Darkness Rising (Ancient Vestiges Book 1)

by Brenden Gardner

  “The Southern Nations are done,” Aerona said roughly, gathering herself, wiping the tears from her eyes. She thought they all seemed healthy and hale, all but Ashleigh who was still weak, grasping onto the slimmest threads of life. “The seat was his. No one will raise his mantle.”

  “Aerona Harkan,” Jaremy turned, smiling. “A pleasure. I have much explaining to do but if—” The Overlord’s Seat rattled as if a quake opened beneath it; she could barely keep her feet. “Curse his hide, he could not have bought us s’more time.” The crashes returned, the whole castle shook, pebbles and dust falling all around them. “We must leave and now.”

  “What is happening?” Daniel demanded.

  “Whilst you were occupied in here, I convinced most of the captains to gainsay the overlord’s orders. It did not take much convincing when a fleet of ships showed up from the west.”

  “Dalian? Dalian ships?”

  “Yes and no. Trechtian ships, flying the banner of the Faithsworn beneath it. The Voice has come for us. They come to destroy us.”

  “W-we have to s-stop the Voice,” Ashleigh said weakly.

  “You will do naught,” Daniel said sternly. “Demand when you can walk without help.”

  The sentinel bore a stubborn look on her face, grave with disapproval, but offered no other resistance.

  “How bad is it?” Aerona asked.

  “Most are fleeing,” Jaremy explained. “I have a ship prepared for us. She is fast and small. Lord Daniel should get us through—if anywhere is safe.”

  “Get all of us to that ship, and I will do the rest,” Daniel commanded. “Go, Jaremy.”

  The squat man hurried out, and Daniel trudged behind, half-dragging Ashleigh. Aerona took one last look at her consort, and left the Overlord’s Seat as the thick pillars came crashing down behind them.

  Good-bye, my love.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Secrets of the Sands

  Jophiel stood in a dank underground path.

  The only light came from a single ensconced torch. He smelled earth, piss, and rot. Endless steel cells lay ahead, though few occupied them. It opened to a long earthy hallway that he led Servitor Hamad down.

  “There are no prophets or saviors, Hamad, not anymore,” Jophiel said, hoping his servitor would understand what he had to do. “All that is left to us are secrets and sacrifice. Amos told me it is worth the sacrifice. I will sacrifice, if it means this ends. My secret must be revealed: you and I must set her upon the path, no matter who stands before us.”

  “Where are we?” Hamad asked

  “Where we must wait for my brother.”

  Hamad gripped Jophiel’s arm. “We cannot trust to Amos we—”

  “Not Amos. Another.”

  “Do not speak his name,” a voice barked.

  Jophiel peered through the darkness and saw the tall, broad shape of Reuven. “You are aware of what has come to pass on the islands, brother?”

  Reuven grinned in the half light. “I have.”

  I had to know if I could trust you. “Hamad was the first. The others will know the truth of our history.”

  “They are your concern, not mine,” Reuven said dismissively, not bothering a glance towards the young servitor. “The Heart of the Sand. Where is it?”

  The stone shone brilliantly beneath Jophiel’s robes. He withdrew it, and it illuminated the emptiness. “She is not yet ready for it.”

  “She will be,” Reuven replied, clasping the last gift from Mother God. “For she is the Bringer of Dawn.

  Part III

  Heart of the Sand

  Chapter One

  The Cleaver Prince

  Adreyu stood at the prow of his great dromond, Blood of the Lion.

  It was a torrential downpour in the deepening gloom. The sea seemed to boil and steam, and Lanan burned in the distance, though it was only a speck to his eye. He grinned; he had long wanted to bring ruin to the traitors who formed these Southern Nations, and when the good counsel came to Trank, he seized the opportunity.

  It was all worth it. The depravity has now come to an end. There remains only one to still address.

  Adreyu turned his head and looked to the priest by the port side rail. The fat man in cloth gripped it hard, and the water sloughed off his fat body. Adreyu thought the biting wind must have chilled Counsel Stephen Francis to the bone. He wore no more than his pristine white and silver robes, tough lamb hide boots, and soft woolen gloves. It seemed that he looked to the dark waters choked by burned and broken bodies, overlapped by shattered hulls of stalwart ships that the fire had yet to reach.

  The fat priest looks incredulous. Have you never seen war before?

  “Is this not what you wanted, Counsel?” Adreyu slyly remarked as he stood beside the priest near the port side rail. Smoke and sulfur rose against midnight skies. “Damian only ever understood fire and death. A truth that I understand very clearly. The wounded and dead are still beneath decks, if that is more to your comfort.”

  The priest was emotionless as a stone. “That is not what draws my eyes. I have seen more death than any man should, whether he sees the Light of Mother God or not. It is rather the change that this death signals. Once, your king looked eastward and saw three countries, strong, if indifferent to each other, but now only one. I doubt this is a change either of us are ready for.”

  Adreyu knew there was some truth to those words. It was not long since he and his brothers brought down their father in a brief, but bloody coup. Not a day passed that he felt regret for the patricide. We buried the fools who thought otherwise. A new king, a new rule. There was no room for doubt. Yet the change that the father suggested would shake the kingdom before the year was out.

  “Fool’s words.” The priest did not stir. Adreyu turned and shouted to the captain. “Signal the escort, we make landfall!”

  Commands were issued, sails unfurled, and the Blood of the Lion moved once again. The flagship of Trecht’s royal fleet, she bore five mammoth masts, two decks of canons, and hundreds of crew to work it.

  Smaller war galleys came to port and stern as escort: Declarant, Knight’s Honour, Lion Spawn, Kingmaker, and Besieger. Those ships carried a score of Dalia’s Faithsworn; as many as Adreyu would allow to land with him on the northern beaches, closest to Lanan itself. The remainder would dock along the north-east stretches of the isle, occupying the outer harbours, sweeping the overland of stragglers and vagrants.

  The rowboats were made ready when the shore neared. The priest joined Adreyu at the prow of the lead boat, along with a trio of Faithsworn that were never far from the father’s side. Ser Rupert Duvan and Lady Sophia Locklet had ugly, ordinary faces, with short, dirty blond hair.

  Twins like as not, if you ignore the teats.

  Adreyu thought there was a ruggedness about them, and more often than not they stunk of suet and sweat. When their heads rose, they gazed back with fierce, unmerciful eyes.

  Knights of the Faith indeed.

  The other closeted so often with the priest, and spoke so informally, that Adreyu thought them brothers, though they looked little alike. Ser Jarl Yanif was big and burly with short cropped brown hair; he always scowled, and spoke only when need compelled him. Adreyu feared naught, but he watched his step around that man; much was made of his deeds in the last war, and little of it good.

  Not that the Faith would ever admit to it. Just like Ser Elin Durand and his sin, they thought it better left unsaid and buried.

  Shorn lumber and shriveled up corpses littered the shore. The crew dragged the dead to a thin tree line to the west, and sorted through what they could salvage. Men in dark green leather waded through and went ahead, and Adreyu’s knights came up behind garbed in chainmail with the green and gold tabard of House Marcanas.

  Fewer than I would like, but if the father tries to turn on me, he shall find that I do not need legions to slay him.

  “Send your men forth, Ser Jarl,” Adreyu barked. “We won the battle, certainly we can prot
ect the commandant. Heh, clear the way.”

  The knight looked back in pained reservation. The priest stood beside Adreyu, inclined his head slightly, and the knight scurried away.

  “I have been called many things, Adreyu: never dishonourable,” Counsel Stephen replied. “You have seen to your end of our pact—I will see to mine.”

  “Time will tell, priest.”

  Adreyu probed through the thin forest to the south before it gave way to a flat dirt road. It was wide enough for a pair of horsemen in each direction. Household knights to the fore and rear, the drear, flat expanse posed no dangers for the nonce, but he feared much would change when Lanan came to sight. I smell it. Whatever did it may be gone, but more than our cannons ravaged that city.

  “The penitent man feels relief when the sinners are expunged, yes?” he asked the priest who barely kept pace. “You are still a man, are you not? I would have thought triumph to be on your tongue?” Adonis had treated with this man of the cloth in Trank. Adreyu wanted to learn much, and the priest’s stoic obeisance grated his nerves.

  “It is not relief, no,” the priest replied solemnly. “As a man sworn to the will of Mother God, I weep for the souls lost to discord. These lands are plagued by wanton destruction, sacrilege, and sin. Surely more could have been done for them; my brothers and sisters have failed them. Yet as a man, and what I saw that day before the Crystal Throne—”

  You are more than your cloth, Father. “Heh, you hide your true self. Dogma holds you down; others may not see it, but I do. There is a blood haze in you, try as you may to forget it with prayer and hope. Deep down you know what rules the realm; much as you may kneel, that truth has not escaped you.”

  The priest gave a subtle half smile, more a smirk. “I know the history of our countries, even if your people would choose to forget it. Much like my ancestors were hundreds of years ago, I am a humble man of cloth, and such a man cannot afford those thoughts.”

  The great lie you could ne’er hope to hide is that you do. We may choose to forget history that has long faded from relevance, but I was there in the Northlands when I saw your champion’s savagery and cruelty. You are not him though. There will never be another him.

  “The land will heal once the God Stone has left it,” the priest declared. “It is a godless power that should ne’er have come here. You and your brothers are the old blood: you will see paths that we cannot. Alas, the fallen will never return to us, but in time our children will have more than we do. That I will do for Mother God.”

  Counsel Stephen Francis always seemed to have the words that Adreyu wanted to hear. He recalled that Adonis said as much in their private deliberations with their kingly brother. Adreyu cared little for it at the time, but the arguments between his brothers served as a warning now: words too sweet, mannerisms too humble, and intent far too noble.

  I will not trust him. If he flees from the pact, my steel will find him before a step is taken.

  Scouts returned from the city as its walls rose in the distance. Adreyu could smell the rot and stench of death.

  “Dead, Prince Adreyu,” a scout reported. “The city still stands, but none stirs within the walls.”

  “We laid siege to this city. What else did you expect?” Adreyu remarked irritably.

  “This is… it is not that death, my prince. They were not slain by steel.”

  “I will see to that with my own eyes,” Adreyu remarked, dismissing the scouts. He ensured the fleet took the smugglers by surprise. The captains did report little resistance once the siege began, but he knew that these islanders were not frantic women hiding frightened children behind their skirts.

  They are warriors, conniving traders, and survivors.

  The western gate plain to see, he wondered if those words were true.

  Blood pattered the ground from the raised portcullis as the severed limbs of a guardsman were pierced by thick iron spikes. The other guard lay to the right of the gate, lifelessly laying prone in a thick puddle of blood, and what looked like intestines squeezed out along the side. A third was skewered by long steel pikes at the neck and gut.

  “Only the godless man could do this,” Counsel Stephen intoned. “May Mother God embrace these pour souls.”

  Adreyu had seen much his short lifetime—all the savagery and cruelty that carnal men had wrought. All the slaughters and massacres, of statements and declarations, and he thought only one sight compared to this: the cathedral in Zelen.

  All roads lead back to Ser Elin. Even dead, he still haunts me. “Clean it up,” he shouted out, shouldering his way through the open gate.

  The cobbled streets of Lanan, with its close-built, tall stone houses were not spared. Faithsworn and Trechtian knights alike were dragging the corpses of women, children, and broken men from the halls, roofs, trees, and fences. What was green and grey now bore streaks of the darkest red. “If he was not dead—,” Adreyu muttered, dismissing a returning memory

  The city became more cloistered, and every side street and alley was the same: corpses upon the road, the rest piled on from homes and buildings as the men searched.

  Whatever may be thought of these people, the least that they deserved was a pyre. “My brother will want to know who did this.”

  “May Mother God guide us in the pursuit,” the priest intoned.

  Adreyu was not taken to piety, even if it seemed a comfort. To him, the Faith was no more than fanciful myths and legends that men in robes used to master the will and minds of common stock. He was always a man who learnt from history. The Nameless Times were not forgotten: the burnings, rioting, the defilement of king and country. Hundreds of years of history near shattered by the whims of a mob fueled by flickering fantasies. Then, when he could do naught but stare listlessly as Ser Elin desecrated his own people in the name of the Faith.

  No, I shall not be taken by the lies.

  The main square loomed ahead. It looked deserted, though a creeping dread took Adreyu, and the only sounds that broke the dread was that of his own men as they brought up whatever gruel they had before the battle. He saw the great fountain of pride and arrogance: Overlord Damian Dannars wrought in marble with a foot atop a pierced foe, and a stream of blood funneling from the broken neck, emptying into a pile of corpses that were rotted, mangled, and eaten away by maggots. “Get them out of there. Now.”

  “We were not the only ones to come here,” the priest declared solemnly whilst the men reluctantly pulled the bodies out. “But who? Where are they now?”

  “Men gone mad. I have seen it before.” Adreyu knew the answer was weak as soon the words passed his lips. “The castle.”

  He kept his eyes on the ever-climbing cobbled road as it climbed the low cliff. There was a short wall and tall iron fences along the sides, and windowless structures rising with the cliff. His eyes could not discern any of the grotesqueries, but his nose did not lie. Looking away, he covered his mouth with a patch of silk.

  In the distance, a diminutive castle stood, grey once, he thought, but blackened by char and ash. The Overlord’s Seat was bleak and dark. He thought it was no more than a humble manse, even if it was not broken by canons and catapults. Before that came the gate, much like the western, though his men had enough sense to clear it away.

  They had not yet seen to the courtyard.

  Madness that what ‘tis is. Madness. Men in crimson, women and children, sailors and smugglers, were torn apart; their blood soaked the cobbled court, and their entrails decorated the broken trees. He threw the silk away. “Torch, now!” Words were emblazoned on the side of the castle, near its towering doors. When the light touched it, the message glistened and dripped, never losing shape, writ in the darkest black ink: He hath come.

  “He hath come…,” the priest murmured.

  “What does it mean?” Adreyu demanded.

  Counsel Stephen took a moment before answering, closed his eyes, and sucked in his cheeks. “The Bringer of Dusk.”

  “Who?”

 
“The faithful shall heed salvation in the Time of Ascendance, whence the paragon of Light—the Bringer of Dawn—comes to the field to challenge the sworn sword of Darkness: the Bringer of Dusk. Whence they come, Dawn will triumph over Dusk, and the realm is remade wholly in the Light. It will signal the end of days, and the beginning of our ascended existence. It is what we believe under the Light of Mother God.”

  The bleating of sheep. A lie they tell themselves to sleep better at night. More it is like a man who thinks himself this Bringer of Dusk. No more than that. “Heh, I have not suddenly found my faith in this pit of death.”

  “Absence of belief does not make a thing less true, Prince Adreyu.”

  “Open the doors,” Adreyu shouted out to knights and scouts, giving no heed to the priest. His knights pushed aside the lifeless bodies like broken rubble. The iron hinges creaked and groaned as it opened enough to let him pass.

  The knights went first, followed by scouts, runners, and then he followed with the priest. The front half of the castle still stood, but after forty steps the pitch and mortar that smashed the castle were at their feet, and the stars glistened above them through the smoke. He sent runners throughout the castle, and they returned to him quickly with word that the upper levels were barren; no more than apartments and food storage.

  “What of the throne room?” Adreyu demanded. “The worthless cur would not have kept it far from him.”

  “We believe it was on the upper most level, towards the rear. If it was there, we should find it in the rubble, north by north-east, I would say. We should begin there.”

  “Best start then.”

  The work began in darkness and continued as the sky began to grey, the stars dulling behind the early morning gloom. Near the dawn of day, the men discovered more than rubble: broken and mangled bodies, torn artwork, and ripped furnishings.