Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1)

by J. Edward Neill

  All of them did as he asked, all but one. From amongst a mass of rising men, a lone soldier emerged. He was older than the rest, with short grey hair and wrinkles fraying his forehead and the corners of his eyes. He might have seemed feeble, but his ebon raiment was that of a Furyon knight, one who had seen decades of service. He came before Daćin, bowed, and looked his new commander directly in the eyes.

  “Sire, I’m steward of this vessel,” the old soldier announced. “I’m at your disposal. The Emperor asks that you rest today. On the morrow, we sail. For now, I’m to guide you to your room.”

  “Rest? Is that what he said?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “He insisted. Said you weren’t to be disturbed. Please don’t be angry. My only tasks are those he gives me.”

  “So be it.” Daćin rolled his shoulders. “Show me the room.”

  With the old man leading the way, he moved swiftly through the ranks of soldiers and descended far below the decks of the Exemone. The ship was many levels deep, its hallways a maze of black planks and swaying lanterns. At the end of a long, dark passage, the old man swung the door to his room open. Daćin frowned. The space beyond was tiny, a hole within a hole, scarcely big enough for the tiny bed and too-small table filling it.

  “This is it?” He tapped the low ceiling with two knuckles.

  “Yes, master. The Emperor said you wouldn’t mind. Said it would seem a palace compared to the fields you’ve served in.”

  “It’ll have to do.” He shrugged. “I ask that you not disturb me until nightfall. My planning begins today. We leave tomorrow.”

  The old soldier never answered. A click of the door at Daćin’s back told him he was alone again.

  He appraised his newest home. Within the room, more a closet than a commander’s chambers, only a narrow cot was provided. There was no chair to sit in, no chest to store his clothing in, and none but the most pitiful of lanterns to see by. Chill drafts from the hallway wafted beneath the door, filling his nose with the stench of saltwater and the noises of the soldiers working above. All in all, little better than a prison cell. He tinkered with the room’s only lantern. But home it shall be. Better to have no comforts than to long for them when they’re gone.

  He caught sight of something else within his room. A tall, shapeless lump loomed in the cramped corner opposite his cot. The lump was covered in crimson cloth, the color of the Emperor, inviting his curiosity.

  A gift?

  He went to the lump and tossed the cloth aside. What lay beneath made his eyes glimmer and his blood course like fire through his veins. A token from the Emperor, rarest of all rewards. A magnificent suit of war, armor given life by the hardest hammers of Malog, glistened beneath his fingers. From helm to greaves, the suit of Dageni steel shined blacker than the darkness between stars. At its top, a Dageni mask stared up at him, and from its shoulders wicked tines jutted. He knew it was forged for him alone to wear, likely made by the same hands that crafted the Emperor’s own raiment.

  He marveled at his gift. He craved to wear it. He wished to see his enemies flee upon glimpsing him within it. Holding his lantern high, he traced his fingers along the armor. Upon every surface, he found markings unlike any he had seen before. They were runes, the shapes of a bizarre language no one in war college had ever taught him. He brooded over what they might mean. Of Malog, he guessed. I’d ask, but he’d never tell.

  And there was another gift still.

  Upon the back of the war suit hung a great shield whose color was even darker than the armor. Sigils were etched into it, shapes streaking about its surface like the talons of a vicious thunderstorm. He picked the shield up and studied it. It felt weightless in his grasp, powerful to the touch. Tempered in the Malog fire. Unbreakable.

  The gifts were far more than he ever hoped to receive, but after a few moments of inspecting them, he laid them down. Until his maps arrived and the fleet set sail, there was little else for him to do. To worsen matters, his stomach growled, and yet there was no food on hand, no morsels to sate his morning’s hunger. More tests. He understood.

  I must outlast them.

  * * *

  Elsewhere in Morellellus, darkness prevailed in the tower of the Emperor. The afternoon hours brought little light to the unhappy place, for there were few windows and fewer cracks in the clouds outside. In the tower’s central chamber, where but a few hanging candles and a single grey shaft of sunlight dared to creep in, the Emperor paced. His face was pale, his eyes roving and wild, and his fingers gnarled into sweaty fists. It was during these moments, dark and dour, the door to his chamber opened and three figures entered. The Emperor halted. His gaze, hard as Dageni stone, settled upon the three. “Who goes?” he rumbled.

  “It is us,” a voice in the shadows rasped. “We return from Malog.”

  He glowered at the doorway. The first two figures, long, lean, and shadowy, remained hidden in the dark. The third, a fair-skinned, blue-eyed woman, was cast into the light. Thrown down by the others, the woman collapsed upon the hard slate. Her wrists and ankles were bound by chains, her naked flesh rent with recently-made scars. The poor creature, wounded and weak, made no sound when she stuck the floor, not even a whimper.

  “Another captive.” A voice issued from behind her. “From the Grae vassal of Mormist.”

  Scarlet cloak swirling, Chakran hovered over the girl with hunger in his eyes. She was barely twenty years old, yet her condition made her seem much older, as though the hurts Malog had inflicted upon her had aged her many years. He glanced upon her with a look resembling pity, but then tilted his gaze back into the shadows. “You’ve questioned her,” he said. “What does she say?”

  “It is as you thought,” said one of the shadows in the doorway. “The Grae king is dead. The east lords have gone into hiding. There is strife…and much doubt. For the Grae have yet to seat a new king.”

  “And the Grae armies?”

  “Neither she nor any of the others have seen any soldiers. We took that to mean there are none at the shore. Mormist will pose no threat. Malog shall see to that.”

  “She’s been to Malog? She’s seen what sleeps in the dark?”

  “Yes.”

  Chakran smiled with morbid satisfaction. He knelt before the girl and lifted her gaze to his. She might have once been beautiful, but as he looked upon her now, he saw her eyes were empty, her skin pallid as the moon. Whatever she had seen in Malog had unraveled her mind. She no longer cared for her life. “A pity,” he said. “She might’ve been…useful.”

  The men in the shadows retreated. “Dispose of her,” one of them said. “She is flesh without a soul.”

  The shadow men retreated beyond the door. Chakran, left alone with the shivering slave girl, stood in place for a time. He eyed her as though she were a scrap of refuse. He sniffed the air around her, seeking some trace of her scent, but he smelled only sickness and tasted only death. She was cursed, her flesh tainted by Malog, and so he left her. He went to the tower stairs and returned to his room far above, spending not a single, merciful thought upon her, tending instead to a meal of bread, broth, and wine.

  Sunrise the next morning was announced by the blaring of a Furyon horn. The autumn skies roiled with clouds the color of a thousand bruises. A storm seemed near, shouldering its way into the harbor from the east, promising a strong wind to push the Emperor’s armada. The Furyon army crawled from their beds and onto their decks, where they awaited the arrival of their master. Today was the day they had long awaited, the day of leaving, the beginning of the end.

  After the horn’s third blast, Emperor Chakran arose. He cracked open his brittle eyelids, shaking away the last vestiges of sleep as though knocking the dust from a long unused book. The morning’s weariness hanging like cobwebs from his cheeks, he hunched over the edge of his bed and pulled at his beard with calloused fingers. His dreams had been dismal, but even the poorest night of sleep could not keep him from rising today. Today was the day of he had long awaited. After dr
essing, he lumbered across his room, pushed his bedchamber door open, and ascended the glassy, ebon stairs to the tower’s top. High above Morellellus once again, he rested his palms upon the black crenellations, narrowing his gaze upon his flagship, the Exemone.

  He stared upon the Exemone’s bronze-colored decks and mighty masts. His gaze was penetrating, so sharp he dreamed he could see straight into the ship’s belly. Therein he imagined his young prodigy, Daćin of Dageni, must now be waking. As he thought of his new commander, he swelled with confidence. Were I to have an heir, it would be you, he thought. A son you are, in my eyes. The best of us. The noblest.

  With the breeze whistling through his beard, Chakran closed his eyes and sucked a deep breath into his body. He allowed his thoughts to slip into the distant past, back to the early days of his reign as Emperor. He recalled a much younger Daćin, a lad always meant to command the legions of Furyon. I remember it now. His mouth moved with his thoughts. Ten years, even as I rose to power. There you lurked, my prodigy. The War Academy, the constant tests. You were the finest. Twenty years old and already a colossus. Every weapon the academy gave you, you mastered. Every war we sent you to, you returned victorious. You destroyed Davin Kal. You surpassed all expectations. You became Furyon’s sword.

  And now Graehelm will break before you.

  The wind, brisk and biting, snapped him back into the present. The day he had long waited for was at hand. With his commander chosen, his armada built, and his armies gathered, he had no doubts for what lay ahead. Over all the lands of Furyon and beyond, I’ll reign. Beyond the mountains, the forests, and the seas, all who live will know the heel of my boots.

  Tyberia, I’m coming home.

  A few moments more spent gazing from his tower, and he passed back down the stairs. He halted at his room to set aside his robes and don his armor and weapon. He dropped his royal clothing on the floor, and in its place his silent servants fastened plate after plate of dark, masterfully forged metal upon his body. He seemed a man no longer, becoming instead a statue, more steel than human. Any weaknesses he possessed were hidden, pressed into perfection beneath layers of darkness. No other armor in all the realms of men held such power as his. Mined from the deepest veins of Dageni, forged in far northern Furyon, the ebon plates were harder than any of the earth. Its barbed greaves and twenty-tined shoulder plates were graven with the sigils of Malog, the language of the old world, in which unthinkable power was contained.

  His servants delivered his sword, laying it across his palms before retreating into the gloom. Forged in the Dageni gloom, the sharpened spoke of midnight stood nearly as tall as he. The blade was etched from pommel to point, bearing sigils not unlike those upon his armor. The sigils writhed into a language even he did not know, scattered across the dark surface of the blade like souls fleeing to the nether. The sword was impossibility made real, a thing forged in darkness. Terrible power lay within it, though few as much, nor will they until the time is right.

  Fully garbed, he gazed at his magnificence in the massive mirror his servants had wheeled in. I’m old, he thought. But they’ll still fear me. He saw the reflection of his eyes, hanging like lanterns above his hard cheeks, glinting grey like orbs of shattered slate. The wildness of his beard spread out like the grizzled mane of a beast, hiding most of his face. He sheathed his sword into the black scabbard on his back and retreated from the mirror, the blade pattering against his shoulder. I am Furyon’s Emperor, he reminded himself. They’ll look upon my reign and know it was I who resurrected Tyberia.

  My age won’t matter.

  Nor my methods.

  At tower’s bottom, he set a hard boot onto the floor, and twelve men filed in behind him. These were his personal guard, the finest of his knights, and they made no utterance as they joined him. They came to his side from the darkest passages of the tower, making hardly a sound. They were his most trusted men, his most dangerous, and they too wore Dageni armor and weapons, some ever bearing the same strange sigils as his. With his twelve guardians in tow, he strode from the tower and onto the widest road of Morellellus. The praise and cheers of many bystanders washed over him, but he marched past them as though he were the only soul in Furyon, the only wolf in a sea of bleating sheep. The quiet capturing the morning was soon broken, for when he climbed to the topmost tier of the highest dock and looked upon his armada, a roar erupted from those that had gathered to bless his leaving.

  Thunder cracked in the distance. Autumn’s last wind rippled across the harbor. The folk of Morellellus clamored for a final word, but he and his grim-faced guards passed off the dock and onto a warship whose hull rocked in the black waves like a coffin sent out to sea. The ship’s decks were drowned in a sea of black and grey, a mass of steel-encased soldiers garbed with the dark mantle of Furyon. Upon the soldiers’ countless cloaks, a symbol was emblazoned, the same mark as that upon the armada’s sails: a black sun sinking into a red horizon.

  He stood upon the deck, grinning like a lion. His soldiers crowded around him, a thousand brothers standing shoulder to shoulder. Of all the masked masses, only one stood out from the rest. He was last to set foot upon the ship before the gangplank was raised. The shadow man wore a hooded robe and carried a slender sword made in Malog. Even as Chakran strode to the bow, the man followed him, winding behind him like a serpentine specter through the grass.

  “You must be pleased,” the man said when he arrived at the Emperor’s side.

  Chakran frowned when he saw who had spoken. “I am.” He gripped the deck rails with his gauntleted hands, squeezing the wood so hard it creaked. “Furyon may not know it yet, but they’ll be grateful come the day.”

  “Yes...” The hooded man said. “But don’t forget us, whatever the outcome. You’ve endeared your people to this little ruse, but it may yet fail you. If it does, you must proceed with or without their love.”

  Chakran gave the hooded man a glower no other could see. “You and your master needn’t worry.”

  “Good,” hissed the man. “See that it stays that way. I am with you now. I shall shadow you to the Graeland. If you require me, look to your back. Never speak my name. Some might take it ill to have one of me aboard.”

  The man walked away without another word, vanishing so swiftly beneath the decks that few noticed his passing or questioned who he was. Once he was gone, Chakran wrung his eyes out with his knuckles, attempting to rub the memory of the man from his mind. In the deep silence, all eyes beheld the Emperor’s ship. He raised his armored fist into the air, clenching it as if to strangle the world. A breath of wind later, he brought his arm down like a hammer, signaling to every shipmaster the hour of leaving had come. Hundreds of anchors were lifted from the cold ocean floor. A sudden, powerful wind arose from the east, and the sails of the Furyon fleet were released from their lashings. A great gust of cold filled each sail, unfurling them like countless cloaks. When they all were open, the sea became dressed as if by a tremendous black curtain, and the ships began to lurch forward, pushing aside the waves as though the sea were made of air.

  Chakran gazed over the sea, watching as thousands of sails opened and as hundreds of oars rose and fell into the foaming water. For a long while he stood there, affixed upon the prow until the stark spires of Morellellus faded against the eastern sky. When at last the city was gone, he crossed the ship’s deck to its aft and gazed upon the Exemone. He smiled beneath his beard, a grin creeping like twilight onto his face. In his heart he felt as though the war was already won.

  Such was his way, to see with assured eyes all things of the future, even though they were unknowable to all.

  The Red-Haired Girl

  Cairn was far from war, far from everything.

  Founded some hundred years ago in the quietest corner of northwestern Graehelm, the old city lay in the center of a bowl of tumbling hills and tiny lakes, a mote in the middle of nowhere. A dusting of woods surrounded the village heart, a forest sprinkled with houses whose roofs were thatched with go
lden straw and whose doors were rickety and rarely locked. Few roads crossed into those woods, and even fewer people. It was a quiet place, its Lord Mayor a quiet man, and its people content to live as they always had.

  In Cairn, there was little to do. Other than the occasional public reading of news from the south or the annual autumn festival, its people rarely found reason for excitement. Still, there was one place, one house of gathering beloved by all. It stood at the edge of the forest, an old three-storied inn where the windows leaked laughter and the door was always open. Were it found elsewhere in Graehelm, the Rockbottom would have been considered small, maybe even shabby, but for the simple people of a town far removed from the world around it, it was a second home. With a bar never short of mead, enough tables to seat a hundred folk, and a hearth blazing in every corner, the Rockbottom was the source of Cairn’s entertainment, its meeting hall, and its joy.

  The owner of the Rockbottom was a man who was somewhat new to Cairn, in that he had lived in the old town for the small sum of fifteen years. Symon of Dalkin had come to Cairn from the east with his merchant caravan, and had remained rather than return to his busy life. Struck by the simplicity of life in the small, easygoing community, Symon had purchased the Rockbottom and reshaped it from a warehouse into a tavern, sensing an opportunity to gain wealth and an end to his constant traveling across Graehelm. His efforts were a success. Although he often longed for the open road, Symon found he could not leave his investment behind. He loved the townsfolk too much, and their coin doubly so.

  As each of fifteen autumns drew on, Symon hired a number of girls from amongst Cairn’s youth to tend his bar and entertain his patrons. He was a wise innkeep. He knew pretty faces would draw young men with plenty of coin to spend inside. Over the years, he saw his hired girls mature and leave to marry, and as the years passed so too did the memory of their names erode from his mind. Yet in all his days at the tavern, there was one young woman, one shining face amongst the many whose name he knew he would never forget. Her name was Andelusia. Symon had found her when she was but fourteen years old, flirting with trouble with the many young men in and around the tavern. He was struck by her beauty and smitten by her dark sense of humor. He had hired her without hesitation.