by decay, matter by dissolution, life by death.” Blightey gave a peculiar laugh at that, high-pitched and way back in his throat—or was it still Silas’s throat? “I took a sheet of vellum, coated it with honey, and stood the dragonfly on it. It tried to lift off and lost a leg in the process. Then it did something that perfectly illustrated the enslavement of all base creatures to their nature: it tried to eat the honey, and got its head stuck.”
Nils pulled the sword all the way clear. His fingers were so numb, he almost dropped it. His breaths were little more than gurgling hisses now, and it felt like a fist-sized rock was working its way up his throat.
“Then, I set the vellum down by a teeming razor-ant nest. You know the ones I mean? As big as your thumbnail, and with enough mandible force to rip through bone. The first wave got trapped in the honey, but that simply made a bridge for the others to cross, and then I settled down to watch as they stripped the dragonfly bare. It was, shall I say, a most invigorating experience; one of my first of any consequence.”
With the last remnants of his strength, Nils reversed the blade and thrust it back into the Lich Lord’s fruits.
Lightning ripped through his veins, and the sword spun away into the branches below. Nils choked out a scream as he fell, but his feet struck shadow as solid as rock, and he crumpled onto the floating disk, body racked with spasms.
Blightey smiled down at him, like he was adoring a newborn babe.
“My dear boy. What did you say your name was?”
Nils tried to speak, but all he could do was grunt. “Nee. Neeh.”
“Knee-knee? No, that will never do.”
“Nils. My name is Nils.”
Blightey’s eyes flickered, and he cocked his head to one side. “Nils. Yes, there’s a certain peasant honesty about the epithet. Nils it is, then. Well, my dear Nils, it is perfectly understandable for you to lash out at me, in spite of my good intentions. You have not yet seen enough of the bigger picture to witness my friendship. Do not concern yourself, though. A blade so disenchanted, if you’ll excuse my flippancy, is as effective against my borrowed flesh as a flaccid appendage before the most enticing grease-pots. There are always teething problems at the start of a new relationship, but you must not lose heart. We have all the time in the world to get to know one another.”
Nils felt like a bunch of eels was nesting in his stomach. He clamped a hand over his mouth to silence his chattering teeth.
A crow flapped its way up from a branch below, just before the entire tree began to shake and sink.
“Now they’re starting on the forest,” Blightey said. “Devouring the trees from the roots up. Insatiable. Utterly insatiable.”
All around the copse they’d recently been standing in, trees were shuddering and disappearing in clouds of black dust, and as they did so, they let out the most blood-curdling screams that made Nils cover his ears and scream along with them.
The disk drifted higher and moved out over the forest of tar, while below, thousands of feeders were swarming over the trees.
“There will be nothing left in a matter of hours,” Blightey said. “I imagine they’ll sleep it off for a bit and then pick up the trail. I’ve instilled in them a particular desire for dwarf meat. It should be fascinating to watch.”
The crow followed the disk upward and to the south, where Nils could make out the smoldering peak of the volcano they’d passed on the way to find the staff. It flew closer, as if it were going to land on the edge of the disk, but Blightey glared, and it broke off, losing itself in the swollen clouds.
They drifted on until they reached the mouth of a valley.
“Off you hop,” Blightey said, stepping away from the disk and brushing his palms together.
Nils jumped clear, just as the disk vanished into thin air.
“Not my first choice of travel,” Blightey said, rubbing his forehead, “but what better way to watch the feeders at work?”
“Better than them eating us, as well, I suppose,” Nils grumbled, hugging himself and shivering.
“Oh, they have no taste for my kind of flesh, although they might make a mess of this splendid coat. You, on the other hand, would set them salivating.” Blightey licked his lips and gave Nils a searching look that made
his skin crawl. “I’m sure I could protect you, but the question is, would you want me to? Everything comes at a price, Nils. Even friendship.”
Nils gasped as the rain ceased to touch him. Warmth seeped beneath his skin, dried his clothes and hair, the puddled soil beneath his feet. A circle of summer had grown up around them, while beyond its bounds, the storm continued to rage.
Blightey gestured for Nils to sit on the ground. With a wave of his hand, he made a fire spring up and seated himself on the opposite side, the flickering flames reflecting off his pallid skin.
“We have perhaps a few hours before the feeders are finished with the forest, and then they’ll need to sleep. In the meantime, I have a proposition for you, young Nils.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Silas here,”—Blightey swept his hands down his chest—“told me, as we passed each other in the mouth of the Void, that you are something of a student.”
“I read a bit,” Nils said. “Silas was learning me.”
Blightey winced and held up a finger. “And not altogether successfully, if I might make so bold. I am in need of an apprentice, Nils, and you are in need of a tutor. The synchronicity is undeniable. What say you we enter into a mutually beneficial relationship?”
The way Blightey inflected the last word brought bile to Nils’s throat. “Don’t think so. If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon be on my way.”
Blightey pursed his lips and gave a shrug. “We’ll discuss it later,” he said as he snapped his fingers. A picnic blanket appeared beside the fire, loaded with sweet meats, pastries, fresh fruit, bowls, plates, cutlery, and an enormous ceramic pot filled to the brim with steaming broth.
Nils couldn’t stop himself from drooling. He gave Blightey a sheepish look and reached for a bowl and spoon, then flinched when Blightey raised an admonishing finger.
“Masters and pupils only,” the Lich Lord said, grabbing a bacon-wrapped delicacy and dangling it in front of his mouth.
Nils’s stomach grumbled, he was so hungry. More than that, he was starving. He wondered if Blightey was someone he could bargain with. Perhaps if he said he’d consider the apprenticeship…
Something corpse-blue wriggled from the end of Blightey’s delicacy. It was some kind of worm with a head like a… like a thingy, which it turned back on itself, so it could gnaw at its bacon wrappings. Blightey popped the whole thing in his mouth and crunched down hard.
“You don’t know what you’re missing, my boy,” he said with a grease-covered smile.
The Lich Lord’s chewing threw up the image of a hundred maggots working their way out of a week-old carcass.
Nils rolled onto his side and puked his guts up. When he’d finished, he saw the crow again, atop the valley wall, watching him with beady eyes.
It cawed, and Nils had an even nastier vision of it pecking at his liver while his body was slowly consumed by a river of fire.
Blightey watched him with an amused grin. With a shrug that said, “Suit yourself,” he turned his back on Nils and continued to stuff his face.
The Lich Lord clicked his fingers, and the patch of summer drew tight around him, leaving Nils outside, in the icy clutches of the storm.
That got Nils thinking he’d made a mistake. It was just like those times back home when he’d been sent packing to the yard for answering back once too often, when Mom used to tell him he was in the dog house.
NAMELESS
The dwarves had moved quickly. They were teeming about the slopes of the volcano in well-organized groups, setting up camp, building fires, reconnoitering the lava vents with the efficiency of an army of termites.
Nameless followed Cordy up the last twists and turns of a narrow gully onto open ground. He was mesmerized by the roll of her fine dwarven—
He checked the thought instantly. In days gone by, he’d have said it out loud, and she’d have given him a playful thump, but there was no chance of that now. The realization came like a dagger in the guts that twisted mercilessly until he snapped out of it.
“I once knew a girl, Cordy was her name,” he started to sing, before he was even aware his lips were moving.
“What’s that?” Cordy spun round.
Nameless looked up like a child who’d been caught stealing from the beer shelf—not that that had ever happened, of course. “Nothing.”
“Yeah, right,” Cordy sneered. “I heard you. What are you trying to say?”
Movement on the incline ahead distracted Nameless and gave him an excuse not to answer. “They’ve seen us.”
“So what? Answer me, you shogger.”
“It just came out. I wasn’t thinking. I always sing when I’m nervous.”
She took a step toward him and stuck out her chin. She had the kind of look about her that left him in no doubt what she thought. The dagger blade turned into a greatsword. Nameless felt his cheeks burn with shame, and he looked down at his feet.
“Do I make you nervous?”
Nameless couldn’t bring himself to answer.
“Good,” Cordy said. “Then sing some more.”
“Cordy, I—”
She pressed up so close, he could feel the warmth of her breath, smell the sweet musk of her sweat.
“Sing. I want to hear the rest of it.”
There was no more. The words had sprung to mind of their own accord. On a better day, he might have called them inspired, but he knew that couldn’t be the case; he’d not touched a drop since the Urbs Sapientii mead he’d downed in the cavern of the cyclops.
Cordy’s glare was unrelenting. He felt her willing his lips to move.
He coughed and winced as he said, “I once knew a girl, Cordy was her name; Arx Gravis fell…” His voice quavered, and he felt his eyes welling up.
The tramp of boots on shale insinuated its way into his mind, but he didn’t look up.
“Go on,” Cordy said, her voice cold as steel.
“Arx Gravis fell,” Nameless said again, hoping the right words would come. They had to rhyme. It wasn’t a song if it didn’t rhyme. “And Cordy did the same,” he finished, relieved he’d found something, something that would tell her how much he’d lost, how much he—
“Is that a threat?” she hissed right in his face. “Wasn’t it enough for you to drench the city in blood?” She grabbed his beard and yanked his head up so that he had to look her in the eye. With her other hand she clutched his wrist and made him raise his axe. “Do it, you evil shogger. I’m not scared. At least then I’ll be with my Thumil. With my… my…Marla.”
She shook so much Nameless thought she was going to collapse. He wanted to steady her, hold her, but he was afraid his slightest touch would shatter her into a thousand pieces.
A hand clamped down on her shoulder, and she gasped.
“Got you,” Kaldwyn Gray said. “And look who’s with you. I might’ve shogging guessed.”
Kal’s face was enclosed in a bronze helm, and he wore a red cloak, same as he had when Nameless was his commander.
A dozen heavily armored comrades pressed up behind him, cloaks sodden, shields deflecting a barrage of rain, swords a bristling fence.
They were all new recruits. Nameless could tell just from the way they moved. But what did he expect? He’d sent most of the Ravine Guard to their deaths at New Londdyr, and the rest he’d killed himself.
They closed in around Nameless and Cordy in a tight cordon. Kal squeezed Cordy’s shoulder and pushed past her, sticking his face up close to Nameless. Way too close.
“Butcher,” Kal said, no trace of friendship left in his voice. “I knew I’d get a chance to—”
Nameless’s fist hammered into Kal’s chin. “Shog off, Gray, can’t you see I’m talking?”
Kal pitched over backward and hit the ground like a felled tree.
The others paused uncertainly for a moment, and Nameless didn’t miss the opportunity to use his best barrack ground bark.
“Anyone makes a move, and you’ll be get a ser
ving of axe blade for dinner. Understand?”
He knew most of the men—Fror Bellos, Sern Abar, Lampol Drynn. They’d been good, solid working folk, for as long as he could remember. Frequented the same taverns as him and Thumil. They weren’t fighters, and they hadn’t had the time to learn how to be.
They lowered their swords and retreated a couple of steps.
“Now,” Nameless said, not wanting to lose momentum, “I’m taking Councilor Cordana to a very important meeting, and I’d appreciate it if you lads would provide an escort.”
“Uhm,” Drynn said, looking to his colleagues for support. “After what happened… you know, back at the ravine—”
“Make it easy on yourself, laddie,” Nameless said, glowering at the poor shogger.
Drynn lowered his eyes.
“Good. Now, Councilor Cordana, let’s go see our friend Grago.”
Cordy drew in a deep breath, glared at Nameless, and shook her head. But she set off toward the camp all the same.
NAMELESS
Grago’s tent stood a little way apart from and above the tarpaulin shelters of the rest of the camp. Nameless could tell it was Grago’s: it was the only one big enough for his head. Not only that, but the way it was positioned at the top of an incline spoke volumes. It was like a lord’s castle, dominating the shelters being set up at the foot of the volcano.
“Sorry, Councilor, you’re now allowed in there.” The Red Cloak outside blocked Cordy’s path with his shield. He mouthed something at Drynn, who just shrugged.
“Think you should let her in, Theon.” Drynn glanced at Nameless.
Cordy shoved the shield with her palm but Theon wouldn’t budge. He was a solid tub of lard, almost as wide as he was tall. He looked at the escort for support, but Drynn just deferred to Nameless with a hapless glance.
When you’d dealt with grunts as long as Nameless had, the solution was easy. Grunt louder.
“Out of the shogging way!” he bellowed, and Theon cringed and shuffled to one side.