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

by J. Edward Neill

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “No man is so brave and noble as a Furyon, who takes a woman to her doom, but does so with a smile.”

  “I’m not smiling,” he said. “I’d rather be with my master and leave you safely with your Rellen and your Garrett. You won’t believe me, but this is the truth.”

  She snapped her eyes open, casting her gaze to the black tower looming just behind him. “You are right. I do not believe you.”

  No matter the sea’s radiance and the glory of the twilight touching the water, she knew she could never feel the same way as Arjobec did. To her, the ocean was the last frontier before death, a doorway to the end of time. She felt sick to her stomach, as fearful of the water as she would be of a goblet of poison against her lips. She felt only emptiness inside her. Furyon, she reckoned, would not prove to be the realm Arjobec boasted of. It would be far, far worse.

  He led her away from the tower and nearer the ocean. At the edge of dusk she came to the Furyon camp upon the shore. Tents and fire-pits and empty cages littered the sands as far as she could see. Only a few hundred Furyons were present, and most of them languid, sullen, and leering. She feared them not. Her gaze was elsewhere, wandering within the shadows at her back. Someone, or something, is following us again. I am sure of it. The same as a dozen nights during her voyage, she caught the slip of a man gliding just at the edge of her perception. “Do you see him now?” she said to Arjobec. “The man behind us.”

  He pretended not to notice. Shaking his head, he led her and her mount across the filthy sand toward the longest of the Furyon docks. “There’re many Furyons here, mistress. One man at our backs doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “He has been behind us since Orye.”

  “Oh?”

  “There is no sense in denying it. You know as well as I do. You always have. Who is he? What does he want?”

  Drooping atop his horse, Arjobec looked ashamed. “Mistress, I…I can’t say. It’s not for me to know. If he follows, there must be a reason. Perhaps our master sent him. I don’t know.”

  “He is not your master’s. Your master would have told you.”

  Arjobec nodded. “Yes. He likely would’ve.”

  “Then who is he? Who would follow us so far?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say he is the Emperor’s man.”

  “And why would you say that?”

  He looked to the star-streaked sky, then to the dark and roiling sea. She sensed the truth was finally at hand. “Because Ceres said to expect him,” he said starkly. “‘Watch for a lonely wolf,’ he told me. ‘Malog’s eyes are upon you, and her.’ And so they are, mistress. Malog gets what Malog wants. What would you have me do?”

  He brought her to the sea. She felt small beneath the stars, a child wandering in the shadows of the two massive cliffs. The Furyon ships, sails down and ropes dangling across their decks like so many nooses, loomed high above her. Arjobec dropped down from his horse and bade her do the same. “That one’s ours.” He pointed to a two-tiered frigate at the end of the dock.

  Her sandals sank like stones into the sand, filling up to her toes with grit and silt. She gaped at the huge frigate whose top deck was stacked with cages, some of them flush with Graefolk. The last of her courage fled. She had tried to be like stone, to be as fearless and stoic as she remembered Garrett to be, but now her heart shuddered beneath her breast like a rusted coin clattering inside an empty cup.

  This is real, she understood more than ever. This is happening.

  He is taking me to Furyon.

  Down the dock he took her, tugging her by her wrist whenever she lagged. She went numbly, all sensations dwindling save for sight. Arjobec halted and showed a sheaf of dry, crackling papers to a ghoulish Furyon guard, but she heard nothing they said, and felt none of her usual horror when the Furyon slid off his mask and gazed with soulless eyes upon her. Arjobec continued toward the end of the dock. She passed two galleys on the way, and within the scarlet lights of the galleys’ lanterns she glimpsed the captured thousands, men and women of Mormist shackled and caged like animals. To her, the poor creatures were already dead, lost souls waiting to be harvested by Furyon scythes. She saw Furyon sentries patrolling between their cages, whipping hands that extended too far, playing the tips of their black-bladed swords against whatever flesh they like.

  “Best not to look,” Arjobec told her. “Your fate isn’t theirs.”

  Beneath the star-dusted sky, she walked the dock all the way to its end, halting at the plank leading up to the frigate’s topmost deck. Here was the end, it seemed, and yet she could not help but look behind her. There, gliding down the shadows of the dock, she saw her follower again. She fixated upon the black-clad man. His face was hidden by the darkness, though not the rest of him. He wore no armor, no Dageni mask. His strides were slow and graceful, and his demeanor such that none of the other Furyons dared intercept him. “What does he want?” Her voice was but a whisper.

  “Come, mistress.” Arjobec tugged her. “It’s our turn to board. Hurry.”

  “Why should we hurry? Are we in danger?”

  He never answered. Too numb to resist, she let him lead her up the ramp, across the cage-littered deck, and toward the frigate’s gloomy hold. Soldiers and sailors gazed at her, and prisoners watched hopelessly as she drifted between their cages. She looked for her follower again, but lost him in the rush. I will see him again, she knew.

  Arjobec ushered her into a door and through a half-dozen hallways, delving into the lowest gut of the ship. She had never been on a real boat before. The dark corridors and narrow passages were disorienting. Already she longed for a breath of fresh air, but drank only the scents of the ocean and the stench of humans packed too tightly together.

  He brought her to a door at the end of a narrow corridor. The shadows were long here, the only light from a lantern some ten paces behind. The old soldier looked dreadfully anxious, she thought. He was sweating, and his angst he wore like a leaden medallion about his neck.

  “What happens now?” She feigned calmness.

  He wiped the sweat from his brow. “This is your room, mistress.”

  It took many breaths for the truth to settle into her heart. The door in front of her was fashioned of heavy, unbreakable planks. A tiny window, cut crudely into the door and barred with cold iron, stood at eye level, and the darkness was too deep for her to see what lay beyond. “A cell?” Her lips deadened when she said it.

  Arjobec gulped. She sensed he hated what he was about to do. “Mistress, I’m sorry.” He cracked the door open, the planks creaking with an agonizing sound. “Though I wish otherwise, you must remain here for now.”

  “You want me to be surprised.” She felt as though she were dying inside. “But I am not. I knew this would come.”

  “It’s for your own safety,” he sympathized. “I’ll see you many times each day, but I can’t let you roam, not on this ship. I promise you; better days are due. Perhaps a while off your feet and out of the saddle will do you well. Rest and be patient, and soon we’ll be in Morellellus.”

  “I should have thrown myself in the water. I could have done it, you know. I was one step away.”

  In silence, he led her through the door and sparked a candle to life on the room’s tiny table. The reality of her prison sprang to life. Her cabin was pitifully small. She saw a sagging cot, an urn of stale-smelling water, and a stool with one of its legs missing. Stranger still was that the walls, floor, and ceiling were banded with strips of iron, cold and rusted as swords left a decade in the rain. She trailed her fingers along a line of it and drew back a fingertip tainted orange with metallic dust. The smell of it made her ill. “Is this meant to keep me in? Or to keep something else out? Will I stay here until Morellellus? Or will someone collect me as a pile of bones after I have died?”

  Arjobec gave her a look of grandfatherly concern. She saw the whites of his eyes as he backed out of the room, little sad stars fa
ding into the midnight of the passage beyond the door. “Don’t say such things, mistress,” he said as he shut the door and locked it tight. “You know you aren’t meant to die. I’ll bring you food and fresh water on the morrow. Until then, you must rest.”

  He left her then. The silence jarred her. Only the candle’s pallid glow remained, casting small shadows that danced weirdly upon the walls. She was suddenly, profoundly alone. She ripped the rags from her hair and tossed her sackcloth dress into the corner. Her skin still crawled. For time unknowable, she sat on the dusty cot and shivered, gazing blankly into nothingness. All because I left the castle. She remembered Verod, the pale stones of her tower, and the voices which had plagued her dreams after Rellen had left her.

  Foolish girl. Proud and impatient. Fickle as the wind.

  All because I left Cairn…

  Much later, after a long while of sorting the many sorrows of her heart, she was jarred back to her senses. The ship was moving. She felt the waves slam against the hull, filling her prison room with thunder. She heard a distant drum banging, and sensed the ship lurch behind the thrust of hundreds of oars. Her candle had burned out, but she needed no light to understand what was happening. Graehelm was gone. She would soon be in Furyon.

  She would never see home again.

  The Orb of Souls

  In the topmost room of her life’s loneliest dwelling, Andelusia perched atop a sill and watched from a window as dusk descended over Morellellus.

  Her gaze was dark with all that lay before her. The skies were the color of slate, the harbor black, and the skeletal husks of Furyon galleys motionless atop the water. The city seemed a contrast of new and old, with hard obsidian spires lording over a warren of lesser dwellings, the whole of it sprawling in every direction. There were few of the gardens Arjobec had promised and none of the golden fields. She saw no trees, no markets flush with Furyon goods, and she heard no laughter. The city was just what she expected it to be.

  Hard and cold as the Furyons themselves.

  What Graehelm will be fifty years from now.

  She was not the same woman as in Graehelm.

  Her journey across the mountains and long captivity in the lightless bowels of the Furyon frigate had carved away much of her softness. She curled her legs and sat forlornly atop her sill, and the light in her eyes was nearly extinguished, her hair still sodden with yesterday’s rain. Her newest confinement was an empty warehouse abandoned on the city’s outskirts. Her room was furnished with only a chair, a bed, and a handful of candles, not unlike her cell aboard the Furyon frigate. Her new dress, though as green as the one Garrett had given her and almost as resplendent, hung from her body more like a funeral shroud than the pretty thing it was supposed to be. Her lips, sealed against all sound, opened so rarely that the sound of her own voice seemed a forgotten thing.

  From her window, she glimpsed the sea, and the sight reminded her that there was no going home. Nothing was beautiful any longer. Nothing mattered.

  Even as she watched the cloud-curtained sun slip beneath the horizon, she was startled by a knock at her door. Arjobec entered carrying a bundle, which he brought before her and set onto the chair beneath the window. “Good evening, mistress,” he said too amiably for her liking. “Today was a busy day, but I made time to go to the bazaar. I thought you might like these: a new pair of sandals, a comb for your tangles, and a flask of sweet-mead, finest in the south.”

  “Thank you.” Her voice was a whisper.

  “I thought tomorrow we might visit the bazaar together.” His smile broadened. “‘Tis best to see it with your own eyes. Perhaps a phial of spice perfume or a necklace of Dageni gemstones might help you remember how to smile?”

  “As my lord wishes,” she said spiritlessly.

  “I see.” His enthusiasm fell flat. “What is it then? What can I do, mistress? What will break the ice surrounding you?”

  “When do we leave? When do we go to the paradise you promised?”

  “I don’t know,” he lamented. “As before, we’re quarantined until told otherwise.”

  She looked to the ocean again, the water darkening the same as her soul. “Then I need nothing.”

  “Nothing? Truly nothing?” He looked worried. “Our master is a wealthy man. Anything you desire, Morellellus can provide. To stay so melancholic for so long…it seems pointless.”

  She gazed at him. He never looked so weary as then, or so full of sadness. “I need nothing,” she said. “Morellellus might hold every jewel in the world. It does not matter.”

  “Ah…” he sighed. “Then I suppose I’ll see you on the morrow. Perhaps your mood will be better by then, though I begin to wonder.”

  Leaving the bundle of gifts, he retreated to the door. She did not watch him go, but simply stared at the sea. He opened the door to leave for the night, but lingered on the threshold.

  “Mistress?” he called to her again.

  “Yes?”

  “It’ll all be better soon. I promise you.”

  “It will not.”

  “I’m sorry you see it that way.”

  “It is not your fault. It is mine. Whenever I dream, I wonder if I would have come to Furyon anyway...even without you catching me.”

  He looked baffled. “Why would you think such a thing?”

  “I feel it…” she said softly, tapping her chest lightly with her fingertips. “Something in Furyon calls to me. It wants me to be here. It has my whole life.”

  The poor old Furyon stared at her. “Perhaps you need more sleep.”

  “No. The voices are loudest when I sleep.”

  “Oh,” he creaked. “Well then, goodnight.”

  He left her, no doubt thoroughly unnerved. It was a mistake to say anything, she scolded herself once he was gone, even though everything she had told him was true. Since the moment her sandals had struck the Furyon shore, she had felt ensnared, though not by the Furyons. Something, or someone, calls to me. She felt its tug when she was awake, a distant thrum pounding in her blood. She felt it far more powerfully whenever sleep took her. Voices in the night lulled her with promises of glory, and always she felt as though she were flying, soaring ever northward. Sometimes the feeling filled her with a dread sense of power, and other times with a moribund sensation, as though all the death and destruction of the Furyon war were somehow connected to her. It is not madness, she believed. My mind is as steady now as ever.

  She turned away from the window. Her breaths were like shivers, her pupils wide and dark like a clouded twilight sky. She slid off the sill, accidentally knocking her gifts to the floor, not caring that the flask of sweet-mead cracked and spilled. Maybe sleep is wise, after all, she thought while slipping beneath her sheets. This was her seventh eve in Morellellus, and though she had not marched or ridden since arriving, she felt more exhausted than at the end of her journey through the mountains.

  Her pillow was happy to receive her. She laid her head against it and closed her eyes, awaiting the night’s dreams with dread.

  Dawn of the next day crept in through her wide-open window. She awoke as hungry as a bear. Her reluctance to eat supper had served her poorly, for she sat up from sleep weak and trembling. She felt less gloomy today, but any gladness for it was subdued by her starvation. Shambling out of bed, she went to her door and knocked. “Arjobec?” Her knuckles felt like glass about to break. “Sorry I was so miserable. Please…a glass of water, a wafer of bread, anything.”

  She tried hard to collect her scrambled thoughts. He is quartered in one of the chambers below me, she knew. Surely he will hear.

  She rapped on the door several times more, succeeding only in bruising her knuckles. When no answer came, she slid to the floor. Her limbs felt weaker than river reeds, while her heart pounded and her blood felt cold in her veins. Patience, she told herself, battling back her dizziness. He will come.

  A long while of meditative silence, of breathing slowly and calming the flailing of her heart against her ribs, she rose ag
ain. Her head felt foggy for lack of food, and the shadows in the room seemed as thick as fog. “Arjobec?” she murmured. “Are you there?”

  Again there was no answer. She began to worry that Arjobec, so weary of enduring her discontent, had decided to abandon her. The hour was still early, but the grey sunlight spearing through her window seemed loath to touch her. Something is the matter, she sensed. He should have been here by now. And the light…what is the matter with the sun?

  She stood with her fingertips pressed to the dry, cracked timbers of the door. Arjobec had told her many times never to open it, never to attempt to leave, but the pale slivers of light bleeding through at the door’s edges were impossible to ignore. Certain that the door was locked, she grasped its handle and turned, and to her amazement it creaked open. Unlocked? Has it always been so?

  A dark stairwell lay before her. The light on the door’s far side was not as bright as she expected. Near the stairwell’s bottom, the source of the light shivered, the shadows dancing about the rotten walls like spirits. Her hunger forgotten, she slunk down the stairs until she found herself standing in the entrance to a room she did not remember. Inside the dilapidated, mildewed room was a table, and atop the table a lantern whose light was not golden and bright, but violet and sullen. “Arjobec?” she called out again. “Too dark outside. A storm is coming. Maybe we should leave.”

  Tiptoeing deeper into the room, she glimpsed three windows, each of them too filthy to see through. She wanted to take the lantern and use it to search for food or a way out, but she dared not. Its light was forbidding, the violet flickers reaching for her with corpselike claws. This is not right. She felt her skin bristle with cold. That is not Arjo’s lamp.

  She padded across the shadowed room. The lantern reacted to her presence, its light growing fainter, the flame seeming to suck the warmth out of her. Three steps closer, her bare foot struck something cold upon on the floor. A body? A shudder worked its way through her bones. No. No. Not possible. Her heart leaping hard, she scampered back to the stairs. Only after cringing for many moments upon the bottom step did she dare look back.