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

by J. Edward Neill

  “Should make for an easy climb,” said Dank.

  “Assuming no Furies.”

  “We’ll know by tomorrow.” Dank shrugged. “Tonight, we rest.”

  Remounting, he trailed Dank across the stream and into the fields beyond. No dwellings were here, no signs that humanity had ever occupied the place. And likely no Furies, he decided. Dank raised a slender finger into the air, pointing to what lay between them and the forest. There, in the lowest part of the last field between them and the forest, a lake with water like silver lay. Garrett thought it the most beautiful sight he had seen in weeks. The bright, mirrored waters were ringed by trees, their wormy roots dipped like fingers below the water.

  As they drink, so shall I.

  “We stop here.” Dank slid out of his saddle.

  “Good. I will hunt tonight,” he said.

  His destrier joining him, he crossed the field and knelt beside the water, drinking so deeply he thought he might drown. I am a savage, he thought when he glimpsed his reflection. His beard was prodigious, his hair dark and slick with sweat. Were my hair copper, Rellen would say I looked like an Yrul barbarian. Were it black, perhaps Romaldarian.

  As the setting sun sprayed its light over the water, he scrubbed his skin raw and took a careful knife to his hair and beard, knowing it might be his last chance to do so for a great while to come.

  Come nightfall, he set out to hunt. The sun’s scarlet glow fled the lake’s surface, and he took to the water’s far side, where but a narrow lane of grass separated him from Velum’s outermost trees. He carried his whitewood bow, and in his quiver he kept ten razor-fletched arrows. These were his favorite hours, the period after dusk during which all the creatures of the night stirred to life. He settled between two trees and waited in silence for a deer or a wild boar to come near. The moonlight was pallid, winking upon the world like a lidded eye. Even in darkness, he saw everything.

  An hour of waiting, and the sounds he sought drew near. Footfalls thudded in the loam like thunder. Grass crunched like crackling hay. He crouched to the earth, silent as death. That is no boar, no buck, he sensed. A fawn lost from its mother perhaps, or polecats digging. He nocked an arrow and slunk out of the trees. It was then, even as he aimed at the shadow moving through the grass, a burst of dazzling radiance erupted in the night. He froze, his bow gone loose in his fingers. Just as the aftermath of the light-burst faded from his retinas, a second bolt of frozen lightning set the night afire. It was the same hue as those which had cooked Lothe’s men at Gholesh. It was violet, the pallor of death and the color of blood blended into one.

  Furyons! he believed.

  “Shoot now!” A voice cracked the silence somewhere behind him

  Dank…he cursed.

  That the little warlock had slipped behind him made him feel foolish. The explosions of light faded from his vision, leaving pale halos to float in the blacks of his eyes. He staggered, arrow half-nocked. Only when he saw the doe erupting from the high grasses did he understand. He flushed her out, the schemer. He found our supper before I did.

  He heard Dank scuttle through the grass behind him. Even half-blinded, he glimpsed the doe streaking toward the trees. There is no magic faster than I. Watch, little warlock, and learn. No matter the darkness, no matter the halos drifting through his gaze, he lifted his bow and fired. The string twanged, and his arrow screamed through the night.

  He had but a slender slice of moonlight to see by, but when he heard the grunt, he knew he had hit his mark.

  “Amazing,” he heard Dank say. “How on earth did you make that shot?”

  He emerged from the shadows and into the grass. It had been too long since last he hunted. “No more magic,” he said as he straddled his kill. “This is a sacred thing. Do not poison it with violet lights and false flames.”

  “Those were not—”

  “No more magic,” he said again. “Else it might be you my arrows find in the dark.”

  The next morn, bellies full of venison, he and Dank stood in the swaying, sunlit grass on the western side of the lake. It was time to set their horses free, or so Dank had told him. As hard as it promised to be for him, it appeared trebly so for Dank. The little man huddled in his robe, shivering like a child whose favorite dog had died in the night, a tear streaking down his cheek like a raindrop sliding down a tower’s stones.

  “You do not have to let her go,” he said more than once. “We can go far into the forest with yours and mine.”

  Dank played his fingers through his creature’s ivory mane. “Nay. There’re grasses east of here, empty fields for her to stomp through. The forest isn’t her domain. We must let them go, Garrett. They’ve done well to bring us this far. Let them go free where no Furyon may ever find them.”

  Dank released her. Unbridled, she flashed past him and into the grasslands beyond the lake. She was a blur of white and silver as she fled, her coat shining beneath the dawn, her whinnies as merry as a man released from prison. “Go on,” Dank urged. “Let yours go. There’ll be other horses. Where we go, who we face, it’s better for our friends to be free. You’d love it none too much if he were riddled with Furyon bolts or saddled by soldiers with spirits as black as his mane.”

  His choice felt inevitable. In his gut, he agonized, though he gave no outward sign. Farewell, old friend, he said silently as he freed the beast from its saddle and reins. Like everything I have known, I leave you to yourself.

  “It is well done,” Dank remarked as the destrier sauntered away.

  “No. Not well done.” He watched the beast go. “I have lost my friend, my ward, and now my horse. I have nothing left but you, little wizard. I keep no faith in men who claim the sun is shining even when a storm is upon him. When we destroy the Furyons, it might be well done. Not before.”

  Glooms

  For the fourth sunrise since entering Velum, Garrett saw no sign of the Furies.

  The forest seemed a graveyard. Every dwelling he and Dank had happened upon was empty, every hamlet abandoned. Livestock roamed the open woods, but no sign of humanity remained. He had expected bodies, ruins, and the wails of widows and children in the night, but there are none.

  “One wonders if this is Mormist anymore,” he grunted at Dank as he picked the thorns from his boots after a breakfast of bread and berries. “Or if you even know the way to Verod.”

  “I know the way,” the little man said. “I could close my eyes and walk from Gryphon to Verod to Furyon and back. The forest is empty for good reason, my friend. The folk in the north served Lord Ennoch. They knew the Furyons were coming.”

  “You imply they were in league with the enemy.”

  “I imply nothing,” Dank retorted. “The truth is the truth.”

  He frowned at that. “I assume you told this to Lord Emun. And if that is so, Emun knew all along. That would mean—”

  “…that he sent his son willingly into a Furyon battleground?” Dank snorted. “No. He did nothing so wicked. I came to the truth only recently. It took Nentham Thure to show it to me. By that time, Emun was already gone.”

  “The lords of Gryphon have long distrusted Nentham.”

  Dank stood and slapped the dirt from his robe. “For good reason. It’s my belief Mooreye has allied with the Three Lords, and thus Furyon as well. The war goes too neatly for it to be an accident. The Furyons have their fingers in many pots, but those who bargain with snakes are oft bitten. If I guess rightly, the Furyons will honor none of the pacts they have made. The Object commands that only one shall be strongest, not many.”

  Garrett shivered at that. The Object. He will not say what it is, and I will not ask.

  The day’s journey began. The fog, thick and soupy as a Mooreye swamp, clung to every surface of the forest. More is the better, he thought as he marched. No one can see us. He walked for hours in the grey shadowstuff, clawing it aside with his fingers as though he were a breeze passing through. Later, when the air cleared and the sun tried in vain to shine behind a ce
iling of clouds, he and Dank wandered through another three villages, all of them just as empty as the others. Doors were shut and marked with the letter ‘V,’ which he took to mean Verod. And I would be there, were I a better man. But instead I travel in the company of a warlock who meditates from dusk til dawn, mutters in his sleep about the stars, and cooks his suppers with violet fire.

  Late afternoon, and the slopes became sharper, the trees closer together, and the vines more tangled. Velum’s floor, now a warren of fallen limbs and storm-slain leaves, stank of rot. We must be close, he thought. It has rained too much here.

  Dwelling upon what was next to come, he slowed to allow Dank to catch up. “I have wondered, little wizard, why you chose to journey this way. You say you need me, but I see no reason why. I did not believe in magic before now, and yet here you are. I have seen you slip through the night, soundless as a bat. I have seen the way you make fire. If you can perform these miracles so readily, the way to Furyon should be easy. One begins to think; with a task so dire and so great a need for swiftness, you would finish this much easier if you were alone.”

  Dank’s bright green eyes were but pinpricks of light within his hood. “You make many good points, Lord Croft. I’ll say only this; you possess many things I do not. You might not see it yet, but your trials will come. There are powers other than mine in Furyon, and they are not likely to expect someone like you to be with me.”

  Knowing Dank would be no less cryptic, he changed the subject. “We are near Verod.”

  “Indeed,” said Dank. “The fog’s gone and the clouds are here. We’ll keep to the low paths, the gullies and the valleys. Even if the castle is still held by the Grae, we must keep our approach secret.”

  “The Furies may well have pulled it down already.”

  “Pray not, Lord Croft. If that’s so, it shall be just you and I all the way to Furyon.”

  “Not an easy trip from here,” he mused. “The Nimis would slay us, and so the mountains seem the only way.”

  Dank grinned. “You’ve been stealing glances at my map. Yes, the only way through to the sea is via the mountains. You’ve long lived in Mormist. Surely you know of the secret ways, the hunters’ paths. With those, only one mountain will truly need crossing. That’s our road, alone or otherwise.”

  He remembered the tales of the deep Crown Mountains. A treacherous place. Cruel rows of mountain rock smitten always by wind and ice. He remembered hearthside stories from when he was but a child. The wise men said few returned alive from the mountains, and fewer still unaltered by the trek. Creatures were rumored to inhabit the low, craggy valleys and snow-blasted mountainsides, wretched denizens of the night who hungered for men’s flesh in the same manner which wolves thirsted for the throats of deer.

  A while longer of walking in a shadowed valley, and he realized why Dank would suggest using such a way. The only other path, the safe road through the city of Minec, is now the Furyons’ domain.

  “Of all the places you have been, the mountain path is the last I expected you to have visited,” he said to Dank as they slogged through a gulley.

  Dank shrugged in his too-large robe. “As I said, I’ve been many places. More than any man in the world, I imagine, though few believe it.”

  Dusk arrived, swift and gloomy. Even in the gathering darkness, the forest became familiar to Garrett’s eyes. He recognized the lay of the hills, the curve of the mountains on the far eastern horizon. Verod was but a few hours away, and still no signs of humanity existed.

  The deeper the eve became, the faster Dank marched. On a hillside choked with creepers and rot-trunked trees, the little man halted and waited for him to catch up. “See?” He pointed. “There, above the leaves.”

  He saw well enough. Slowing to a trot, he gazed through the canopy of dead leaves and into the evening sky. At first, he counted six plumes of smoke drifting upward, but soon he spied more. Twenty, he counted. No…thirty. Each tower of smoke was the sign of an immense flame. The Furies. It must be. Verod and Tratec would never burn so much, so high.

  “The enemy lurks there.” Dank gritted his teeth. “Just across this abyss of trees, coughing up their putrid breath, the Furyons burn their fires to let the world know they are present. The flames are unnatural. Look at the smoke, how it curls, how the faces of the dead fly into the night. The Furyons are in the Object’s thrall. They’ve cut ties with the rest of the world.”

  He squinted at the smoke. “I see no faces.”

  “No?” Dank sounded disappointed. “Not even the eyes, hollow and hateful? The forest dies wherever they go, Garrett, and the skies turn black. Can’t you sense it, the evil hanging over this place?”

  He slowed his breathing, tuning out every part of the world save the pillars of black smoke. Yes, I sense it. The forest shivers in fear of them, every tree, every blade of grass. He sensed also that Dank’s usual calm had been shattered. The little warlock was sweating, and his green eyes gone grey. “I wondered many times if you were a liar,” he said. “And I thought perhaps I betrayed too many oaths to join you. But now—”

  “…you see that I’m right.” Dank pulled his hood lower.

  There seemed nothing else to do but go closer. The smoke’s scent was already in his nose, and with it the worry that Verod was destroyed, Rellen dead, and Andelusia forever lost. He marched on, Dank following close behind. It was not long until the sunlight failed entirely, and the trees halted at the edge of a deep forest basin, a steep-sided valley carved into Velum’s flank. The shadowed vale was as dark as a starless sky, as huge as a city.

  “I remember this chasm,” he said to Dank. “Verod lies on the other side.”

  Dank smiled grimly. “I told you leaving the horses behind was best. Imagine if they were here, if we released them so close to the Furyon horde.”

  “A hard night’s walk to go around.” He betrayed no emotion.

  “There is no going around it,” said Dank. “We have to go through it. We will spend the night in the black, where no Furyon fiend will find us. We can creep up the other side at dawn. If your friends are there, we will steal them away. If Verod is ashes, we go back.”

  His night was a sleepless one. Camped in the heart of the cavernous, root-choked vale, he lay upon his soggy bedroll and tried to dream of better days. He saw Rellen, Saul, and Sara and Emun Gryphon in his mind, all of them like ghosts. And then his thoughts ascended to another. Her smile floated through his mind like the moon over a calm-watered lake. He felt wrong to think of Andelusia so, but he could not help himself. He swore he could smell her naked skin as she sluiced water over herself from his decanter. He wanted to believe he could hear her humming the songs she so often had, and that it was she that sat on the far side of the fire, not little Dank.

  The night deepened. All remained quiet. Vermin were rampant in the deep, dark vale, but Dank kept them away with a violet-flamed torch. Lying sleeplessly upon the earth, Garrett peered through the small gap in the tree cover, a portal through which he saw into the night. The midnight clouds were broken, and the stars shining meekly. Peaceful, if only for now. And tomorrow, there may be war.

  And then the sky changed.

  Even as he watched, the stars trembled and winked out until the sky window became as black as the forest. On the far side of the dying campfire, he heard Dank’s mumbling meditations end. I should be afraid, he knew. It was no bank of clouds or errant flock of crows blocking out the starlight, but something much graver, a darkness like a cloak spanning the world’s night.

  “Did you see it?” Dank crawled around the fire and hunkered beside him.

  “Not sure what I saw.”

  “Exactly. You saw nothing. No clouds, no stars, only nothing.”

  “Speak plainly.”

  “Tis the Object,” Dank whispered. “It’s black, darker even than the night. It shrouded the stars just now, the moon as well. I felt it. Didn’t you? It calls out to this place. It knows its servants are near.”

  “The Furyons
.” The name felt like poison on his tongue.

  Dank nodded in the darkness. “Yes. The Furyons. The Object’s reach is farther than I imagined. It suffers no distance to dwindle its power. The Furyons are its arms, reaching with their fingers into Graehelm, feeding it the death it desires. Believe what you want, but if we fail, it’ll kill everything, and nights like this will reign forever.”

  Dank squeezed his forearm so powerfully it made him wince. “At first light, we make for Verod. We’ve dallied too long. We must set foot in Furyon before midsummer. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.” He pried Dank’s fingers off his arm. “Now let me be. If tomorrow we are to fight, tonight I need to sleep.”

  Verod

  At dawn over Tratec, the sun shed its light across the forest, spilling like gentle rain onto leaf and grassy slope alike. The trees stirred to summer’s warmth, the greys departing for greens. For a time it was as if the war had ended, as if the Furyons had tucked tail and left Mormist behind.

  It was Saul’s stallion who cracked the silence, his and nine others.

  He and his cohorts departed the Crossroad at a frightening pace, their horses’ hooves pounding the forest floor. Saul rode at their forefront, his iron-shod battlestaff held high, his companions’ glistening spears shining at his back. “Stop!” he shouted at the fleeing Furyons.

  “Surrender or die!”

  The Furyon spies had no hope of escape. Three in number, they fled into the trees on foot, already exhausted by their flight from the warrens of Tratec. Only one possessed a weapon, and none wore so much as a shred of Dageni mail. Saul pursued them, his battlestaff like a sledge crushing every limb the forest threw in his way. Marlos and the other riders followed through the tunnel of his ruin, wheeling and herding the Furyons like cattle, tormenting them until they lost all sense of direction.