“I have not forgotten that day. I still see it in my dreams: the mounds of corpses, the slithering, creeping dread,” Aerona sighed. “We never discovered the cause.”
“Open your ears, Aerona. A dark counsellor appears in Isil, bearing a gift, and not soon after, their lord commander sails west. Serenity destroyed, and Luc retrieved some relic, much like its kin in Lakarn.
“I cannot give you a reason to trust me. But know this: when I sailed east with Damian, it was not to destroy, but build. We would rape and pillage the realm over, though to leave it in shambles? That was not our way. This Faceless Shadow is playing a great game with Damian, and if we do not end him, no home will remain for either of us.”
A great game…
What the Corsair revealed was enough to see him dead, if the overlord caught wind of it. It would be so simple for Aerona to send word to her dear Damian. Davat would be far more tractable, though deadlier. Still, she could not do that. Not the way the realm was.
What—or who—seduced you to this path, dear Damian?
“Your swords are in the northern seas,” she declared. “Many men loyal to the overlord remain. Even if I could gather enough of my Brood, I would never make it off the islands. What you propose is worse than what he intends. Even if I do trust you.”
“You misunderstand me. I would stop this war, and ally with whomsoever is stronger, and turn all our strength against the stranger in Isilia.”
“You are a fool,” Aerona rebuffed. The argument was familiar; she considered it often. “Lord Commander Rafael Azail has done far too much. Nor will Ser Elin Durand be halted. I saw whatever was left of Serenity. The man lives, somehow, and he knows—or will know before long—what befell there. Damian has played this too well. Neither man will heed our words.”
Lord Daniel laughed. “There are but two men outside this chamber who know of what befell Serenity: your consort and Luc Endrast. I have spent much of the last weeks learning where that man is. He was last seen in the company of a cloaked man, bearing east. Heh, they could only be making for the desert.”
Aerona did not know the wastelands of Isilia well, but the Desert of Death was no secret. “Luc will die there.”
“Death will not come for him, not yet. You were in Lakarn, just as I was. Some fell sorcery keeps him alive.”
They were not pleasant memories for her. Serenity, Lakarn. They were both alike. The broken, contorted bodies, faces twisted in fear. Luc, a survivor of both.
“What does he seek?” Aerona asked.
“Wrong question,” Lord Daniel scoffed, crossing his arms. “How long does he seek it? Now that is of far greater import. The overlord will not move from his seat. Who in all the realm would inform Ser Elin on what truly occurred there? We play our hand right, and the knight will be in a frenzy against the imperium, and if we should stand by his side—”
“Stay your tongue,” Aerona exclaimed in hushed whispers, listening. She thought Sonia moved from her post, and exchanged words with a visitor. “Flee, Daniel.”
The Corsair melded in the shadows, and even her trained eyes could not spot the man.
The door flew open, and Davat stood in all his crimson finery, arrogant and capricious. Sonia glared at the man angrily.
“What is it?” Aerona asked, unkindly. “Do you know the hour, Davat?”
The man smirked. “The overlord has need of you. You will be coming with me now.” Davat turned without reply. Aerona took her scabbard in hand, and followed.
The hour was past midnight. The halls were quiet, and the guttering candles blew in the wind. Davat said not a word, nor gave any inclination if he knew who Aerona saw moments before.
Turret stairs gave way to narrow, carpeted halls. Murals of conquest were upon the left, and basins of flowing water on the right.
He wants me in the throne room? What does he want?
She matched strides with Davat, and though his face was expressionless, it was intent.
Davat did not halt his steps until he stood before the oaken doors of the throne room, signalling the Crimson Swords to stand aside. He smirked, letting her pass. She felt his creeping eyes until the doors shut behind.
Overlord Damian Dannars sat hunched over on his throne, fingering what looked like a red gem, small in his palm. He did not raise his eyes at her approach. The gem was not cut, but hardened and jagged; clear and transparent, but for thin black lines, and the shape of a broken Y upon its face.
I am too late.
“The bitch in Dalia sends word,” the overlord pronounced, slowly raising his eyes. “The Voice, her counsel, and one of your whores!”
“What have you done with Klara?!”
“Precious little. Like you, she still has her uses. I will not discard any steel that is still sharp. The Faceless Shadow has been looking for this, you know? I would deliver it to him.”
“Damian!” Aerona exclaimed, near charging up the throne. “We do not understand them. It should be kept—”
“In your hands, away from mine?” the overlord cackled, slouching back. “It would have come to me before long. But what to do about your deception? You try my patience every week, dear Aerona.”
She remained silent.
“Perhaps seeing your intentions crumble shall suffice?” Damian raised his left hand lazily, and from the shadow of the far pillar, a man appeared cloaked from head to foot, face shadowed. “I trust that you will deliver it to your master?”
“That is our tryst,” the cloaked man replied, rasping and guttural. He stretched an arm out: his flesh was blotchy, fingers long and bony. “I will have it now.”
The overlord clumsily handed the gem over to the cloaked man, who stuffed the object into the folds of his robes.
Aerona felt her stomach drop, though dared not reveal aught to her consort, and whoever was beneath the robes.
“Lord Kaldred will be pleased,” the cloaked stranger said.
“Piss on his pleasure.”
“The Awakening will stretch to you and yours, Overlord,” the cloaked man rasped. “You would do well not to anger the dark god.”
“I will reap what was promised,” the overlord declared gruffly. “Your Faceless Shadow bleeds. Ask the dead of Serenity what comes of them when they cross my strength!”
Wordless, the cloaked man was suffused by swirling shadows, until the chamber seemed to lighten, as if he never stood within it.
This is what the Corsair fears, what drives him to me. If we do not take this chance, the realm will crumble. My dear Damian is so far gone.
“What have you done?” Aerona asked.
“What I must. You do not know my affairs, do not think to know it. I know yours. Oh, I know every inkling the flutters through your empty head. I will not have you recall Klara, but she will follow my decrees.”
“The Brood is not answerable to you, Damian, nor are the affairs that I set them on. Dalia is mine own concern, not yours.”
“That is where you are wrong. Dalia, Isilia, Trecht, they are all my concern. Much as they are the Faceless Shadow’s. He will bestow upon us many gifts. I will not have you squander them.”
Aerona longed for the man she loved back. The man who deceived the old king in Trecht, who built Lanan into the strength it was today.
What remained was a monster that she no longer recognized; a man that she could not yet revolt against.
“What… is your wish?” Aerona asked, pained.
“Tell your whore not to cut Ser Elin Durand’s throat until he emerges from the Mountain. Just that.”
I will free you from this. “I will send the messages.”
“Good.” He grinned. “Should I learn otherwise, it will not be Klara’s head alone mounted above my mantelpiece.”
Instinctively she grasped the hilt of her sword; her fingers flexing upon it.
“Is that what we will be about?” Damian asked mockingly. “You are strong. Stronger than even the Corsair would think. But I am a blade master and overlord. You wou
ld stain my halls before a drop of my blood puddles the stone.”
Aerona knew it was a misstep. He must live. She released her grip, and clasped her hands behind her back.
“You would do well to mind your tongue, Aerona, lest you want to keep it,” the overlord declared, rising from his seat. He walked down the steps to meet her. “I value but two things in you: your sword play and the moistness between your legs. Never forget that.”
He wrapped his arms around her, licking up her neck. Aerona fell into his embrace, moaning. There would be a time to fight against him, but it would not be in the seat of his power. It would be in the wastelands.
Aerona pulled herself forward, put lips to his ear and said, “I need you. What can I do for you?”
“Your obedience,” Damian replied softly, pushing a hand up her side. “You are more than my consort. You are my queen. My queen must obey. Do not anger me.”
“I am sorry,” Aerona whispered, feeling down his back with her hands. Subduing him.
“You and I will govern this realm as we dreamed of. Once the Faceless Shadow is paid his due.”
“Castle Marcanas burnt to ashes, all of Trank a rubble. The land that was stolen from you, yours again.”
Damian pushed back, and looked at her so deviously. “Come. We will show the realm a storm that they have never seen before.”
Aerona watched her consort walk ahead, shuddering at the taint of a man so far fallen. She followed, repulsive as it was. Damian could not grow suspicious, not yet.
You are not the master of storms, she thought, resolve hardening. There is always another. You will kneel, Damian. You will kneel.
Chapter Twelve
The Son of Lakarn
Jophiel watched as the runes fluttered and faded.
Servitor Hamad strode into the sand swept Hall of Resonance, his face creased with worry and concern.
It is not like him to be so disconcerted.
“High Servitor. Two men have crossed the desert. One bears the mark of an islander—tall, broad, scowling—and none dare take his steel. The other, I do not know, but he is strange. He will show his face to no one, and will not leave. They demand an audience with you.”
None had passed the desert unscathed for centuries. Those who did were sworn to Sariel’s dark hand. Still, it had been so long, and there was much that Jophiel did not understand.
“Hamad,” Jophiel said, hands pressed against the servitor’s shoulders. “What is it that you fear?”
Hamad trembled before he could answer; his voice was unsteady and shaking. “The presence, High Servitor. The presence. When I look upon them, it is like a great shadow cascades o’er me, and when they speak, I want no more than to beg and scrape for their forgiveness. What men are they who bend us to their wills?”
Such is the dark god’s way. No longer through visions and auguries would Sariel extend His reach upon the realm, but darkened, fell servants. Millennia past, the Bringer of Dusk had made to master the Temple of the Unseen, only to be repulsed in the battle that never ended.
If that is who has come—
“It is not men who do this thing, they have come for—,” Jophiel paused, noticing that Hamad still shook in fear. “No, do not fret, do not fear. It is far away from their grasp. I shall not surrender it to them. I will not break my solemn vow.”
Hamad nodded.
There is precious little else I can tell you, Father Above forgive me.
“I shall receive them here, Hamad,” Jophiel announced. “I wish for you to clear the halls before you bring them. Rumours will spread, but better that than seeing them in our midst.”
The servitor turned, but Jophiel called out, taken by his own doubts. “Once they are here, I wish for you to join Servitor Inman outside the hall. I know that you fear, but each of us must do our part. Many in these walls are not yet ready, and those outside of them less so. Even if we perish in the defense, we serve them before ourselves.”
“Yes, High Servitor. I shall not forget.”
The runes set once more, Jophiel felt more a prisoner than master in his own hall, awaiting what must come, unable to flee from it.
Gabriel stood in this hall thence, broken and helpless, imparting me with a gift that I was to use when the need was great.
Is that time now?
Jophiel hoped it was not, though it seemed unsteady. Still, he wanted to believe it a prelude to a darker time; that opportunity would come to judge, weigh, and act.
The revelations of the Great Fate were far off. Too much has yet to pass.
The Vaults still stood, and he knew that Servitor Gareth would reinforce them with the Order’s wards. Sariel—and His power—would remain sealed for millennia more.
As would the Heart of the Sand.
None shall procure it without my blessings. Not even the gods.
Jophiel stepped down from the dais and paced between the wide, narrow benches. His eyes flickered to the runes, waiting for them to dissipate, all the while dissonant concerns flooded his mind.
Come already, he thought irritably, come and reveal yourselves.
Then he felt it: the cascading shadow, the ominous presence, and the twisted, maligned will that sprawled forth.
Servitor Hamad stood at the fore, shaking; his eyes were dead shot and listless, deferring to the strangers.
The man on the right was tall and broad, garbed in dark boiled leather from shoulder to foot, and his long black cloak billowed in the dry wind. His face was long and square, with twin scars arcing from eyebrow to chin; his dark hair was pulled back, and he was perpetually frowning. He crossed his arms, glaring with cold, piercing blue eyes.
Jophiel knew who it was, if only by rumour. The sole survivor of Lakarn: a small wooded village in the islands to the south. Fierce, unmerciful, and cruel, he was the first to land on the beaches of Dalia and Trecht; he cut down any and all who defied the overlord’s will, even women and children.
Sariel calls to the most wanton of men.
The other rose only to the chest of the first man, though he stood defiant and strong. A brown traveller’s cloak masked most of his garb, and a deep hood shadowed his face; and beneath the bleakness were dark, probing eyes.
Jophiel did not know the shorter man, but it seemed to him that Sariel’s touch compelled far more than subservience, almost like His essence corrupted the man’s life force.
“Leave us, Servitor Hamad.” Jophiel commanded.
The servitor turned clumsily and left. The runes set once more.
Words did not pass, but Jophiel felt an unease as the shorter man glared solemnly beneath the hood. He broke the silence. “Who are you and where do you hail from?”
The bigger man spat upon the floor, leaning against the near wall. His hard eyes gazing impenetrably even as he spoke. “After what I have done, you could at least the kindness to learn my name.”
“Luc Endrast.”
“Have not heard my father’s name for some time. Last time, the wretch had my sword up his bowels.”
“I trust, Lord Luc,” the hooded man spoke faintly, “that you will stay your sword, until I call upon it.”
“I did give my word.”
“See that it remains that way.”
“Who are you?” Jophiel repeated. “Where do you hail from?”
“Persistent,” Lord Luc remarked, laughing.
“No, Lord Luc, he does not, but he will soon.” The hooded man stepped forward lightly, and pointed a craggy finger at Jophiel. “You have traversed the realm, obeying the whims of your visions and auguries. To serve, is that not what you always said to your pupils? Meddling is what you have done. It was not to you the Great Fate churned, did we not learn that so long ago?”
The voice chilled and grated, but what shook Jophiel was the improbable familiarity. “I know you.”
“Has it truly been so long? Three hundred years is naught but a fleeting moment to us. I never forget your austere stoicism, looking on while our father cast down jud
gment. Centuries or millennia, it made no difference. Free as I always have, yet now I stand before you, as I never could before.”
The Betrayer. “Has it truly come again?”
Amos pulled his hood back. His flesh was pale, his eyes a rheumy yellow, and his long hair was black as teak. “No, it is not a recurrence. This game that we play, you and I, it is so tiring. I long for an end to it, as I once sought so long ago.” Amos grinned sardonically. “Have you not been met with a void where our father used to be? This is going to end.”
This is his way. “What have you done to him?”
“It is more what he is doing: the burdens he shrugged, the onus that I must bear.”
Jophiel long thought his father absent, or on the surface, guised in the flesh of another. If he was wrong, if Amos did not speak a lie, the emptiness, the void from Edren, it was not a mere absence.
Father, you have never brought harm to your children. Yet your son will undo you. “Do you know what you have done, Amos?”
“What we should have done long ago. The First Son,” Amos grunted at the moniker, “undeserved name. We cannot be rid of him anymore than he can be rid of us. The Chains of Fate made certain of that. Yet I have mastered his mind, and with your help, it can remain that way. Father is a decrepit husk now. We can be free of his yoke, Jophiel. You can leave this place.”
“I would not leave, not even to return to Edren as it was, before you forsook us all. I will not have you defile our father’s legacy.”
“You can do very little about that in the sands.”
“Where is he, Amos?”
“Oh, where he always is. I cannot be rid of him; did I not say that? His eyes are elsewhere, meddling as he always does, not unlike you, Jophiel, but more bountiful, to be sure. To Isilia, Dalia, Trecht, and even the islands. All except to me.” Amos smile, and his lips were like two worms. “Father was ever so predictable. The power he possesses derives from the gifts, the Animus Stones. All it took were scavengers and power hungry warlords to discover the Vaults. Sariel touches our realm again, you see, and our father is mastered now by the very power he once sought to slay.”
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