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

by J. Edward Neill

  Down, down Vom chased the intruder, and down she followed. When at last the intruder ceased giving ground, she slunk within ten paces, a shadow of a shadow, crouching on the ground like a starving scavenger. A shame it should end here, she pitied the intruder. He fought so well.

  But to stand against us is folly.

  The two men said nothing to one another. Nor will they, she knew. The tall one was breathless. She heard him panting through his Dageni helm, and she saw his breath steaming in the frigid tunnel air. But Vom looks fresh. As though the fight only just began. They circled each other, trading feints and withering hacks. They looked impossibly calm, their blades like extensions of their bodies. And then, just when she thought it might never end, the intruder lashed out with his fire-tongued blade. Vom moved with the effortlessness of air, untouchable, and slapped the sword out of his enemy’s hand.

  She should have been exultant, she knew. Once the intruders were destroyed, her studies with Revenen would continue, and more magicks unlocked for me to learn. But as Vom closed in on his defenseless foe, his sword biting shallowly into the man’s armor, she felt a knot growing in her stomach. What is this feeling? Why now? She felt nauseous, as though the coming death was not what she wanted after all. Her focus ebbed. Her vision in the darkness dulled. Sharp memories of another life flickered through the strata of her mind, startling her. She felt split into two parts, one shadow, and one…what?

  But then the nausea fled, and her vision returned. The shadow fell hard across her heart, and after another breath she felt whole again. Cold sweat beaded on the flesh beneath her robes. Her feet felt rooted to the obsidian floor, as though the citadel wished her not to move. As she recovered, she saw Vom kick the intruder’s smoking sword away. The blade skidded across the floor, its flame barely alive. With a flurry of sword slaps and a kick to the breastplate, Vom sent the intruder crashing to the ground. The fallen warrior collapsed into a heap of Dageni plates, and Vom gave him wide berth as he circled for the kill.

  “Quite a spectacle, no?” Vom licked his teeth like a wolf. “Did you enjoy it?”

  She shivered when she realized the question was meant for her. “Yes.” She trembled. “I mean…very much so.”

  “You certain?” He eyed her.

  “I am. How can you see me?”

  “See you?” he laughed. “I see everything, girl. From Grae to here, I’ve seen, smelled, and tasted you every step of the way. I knew what you were even before you did.”

  What does that mean? She feared to know.

  She swallowed hard as Vom bared his teeth at his fallen prey. She heard the intruder’s labored breaths, and she watched as he twice tried to stand, only to be kicked back down. Again and again, Vom lashed downward with his sword. The grey blade bit shallowly into the intruder’s Dageni plates, twice in his shins, twice in his thighs, and thrice into his forearm. The intruder’s blood trickled from each perforation, making little red rivers Vom toyed with using the tip of his sword. He is performing for me, she knew. He thinks I enjoy this.

  Do I?

  With the tip of his blade, Vom lifted the visor of the Dageni helmet up and away from the intruder’s face. The helm fell to the floor with a hollow clatter. She squinted to see who lay beneath, but Vom stood between her and the fallen man, shadowing everything. Vom said something, a requiem for a worthy foe perhaps, but he spoke so softly she heard only every other word. And then he moved to one side, and she saw the face of the fallen man. Oh… She felt her heart stop and start again. I know this one.

  It began as a memory, fleeting and fragile and yet as clear as sunshine. It careened through the shadows surrounding her heart, breaking up all her notions of who she was and what she was supposed to feel. Her mouth fell open, and the darkness lurking in her steely eyes wavered. His name…I know it. I met him before this. The sight of a face so familiar sent a shock through her body. She stumbled backward, the darkness of the worming tunnel closing in around her. Garrett… She hardly breathed as she dreamed his name. A friend. An old friend. Maybe more than that. How is this possible?

  Vom laid his blade beneath Garrett’s chin. She saw Vom’s smirk, and every hated memory of him flooded her mind. A city, she recalled. With white domes and sad faces in the windows. Orye. I saw him there. He came into my room before the Emperor. He hunted me after I was taken away. From Orye to Morellellus, he followed me like a wolf. It was he who killed Arjobec.

  Her heart dropped into her heels. Vom peeled his pitiless gaze away from her and readied himself to kill. She tasted bile on the back of her tongue, a sickness born of not knowing why she was here. For the first time in weeks, she doubted her place as a servant of darkness. This is not right, she knew. I am no warlock. These robes are not anything I would wear. Something inside her screamed for the wrongness of it all. The days of her apprenticeship began to feel like imprisonment, and Revenen’s teachings like lies.

  Before she knew what she was doing, she acted on the feeling. She snapped her palm open, and Garrett’s sword leapt from the floor and flew into her grasp. That swords could fly stunned her, and that she caught it sent a shiver up her arm and into her spine. Vom coiled his muscles to sink his sword into Garrett’s chest, but he was not swift enough. Garrett’s sword burst to life in her hands. The flames were black instead of violet, hotter and colder than any surface on the earth.

  She loped three steps across the glassy floor and swung the sword with all her might.

  The burning edge struck Vom squarely in his swordarm, slicing through his armor like moonlight through a cloud, cutting the limb off cleanly at the elbow. Vom howled in agony. He staggered, hatred gurgling in his throat, and she saw the fire from the blade blacken his cheek and char one of his eyes shut. A half-breath later, his armor caught fire. The metal twisted and curled, folding cruelly into his skin. As droplets of melting steel rained at his feet, Vom knelt to retrieve his sword, but she swung hers again. More powerful in my grasp than any, she knew as she hurled all her strength into the blow. The black blade struck Vom just below his neck. His armor parted like water, and his skin burned like centuries-old parchment. He opened his mouth to scream again, but no sound came out, for his insides were roasting. She backed away, horrified. A few moments of writhing, and all that remained of Vom smoked and bubbled on the floor, his skull sitting neatly atop a puddle of melted bones and molten metal.

  The flames subsided. The sword slipped between her fingers, ringing against the floor. Save for the crackle of Vom’s bones, the world fell into silence. The terrible heat fled from her senses, and the tunnel was plunged into near total darkness. She crept toward Garrett and knelt beside him. When he cracked his eyes open to look at her, she felt a tear dribble down her cheek.

  “I know you,” he said to her.

  His words were a mystery. He knows me, he says? And yet I do not know myself. She reached out to touch his face, but drew her fingers back. As she slunk to a safe distance away, her toes touched the cold handle of Lorsmir’s sword. She lifted it, and the blade streamed with fresh curls of black flame, the light just enough for Garrett to see her by.

  “You…” He sat up, nearly crumpling from the pain. “You…not supposed to be here.”

  She crawled closer, lifting the blade until her face and his were aglow with its light. The flames danced in her eyes like fireflies, gleaming off her skin like moonlight upon a ghost.

  “Andelusia.” He said her name, and she nearly dropped the sword. “I am deceived. You are a spirit. Else I am dead.”

  Something in the way he spoke her name made her heart flutter. She felt awkward, kneeling before him in her flimsy black robes, half of her still convinced he was the enemy. More than anything, she wanted him to say her name again. It felt as familiar as he did.

  “Your hair...” He touched a black strand dangling down her cheek. “Your eyes… You, but not you.”

  The graze of his fingers across her cheek felt intoxicatingly warm. She wanted to embrace him, to fall into his arms a
nd forever shut her eyes, but a sense of half-forgotten danger chilled her. Words began to spill from her mouth, syllables she had no control of. “The others…they will be killed,” she blurted. “You have to save them.”

  He rose from the tunnel floor with a tortured grunt. His flesh oozed rivers of scarlet through the punctures in his mail, and yet he stood without stumbling. “Do not follow me,” he warned her. “Nothing up there but suffering. The gates are open. Go there. Flee into the rain. The days are dark. No one will see you. Go west as far as you can. Talk to no one. Stop for nothing.”

  He took hold of her hand, and her heart lodged in her throat. For a moment, she feared he might hurt her.

  He only wants the sword, she worried. He will take it away and kill me.

  He unfolded her fingers and wrested the burning sword away. He did it gently, and her fears fell away. A last look into her eyes, and he was gone, lumbering up through the tunnel as fast as his wounded legs would carry him. The flames on his sword went from black to violet, from penetratingly cold to as blistering as the inside of a Furyon volcano. He did not look back, but if he had, he would have seen her trailing. And he would know there is no chance of me leaving.

  A shadow once more, she crept behind him. He strode up through the tunnel, gaining speed before summoning the strength to sprint into the grand vestibule beyond. She swept behind him, light as air. As he came upon the battle between his companions and the dead, she saw how it went. One of the intruders was slain and lying in a spreading lake of blood, no fewer than four guardians’ blades jutting from the joints of his armor. His helmet was half-off, he cheeks rent by skeletal fingers, and his empty gaze fixated forever upward. The burly one, she named him. There is something familiar about him, even in death. The other two men battled still, though it seemed a futile thing. All the guardians they had felled had risen again. Those without legs rasped and clawed across the floor, wanting to drag the men down. Those without arms pressed against the outer ring of their undead fellows, jaws snapping for even the slightest taste of flesh.

  The two men were doomed, she knew.

  She squinted at them through the throngs of dead, wanting to see them one last time before they died. One was the helmetless knight who had swept past her in the archway to the Orb cavern. The other still had his helm, but had lost his sword, and now used a spear torn away from the dead as though it were a staff. Their backs were pressed against the pillar nearest to the Orb cavern. Their parries were slow and clumsy, and their breaths ragged and dry. Revenen’s creations encircled them, groaning and laughing with every hack, swords clanging dully off vambrace and breastplate. The only reason the men still lived was because of their armor, which had somehow held against hundreds of blows.

  The guardians had no fear, no purpose but to kill. Master’s failed apprentices, she believed them to be, and apparently indestructible. When Garrett stormed their rearmost ranks, she wanted to scream at him for his foolishness. The dead turned to him all at once, seeming to smell far fresher prey than the two battered men. But when he crashed into the dead, slaying five of them in the blink of an eye, she wondered if her fears were needless. Against the fire of his blade, the dead seemed as insubstantial as mist, as easily snapped as twigs. Each guardian he struck collapsed into a burning jumble of bones, the ashes swirling into strange shapes upon the floor. From one guardian, he tore a sword away, using it to drive back the slow hacks of those who trailed him. He made a tunnel through the rest, cleaving a path that reeked of burning flesh and melted metal. He was like a storm, and the guardians a thicket in his path.

  “The Orb!” he heard him shout at his companions. “Run! Find a way to destroy it!”

  If her heart still beat, she felt it no longer. Numb, she skirted to the rear of the battle, gliding close to the Orb cavern. She looked down the dark stairs to find Revenen, but hoped in her heart not to see him. If he remained, Garrett and his companions were dead, and she was no longer certain she wanted as much. Forgive me, Master. She glimpsed the mountains of bones piled in the cavern, the twisted bodies of the recently sacrificed, and the candles between which a hundred thousand had died. This was never right.

  If Garrett’s companions had any qualms about charging to their deaths, they showed no sign. One of them knocked her roughly aside on his way to the Orb, and as she regained her footing, she heard both their voices like lions roaring.

  “Only one darkling remains!” said Helmetless.

  “That thing that killed Marlos?” The other shivered.

  “Aye.” Helmetless took the first step down. “He’s yours. Keep him away from me. Long as you can.”

  She slunk after them, but gave a last glance back at Garrett. His was an admirable sacrifice, she reckoned, and a glorious thing to watch. Does he never tire? She watched him cut down another five of the dead. How do I know him? How does he know me?

  She felt her heart leaping into her throat every time a guardian’s blade whistled past his ear, and a small eruption of hope every time he ducked or parried. She felt torn in two. A part of her wanted to take up a sword and run to help him, but another part of her told he did not need her, and that her place was nearer the Orb.

  By the time she looked back, Garrett’s companions were halfway down the stairs. Revenen was nowhere to be seen, and the Orb pulsed in the background, matching the thrum of blood through her body. She took her first steps tentatively. Dancmyrcephalis’ body lay broken in her path. She stepped over him lightly, not wanting to look at him, but compelled by morbid fascination to look at his face. Death is not so peaceful, she thought when she saw his eyes, the whites gone black with blood. Did he really think he could destroy Revenen?

  She slid down the stairs, graceful and invisible. The sounds of Garrett’s battle faded behind her. The Orb cavern seemed darker than ever, and the chasm on each side of the stairs deeper than she remembered. Garrett’s two companions had taken one of the violet lanterns for light, which she imagined would only make it easier for Revenen to find them. At the bottom of the stairs, the two men halted. She crept within five steps and listened as they plotted.

  “If Dank couldn’t destroy it, how can we?” said the one holding the spear.

  “Never had a chance,” Helmetless replied. “The ghost got him first.”

  “The one you’d have me fight.”

  Helmetless shrugged. “Were it my way, we’d have an army at our backs. But the captain’s dead, Garrett too, and you and I soon to follow. We’ve no choice but to take the Object with us.”

  “Aye,” said the other.

  And both marched toward the Orb.

  Their courage impressed her. Brave, brave fools, she thought. Will Revenen make them into guardians once they are dead?

  Like a cutpurse, she prowled after them as they continued toward the Orb. The black sphere seemed aware of them, aware of her. Alive and brooding, its surface shimmered with patterns of malignant light, shifting shapes of death dancing across its outer shell. She felt its power pulsing inside her. The closer she came to it, the harder it was to resist. Garrett fell out of her mind, and Revenen’s promises streamed back into her heart.

  Some hundred steps away from the obsidian spokes ringing the Orb’s base, the two men slowed. They gaped like children, beholding the vastness of the Orb, staggering toward it as though wading through a bog. Here it comes. She shook her head. They knew they were doomed, but now they see it. The sea of candles offered little light, but the lavender glow from Helmetless’s lantern danced across the corpses of the sacrificed, playing across bones and pools of coagulated blood. She expected the men to cut and run at the sight. When they did not, she shook her head. Willing to die for this, it seems.

  “How many dead?” the one with the spear sounded sick.

  “Thousands…hundreds of thousands,” answered Helmetless.

  “Dank was right. How could we have known?”

  Between the mountains of bones, a path was graven to the Orb. It was the same road she had many
times walked, the same many thousands of slaves had plodded down before their deaths. Both men took to it, but both soon stopped. A bitterly cold wind, reeking with all manner of ghoulish odors, swept in as if from nowhere. Revenen, she knew even before she saw him. Of course he is here. He would never leave the Orb. Sickened by the stench, she turned her cheek, and when she looked back, a withered shape stood in the center of the path. Revenen seemed almost fragile, wrapped in the shrouds of his rotted robe. He looked like an old man, hunched and pitiful, skeletal joints rheumy and creaky as rusted hinges. But he is far from weak, she knew. He is a horror, like the books he gave me told of. Nothing can kill him, least of all these two.

  “Murderer!” the man with the spear shouted.

  Helmetless gripped his sword with both hands and stepped away from his companion, as if somehow Revenen’s magicks might only kill one of them if they stood apart. Through Revenen’s slitted hood, she saw the whites of his eyes flash, the wasted sinew of his jaw clenching. The rest of him was ghostly tatters, afterimages of flesh, ribs, and innards dangling in the air. “An easy death,” he rumbled in Archithropian. “No more fighting, no more pain. You will become ghosts, and your souls will haunt Malog forever.”

  Both men advanced, but both froze again. She heard her Master’s voice booming in her head, and she understood he had invaded the men’s minds as well. “Dream.” His voice echoed out of their skulls and into hers. “Open your minds and see what awaits you.” Helpless, she closed her eyes. Reality’s curtain rolled back, giving way to the visions Revenen had crafted. Her imagination drank deep of the places he showed her. She saw fields of grey grass, shifting at the beck of a ceaseless wind. She looked upon sunless, restless skies, blanketed with sheets of somber clouds that never stood still. Etched hard upon the horizon were black cities and towers, the pale lights in their windows like thousands of winking eyes. “The world to be.” Revenen’s whispers calmed her. “Hardly the horror you expect, no?”