He eyed Dank. “Gifts?”
Dank moved his arms in his profoundly deep sleeves. He seemed a scarecrow in his cloak, a bird’s nest buried in an oak tree, but somehow dangerous. “Rellen, your father’s among the wisest men of Graeland. He requires precious little counsel, least of all from me. And yet in some matters, those outside common convention, he’s found me useful. Why only recently, he begged that I fashion an instrument of fire for his son. Surely you remember it?”
His hand fell to his waist, where Lorsmir’s sword usually lay. Even now, he regretted leaving it in his room. “The blade was made by Lorsmir. By his fire. On his anvil.”
Dank smiled. “Lorsmir shaped the steel well enough, but it was I who put the flame into it. It was to be a token gift from your father, a reward for your efforts in Ardenn, but at the same time it was to be worthy of slaying your worst enemies, the sort of foes steel isn’t enough for. Believe otherwise if you wish, but know that it’s my craft you carry.”
“Wait…” He grasped his left forearm, where once his silver bracer had lain against his skin. “Was it-?”
“Yes, I also made that.” Dank nodded.
He blanched. Garrett mercifully took control. Ever steady, the Mormist hunter sipped from his cup and gazed expressionlessly at Dank. “We will take you at your word.” He tipped his cup toward the little man. “Though your timing is odd. You say this Object is supremely evil, but also that you can find it. If that is so, you must be able to make the voyage to wherever it is, and you must be able to break it with some power you possess. If this is all true, Rellen and I wonder why you have not done so already.”
Dank lowered his head. “Ah, Lord Croft, the way to Furyon is fraught with more danger than I dare risk alone. There are wild things out there, obstacles even I can’t overcome. However strong I might seem, I wouldn’t tempt this journey without capable friends at my side.”
Garrett cut straight to the heart of it. “If we take you at your word and understand your tale, you come to us seeking help, not offering it.”
“One might look at it that way.” Dank folded his palms together as if in prayer. “But I beg you to see the larger picture. The help I ask is neither for myself nor any singular soul, but for all of us. All lands will turn to ash if the Furyons aren’t halted, and all cities like Gryphon swept away and replaced with obsidian towers tall enough to scrape the stars from the sky. You and Rellen have it in you to decide what you will do. This task requires men of strength, men with good hearts, and that’s why I am here. I’ve looked the world over for brave men such as you. Will you join me in this? Or will you send me away?”
Garrett retreated into thought.
Rellen sank even deeper into his chair.
Of all the things he had expected to uncover upon his return, Dank was not among them. “The answer is no,” he said, though hardly decisively. “We can’t help. If we joined you, who’d be left to fight for Graehelm? We’d return to nothing but a graveyard. No. What you ask is impossible. We’ve a war to fight. Your timing is terrible. You should find someone else to help you.”
“There are no others.” Dank’s eyes went darker still. “Graehelm will never rebuild its armies in time. The Crossroad is guarded by Lord Nentham Thure, and few know the truth of the enemy’s coming. Lord Lothe’s army is scattered and slain, and Lord Ahnwyn lies frozen and dead in the barren fields twixt Triaxe and Velum. Look to your heart and see the truth. There are none to save Graehelm, Rellen, none at all. Only by helping me can you hope to save them.”
“You’re wrong. My father—”
“…is captive now.” Dank’s words deadened the hall.
“What?”
“Captured,” Dank said again. “He can’t help you.”
He felt as though his heart had frozen. Before he could collect himself, Dank spoke again.
“Young master Rellen, your father never made it to the capital. While approaching the city with Jacob’s entourage, he was set upon and taken. His men were dispatched, their limbs strewn about the grasses like leaves. Few are said to have survived, though no one’s certain where they were spirited off to.”
“Mooreye,” he cursed. “Nentham the maggot, Nentham the wicked. Crows peck my eyes out, it was him!”
“It’s possible.”
The hall fell into such quiet it had never known before. He trembled in his chair, fists clenched and throat constricted. “I’ll kill him, you understand?” He stood and sent his chair flying. “I’ll cull all the sons of Mooreye and string them from the rafters for every maid in Gryphon to see! I’ll smoke out every Mooreye manor, Nentham and his children first! The villain will die once and for all! Why? Why did you wait to tell me this? Is this a game for you?”
Dank kept his calm, unflinching against the storm. “I told you this last, knowing you would go blind to all else once you heard it.”
“You…” He rattled the table with a final hammer of his fist. “You come into my home and sneak into Father’s tower. You preach disaster on my doorstep, all the while knowing, all the while lying. You claim you’re responsible for Lorsmir’s sword, for my resurrection, but you offer no proof. You ask me to forget my duty and take some unknowable risk. What do you know of war and death? You’ve been in Gryphon the whole while. What manner of advisor are you? This house will crumble around you, and all you have is a tale ten-thousand years old.”
Disgusted, he whirled to depart, but as he turned he found Garrett’s impassable palm placed upon his chest.
“Wait.” Garrett’s eyes looked even darker than Dank’s.
“Why should I?” he growled. “I’ve nothing more to say. Nentham has Father, and this wandering worm knew all along!”
“Dank, leave us be,” Garrett rumbled over his shoulder. “We will talk again tonight.”
No sooner did Garrett command it than Dank swished his cloak and swept away to the distant cellar door. All became quiet in his absence.
“I’ll not barter with him.” Rellen ground his teeth together. “He says Father is kidnapped, but he says it with such coldness. Like it’s not important. Who does he think he is? Why are our soldiers not marshaling for war against Nentham?”
Garrett held his stare. After a dozen breaths, he felt his temper cooling. He almost hated Garrett for it, hating the way his rage died so quickly.
“Dank’s not your enemy,” said Garrett. “He speaks only the truth, however harsh. I did not have a chance to tell you this, but before you woke I chanced to speak with your mother. She mentioned Dank in passing, and she cast him in the light of a friend, not a foe. With so much lost already, we must weigh our anger against our better judgment. Clear your head. Come walk with me outside. Take a few breaths of summer. Look on that which we must keep safest and then decide what you will do.”
Ashamed of his outburst, he dropped his gaze to the floor and exhaled a mountain of air. Garrett’s right, he knew. I need to clear my mind. Though not for Dank’s sake.
The gloom of the hall was oppressive, the news of his father too fresh. Trailing Garrett, he left it behind. He climbed two sets of curling stairs, cut through a passage inside a gated watchtower, and ascended to the top of the outer bailey, where a narrow walkway circled the entire keep. For a while he walked on the wall’s top and soaked in summer’s warmth, his mind roiling like an ocean. Too many voices, he thought. The Furies scream for war, Nentham claws for the throne, Dank whispers, Marlos complains, and Garrett preaches. Only mother and the dead are silent.
“So now what?” he remarked as he stared eastward over the wall. “Father, Jacob, Bruced, Ande… everyone’s dead or missing. What am I supposed to do?”
“Do as the lord of Gryphon would do,” said Garrett after a long silence.
“You say that as if you know what it’s like.”
Garrett halted beside him, palms atop the parapets, eyes calm and grey as a twilit field. “Consider the possibility that Dank’s tale is true. Kings, fathers, and red-haired girls will not matter.
Death will become us all if we sit in the darkness and simmer in our hatred. We must breathe, and then we must act.”
He shook his head. So easy for him to say. He has nothing. He loves no one. Like a boulder falling off a mountain, he cares little where he lands.
Tempering his thoughts, he closed his eyes against the sunlight. “Maybe…” he said as though speaking to the wind. “Maybe we can defeat the Furies by breaking this Object he speaks of. But what does it matter? If we leave to do it, there’ll be no one to gather our defenses, no one to guard Gryphon while the Furies put everyone to the sword. And what of Father and Verod? I can’t just walk away. No. Neither Dank nor anyone alive can keep me from doing what I should.”
Garrett gazed upon the far horizon. Rellen imagined he sought the Furyon storm, dark and forbidding as any army, closing its lid around the coffin of Mormist. “I cannot argue with what you say,” said Garrett at length. “The sacrifice would cut deep.”
His gaze stalked the same horizon as Garrett’s. His eyes felt cooled by the wind, his mind cleared by the sunshine. “I know what I have to do,” he said at length. “No one in Graehelm will listen to me, not enough to build an army anyway. I need Father for that. I need Jacob. I know where they are, Garrett. Nentham has them. The Mooreye dungeons are said to run deep as Grandwood’s roots, and Nentham’s torturers, well… he knows that if Jacob and Father were free, they’d call for an army. What else can I do? I have to go see for myself. I have to go to Mooreye.”
“With me, with you, even with a hundred men we would not survive,” said Garrett.
“I knew you’d say that. I’m going anyway.”
He glanced at Garrett, and his gaze fell to the horizon. The skies were as blue as the royal threads of Gryphon, the prairies green to the edge of sight. He did not care for the day’s prettiness. In his mind’s eye he saw only the black parapets of Mooreye City, only the sunless skies and scarlet rain that surely ruled in Verod.
“Yes,” he said graver than before. “Mooreye it’ll be. No other choice. Dank is nothing. Father is everything.”
The Breaking
At dusk, Rellen dined alone in his father’s hall.
Helena and a pair of servant lads did their best to make it seem a feast. They stacked his table with a platter of roast swine, two baskets of warm bread, and a decanter of the finest mead remaining in the keep. They skittered about, knowing what Dank had told him, not nearly brave enough to try to console him. Without anyone near to judge, he cast all his supper manners aside. He devoured his meal like a winter-starved wolf, making more a mess than ever in his life.
After three plates were cleared and three cups drained to their bottoms, Helena approached. She seemed terrified to interrupt him, but did so anyway, whispering in his ear. “Ser Rellen, when you’re done, you should go to Lord Emun’s tower. Lady Sara bid me tell you she’s ready to see you.”
His mouth stuffed with bread, he gave the poor girl little more than a grunt. When she tiptoed off, he pushed his platter away, brushed off the breadcrumbs on his tunic, and marched dourly to the tower passage. Soon he was gone and the door shut behind him. The hall was utterly silent in his absence.
Many moments after Rellen left, Garrett emerged from the shadows in the corner of the hall. His appearance startled Helena half to death.
“Master Garrett!” She jumped. “Were you hiding? I didn’t see you. Sorry for that. Had I known you were here, I would’ve brought more meat and mead.”
“Not hungry tonight,” he assured her. “I went to yon window to think, and the night fell upon me.”
“You didn’t desire to dine with Rellen?” she questioned. “He needs you, you know. Everyone else is gone.”
He smiled for her sake. “For this night, he and I needed to be apart.”
Helena went on her way, and Garrett wandered to Emun’s table. The scraps of Rellen’s meal were strewn about like bones in a dog’s cage, a mess fit for a whole table of lords. He thought to sit and sample what little bread remained, but decided against it. The soreness of the last week’s ride still lagged in his legs. Alone enough that his weariness did not need hiding, he ran his palm across his bearded cheek and stretched his hands above his head, wincing when his bones popped in their sockets.
Enough, he thought. I tire of waiting. Come out, little sorcerer. It is time we finish this.
A while longer of pacing about the hall, and his ear caught the sounds he expected. He heard the gentle tug of cloth across the floor and a clink like a coin dropped onto cold stone. He peered across the hall’s dark expanse, aware he was no longer alone. “Show yourself.” His voice echoed from the floor to the soaring ceiling. “You cannot hide forever.”
He glanced to his right. His gaze fell upon a shadowed figure. Dank was seated at the head of Emun’s table as though he had been there all along. The little man was wrapped in an oversized cloak, his nimble fingers playing like knives upon the table.
Garrett loosed his gravest look, reminding Dank who the most dangerous man in the room was. “You should have tread more carefully on the subject of Rellen’s father,” he said as he approached. “That was neither friendly nor wise.”
“I’ll apologize,” Dank offered. “I promise.”
He moved closer. He could have sworn he saw Dank smirking, which made him like the little man even less. “Rellen’s young at heart,” he said. “Harsh words wound him, and poorly-timed truths arouse his anger. But a man like me questions the intelligence of the one who speaks them.”
“Consider me duly scolded.” Dank appeared suitably humbled. “There was no easy way to say it, and I’ve never been known for my tact.”
He drew himself up behind a chair and leaned over its back, scrutinizing every crease upon Dank’s face, every dart of his eyes. “You came to House Gryphon twenty years ago, or so you say. But your purpose has always been the same. You need allies for your crusade.”
Dank flinched. “Master Croft, I came here for the same reasons as you. Lord Emun’s family is a rare island of benevolence in an ocean of war and greed. But I admit; Gryphon also attracts a most excellent crop of warriors. They come here in droves to serve Emun, sent out by whatever village spawned them. The mighty Lorsmir, the bear Bruced, young Rellen himself, and then of course…you.”
“You know nothing of me.”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Dank shrugged. “But I know plenty of Rellen. He has a good heart, the boy, and he’s not to be taken lightly with a sword.”
“You have laid your plans, but Rellen will not go. You need warriors, and none remain. No one here will accompany you. Your quest is dead.”
Dank folded his fingers and shook his head, giving away nothing. “Ah, but if my quest is dead, then so are you, brave hunter. Even were you to fashion a miracle and defeat the Furyon host, it would be but a short measure of time before they returned. That’s the nature of their relic. It won’t allow them to fail.”
Tightening his grip on the back of the chair, he gazed into and through the little man. “For argument’s sake, let us suppose you are right. If the Furies harbor something dreadful, something so powerful as to make them invincible, your plan is folly. The Fury realm will be vast, their vassals many, and their machinations sprinkled like seeds across a land none of us have ever walked. One might wander forever and never find this Object of yours.”
A shadow settled in Dank’s eyes. The little man looked somehow pained, as though a memory of some horror had sprung to life in his mind. “I told you once, Lord Croft, and now I’ll say it again. I can find the Object. It calls to me when I dream. It screams at me when I’m awake. I’m attuned to it. I sense its malice, its hindrance of the natural world. I need no maps, no guesswork. I only need safe passage to Furyon. If Gryphon won’t lend me aid, I’ll be forced to barter with...less savory sorts of men.”
Garrett rubbed the back of his neck. He tells the truth, he sensed. He passes my tests. He is a liar, but not about this. His face gives it away.
Dank arose. His cloak pooled about him like oil dripping from his skinny limbs. “Come, Lord Croft. I’ll show you something. Follow me.”
He did not ask where Dank meant to take him. He simply followed. Dank strode to the keep doors and flung them open. The sentries beyond saw who it was and shrank against the walls, terrified for a reason Garrett could not guess at. Soon they were outside, standing in the courtyard grass beneath the stars, where no soul stirred but for the two of them.
“There.” Dank stretched out his arm and pointed northeast, where the violet dusk merged with twilight’s pitch. “That way, past the fields, past the trees, past the mountains and the sea. That’s where it lies. By day or night, I know where its black heart beats. We must find it, Garrett. By all that we hold dear, we must find it and shatter it. Else we’re naught but bones.”
Garrett stewed in silence. His fear is real, he decided. He is no madman. Deadly serious, same as the Furies. If Emun knew about this, he said nothing for Rellen’s sake.
“Same as the Furies, indeed.” Dank stripped the thought right out of his mind. “Same as yourself, some might say. You sense it now, yes? Something sinister hangs in the skies between us Furyon’s heart. I’m no liar. Some will say the tales of Archithrope and Niviliath are exaggerated, that there’s no magic, and that millions didn’t die. I know otherwise. Furyon must fall, and you must help me.”
* * *
Far above the courtyard where Garrett mulled and Dank gazed into the night, the windows of Emun Gryphon’s high chamber were wide open. The breeze entered at will, tossing the waiflike curtains like spirits in the night. Inside, the tower was lit by the delicate glow of two lanterns, half-shuttered and hanging from silver chains.
The last time Rellen had entered here, he had stumbled across Dank, and his plans to gather an army and march back to Mormist had been dashed. He now hesitated at the room’s entrance, uncertain what awaited him. “Mother?” he called out. “Are you there?”
Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1) Page 40