A Wizard's Dark Dominion (The Gods and Kings Chronicles Book 1)

by Lee H. Haywood

  Cendrik caught his first glimpse of Sir Jeremiah through the hole created by Argan’s body. The battlemage was dressed in a black robe, the fabric flowing in his wake as he spun, his motions as fluid as water. He fended off attackers left and right, sometimes striking with a dagger, other times lashing out with magic. The bodies of men collected at his feet.

  Sir Jeremiah’s voice rose in challenge. “Stop sending sheep to the slaughter, Prince Rudlif. Come and face me yourself!” The battlemage’s face was curled in a grimace as he killed — he seemed to take no joy in the act.

  Princess Calycia lay huddled at his feet clutching at a bloody gash in her right thigh. She had somehow been maimed in all the confusion. She wore a dirty traveling cloak, matching trousers, and muddy boots — not exactly the attire of someone stolen from their bed in the middle of the night. In the gloom Cendrik could only vaguely perceive her features — dark skin, curly hair black as jet, lips drawn tight with determination. She clutched a dagger in her free hand. But instead of thrusting the blade into Sir Jeremiah’s back, which she had every opportunity to do, she pointed it toward her would-be rescuers.

  If Cendrik didn’t know better, he would have thought the princess was fighting alongside Sir Jeremiah, not against him. But that didn’t make sense. The princess was the victim, Sir Jeremiah the predator. Had Sir Jeremiah somehow managed to poison her mind with his sorcery? Cendrik wasn’t given any time to think through the matter. A bearded captain grabbed Cendrik by the scruff of his neck and dragged him forward.

  “Into the gap!” roared the captain, as he pulled Cendrik over a field of injured and dying men. With a strong shove, the captain sent Cendrik hurtling headfirst into the hut.

  Cendrik’s mouth had never tasted so sour in his entire life. He stumbled into the hut, his dagger thrusting forward in his weak hand. Sir Jeremiah turned, flicked his wrist toward Cendrik, and then moved on to face his next foe. For the briefest of moments Cendrik thought the battlemage had simply not seen him. Then, not a second later, something came hissing through the air and embedded itself in the right side of Cendrik’s skull.

  Cendrik collapsed backward, his body momentarily losing all function. The bearded captain jumped over him, his axe pinwheeling as he tried to hack Sir Jeremiah to pieces. There was more screaming and a bright orange flash, but Cendrik lost sight of the action as his head lolled uselessly toward the ground.

  “That man just used me as a shield,” sputtered Cendrik in disbelief. “Sir Jeremiah just tried to kill me,” managed Cendrik, his disbelief greater still. Drool was cascading from his lower lip and he couldn’t get his left hand to move. He pawed at the right side of his head with his functioning hand. He was horrified to discover a finger length of cold iron sticking out of his skull. There was no telling how far it went in.

  There’s a nail in my head!

  He felt his stomach turn over, and he would have pissed himself again had he anything left in his bladder.

  The fighting continued, but Cendrik paid it little mind. The fates of other men seemed trivial so long as he had a nail stuck in his skull. He latched his functioning hand around the nailhead and pulled. The nail came loose with an sickening crack. Cendrik’s face was suddenly hot and wet as blood came gushing from the wound.

  Too much blood. Far too much blood.

  He fumbled with the nail, trying to place it back in his skull to clog up the hole. All he managed to do was gouge up the side of his face.

  The sour taste in his mouth turned hot as fire.

  Aaaah-oooooooooooh...

  The howling of Sullivan’s pack rang loud and clear, silencing the cries of fighting and dying men. Cendrik’s blood ran cold. The wolfhounds were on the loose.

  The dogs came hurtling into the hut. For a brief moment, Cendrik wondered how the dogs would distinguish between friend and foe. They didn’t. The alpha wolfhound pounced on the first person he came to, tearing out the man’s throat. This sent the rest of the pack into a savage frenzy. If madness was Prince Rudlif’s intention, he got more than his heart’s desire. Men battled hounds, hounds battled men, and Sir Jeremiah stood amongst it all, battling everybody. There seemed no end to the chaos, until Prince Rudlif stepped into the madness.

  “Re da mujat, retpupri fapato,” chanted the prince, his frame a mere silhouette standing in the threshold.

  Cendrik was aghast, those were the words to a magic spell. He had heard rumors that Prince Rudlif was trained in the arcane arts, but he assumed the stories were just lies. Thunder tolled as lightning split the darkness, striking Sir Jeremiah square in the chest. Sir Jeremiah fell backward, tendrils of smoke emanating from the ghastly wound. The dogs were on him immediately, one on each of his legs, another biting for his throat.

  The prince was at his wife’s side before Jeremiah hit the ground. “My love, you’re injured!”

  He tried to help Princess Calycia to her feet, but as he reached for her hand she stabbed with her dagger, the blade aimed for Rudlif’s neck. Rudlif caught the blade through his palm, the dagger cutting through his mailed-gauntlet as cleanly as it would have sliced through paper. His eyes flared with genuine surprise.

  “Have you gone mad?” he screamed.

  The princess did not reply. Instead, she grabbed the handle of the dagger with both her hands and tried to drive the blade into Rudlif’s neck, throwing all of her bodyweight behind the effort. Sir Jeremiah had somehow poisoned the princess’s mind — Cendrik could come to no other reasonable conclusion.

  With the blade jammed through his palm, Rudlif was at a disadvantage. He grabbed the princess’s wrist with his free hand, but the princess was impossibly strong. She grunted with exertion, beads of sweet forming on her brow. The blade began to glow, the gemstones set in its fuller flaring brighter and brighter as Rudlif’s hand began to bleed. Rudlif was forced to his knees. Slowly but surely the blade crept forward until it was quivering mere inches from his throat.

  At the last moment Rudlif lurched sideways, letting the blade plunge into his collarbone instead of his neck. Princess Calycia cried out triumphantly, mistaking the wound for a deathblow. But in the same moment, Rudlif struck with his free hand. His mailed fist smashed into the princess’s jaw, twisting her head around so hard Cendrik was surprised it didn’t snap her neck. Her body went limp and she fell to the ground, cracking her head against the wall in the process.

  “The Shadow curse you,” said Rudlif, spitting on his wife’s unconscious body. His left palm was pinned to his chest by the glowing dagger. He roared in pain as he pulled the blade free, drawing it first from his shoulder, then from his hand. The blade was glowing white hot, the gemstones pulsing with light as bright as the sun. The blood on the blade popped and boiled. Prince Rudlif threw the dagger aside with disgust. It clanged to a stop beside Cendrik’s now useless foot.

  “Rudlif!” roared Jeremiah with unbridled rage.

  A flare of hot flames illuminated the destroyed hut. The growling cry of the wolfhounds suddenly turned into yelps of terror. The beasts went scampering from the hut, their fur in flames. Sir Jeremiah rose to his feet, his face twisted with a mixture of fury and heartbreak.

  “You were supposed to be a weapon for the king,” hissed Rudlif, blood gushing from the wound in his shoulder. “A loyal tool to keep the evil at bay. Instead, you’re a covetous fool. First you steal the Orb, then you steal my wife. You’re a traitor to your own kind.”

  Jeremiah didn’t bother to look at his accuser, he was staring at Calycia’s limp body instead. “The Orb was never meant to be handled by mortal hands,” said Jeremiah, his voice husky and filled with pain. “As to Calycia, she is a free woman. You’d better pray that she’s all right.”

  “The cur bitch can die for all I care.”

  A low growl emitted from Sir Jeremiah’s throat, bestial and terrifying. An inky shadow crept along the floorboards, collecting around Jeremiah’s feet, trailing up his legs and chest and arms. The earth began to shake. The few planks still nailed to the walls ra
ttled loose from their studs. Bodies and blades, armor and lumber began to rise skyward, carried on an unfelt wind that sent them twirling in a maelstrom. “Your doom has arrived,” hissed Jeremiah. “Your fate is sealed.”

  Cendrik watched in breathless horror as the objects in the cyclone spun, every blade, every nail, every plank, every jagged piece of armor, everything turned so that it was aimed dead on Prince Rudlif’s body. For once, Cendrik saw fear in the prince’s eyes.

  Someone has to do something. Someone has to stop this. In a panic, Cendrik looked around the room. He was shocked to discover that there was no one else left alive to intervene.

  The vision from earlier suddenly replayed in his head. A cloaked figure reaching toward the heavens, a storm of blades and debris raining down. Amidst the chaos stood Cendrik grinning maniacally as he stabbed at the air, parrying with shadows. Rarely did Fate reveal the future in full. Rarer still was it ever so clear what Cendrik had to do.

  Despite his wound and crippling fear, Cendrik lurched into action. He picked up the princess’s discarded dagger, the ivory handle already slick with Prince Rudlif’s blood, and he stumbled forward on numb legs, his left foot dragging in the dirt. Sir Jeremiah raised his hands toward the heavens, oblivious to Cendrik’s approach. An impenetrable wall of debris surrounded them, twirling faster and faster. Sir Jeremiah leveled his finger on Prince Rudlif, and at the same moment, Cendrik stabbed Sir Jeremiah; once in the small of the back, then again in his right shoulder, and one final time in the side. Cendrik’s last stroke left the blade buried to its hilt.

  A gasp passed Sir Jeremiah’s lips. He looked down, his brow furrowed with surprise. Cendrik gave the traitorous bastard a lopsided grin, then he released the handle of the dagger and fell flat on his face. The roaring wind drew to a sudden halt. Jeremiah’s spell was broken. The debris rained down around them, everything crashing back to earth at once.

  Sir Jeremiah slumped over, clutching at the handle of the dagger in his side. A slow red trickle trailed down his hip and leg. He managed a few shuffling steps toward the princess’s body before his knees gave out.

  “The Orb, Jeremiah. Where is it?” Rudlif loomed over Sir Jeremiah’s failing body.

  Sir Jeremiah didn’t respond. His gaze slowly wandered about the ruined hut, until finally his eyes settled on Princess Calycia’s face. Hand over hand, he crawled toward the princess.

  Rudlif stepped over Jeremiah, blocking his path. “Where did you hide it? Tell me and I will promise you Calycia’s safety. If she wants to leave me, that’s fine. All you need to do is tell me where’s the Orb.”

  Jeremiah’s lips parted, and he mouthed something unintelligible.

  Rudlif leaned over, placing his ear close to Jeremiah’s lips. “What was that? I couldn’t hear you.”

  “The Orb of Azure is not meant for mortal hands,” said Sir Jeremiah. He hacked bloody spit on Rudlif’s face.

  Rudlif yelled with berserk rage and kicked Sir Jeremiah in the side, again in the groin, and a third time under the chin. The last blow knocked Jeremiah out cold.

  Cendrik began to frantically rummage through Jeremiah’s clothing, his face showing greater and greater frustration with each pocket he found empty.

  “Murrr...”

  Cendrik must have made some guttural noise, because Prince Rudlif spun on his heels, his eyes flashing in the dark as he sought the source. His gaze settled on Cendrik.

  Rudlif blinked and the frustration vanished from his face. An unctuous smile creased his lips. “Cendrik, the fortuitous seer!” he exclaimed, as he hurried to Cendrik’s side. “Bards will sing glory of your heroic act. Wonderful work with the dagger. I really didn’t see that one coming, although I bet you did!”

  Cendrik was shocked to hear that the prince actually knew his name. Rudlif usually just called him seer or boy. “I did my best, my lord,” said Cendrik. He was surprised to discover his words came out slurred and difficult to comprehend. “I wish I could say my skills did a better job of keeping me unharmed.” He pawed at the hole in his head.

  Prince Rudlif sucked his teeth as he checked over Cendrik’s wound. “That’s a nasty one,” said the prince, sticking his finger to the hole. His fingers came back flush with blood. “We’ll have to see to patching this up.” He cut loose a swatch of fabric from a dead man’s shirt and began to wrap it around Cendrik’s head. The prince chuckled as he worked. “You’ll have quite the tale to tell your sisters when you get home.”

  “You know of my sisters?” managed Cendrik.

  “Of course, I make a point of knowing about the things that are important to my men.” Rudlif cinched the bandage tight.

  Cendrik tried to smile, but his face felt weighted down, his lips and cheeks weren’t moving in concert with one another. “You honor me, your Highness.”

  “No, you do the king an honor by serving the throne with such faith and obedience. The world is full of traitorous scum. Good men are hard to come by. Men with gifts such as yours are rarer still.”

  “My gifts?”

  “It was your intuition that told you when to strike Sir Jeremiah, was it not?”

  “I could read his every move,” said Cendrik, eager to impress the prince. It was a lie, of course, but he saw no benefit in telling Rudlif the truth — that the only reason he acted was because he had a vision of Sir Jeremiah’s death earlier in the evening. “I waited until I knew there was going to be an opening, then I struck.”

  “Good, very good,” said Rudlif, nodding his head with approval. “Do you know how many seers can penetrate the mind of an Old Magic wielder?”

  “Very few, I suppose.”

  “None, save you,” said Rudlif. Once again that unctuous smile creased his lips. “I’ve been waiting a very long time to find someone with your unique set of skills.” Rudlif gave Cendrik a hearty slap on the back. “Tell me, do you love your king?”

  “More than anything,” said Cendrik, knowing what was expected of him.

  “Of course you do. And you are willing to spend your life in your king’s service, are you not?”

  “Yes, your Highness.” Cendrik could feel it coming, his appointment to the Academy Arcanum. His dreams were about to come true. The risk had paid off.

  Prince Rudlif patted his shoulder. “Sir Jeremiah not only stole my wife. He stole something from the king. Something of great importance and terrible power.”

  “The Orb of Azure.”

  Prince Rudlif nodded. “Did your intuition reveal where Sir Jeremiah has the artifact hidden?”

  Cendrik wiped drool from his chin. “No, your Highness. But I was focused on the battle. Maybe if I had more time with Sir Jeremiah things might be clearer.”

  It was another harmless lie — Sir Jeremiah wasn’t going to live long enough to prove that Cendrik was a fraud. Sir Jeremiah lay only a few feet away gulping for air. Blood frothed on his lips. He did not have much time left.

  The prince grinned. “Time is something I can give you in abundance.” Rudlif stuck his fingers between his lips and whistled. A man dressed in the white robe of a healer rushed forward from his hiding spot in the woods.

  “I know what you want, Cendrik,” continued Prince Rudlif. “Find me the whereabouts of the Orb and I will grant you an appointment to the Academy Arcanum.”

  “Th-th-thank you, your Highness,” stammered Cendrik. He tried to bow, but the motion was lopsided and clumsy. “I will not disappoint you.” Or would he? Cendrik wasn’t exactly certain what he had just agreed to.

  “See that this is true.” Prince Rudlif turned his attention back to the healer, who was just then entering the ruined hut. “Make sure Sir Jeremiah doesn’t bleed to death,” instructed Rudlif. “Our friend Cendrik is only getting started picking apart his mind.”

  The healer nodded dutifully. Lifting his robe, he carefully stepped over Princess Calycia’s unconscious body and took a knee beside Sir Jeremiah. He wordlessly went to work saving the battlemage’s life.

  As it became apparent S
ir Jeremiah was not going to die, Cendrik couldn’t help but notice the sour taste returning to his mouth. The lopsided grin slowly faded from his face, and a stark question emerged in his otherwise muddled mind — if the cloaked figure standing in the maelstrom wasn’t Sir Jeremiah, whose death had Cendrik foreseen?

  CHAPTER

  II

  BULLIES AND COWARDS

  A FINE LINE EXISTED BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH.

  Demetry would know. He had seen death up close more times than he could count. He wrinkled his nose as he rummaged through the undergrowth. There was no mistaking the odor of decay. His subject was not far. Like a hound on a scent, he took in great draughts of air through his nose. To the east, he surmised. He pushed on through the underbrush, letting the scent of death guide the way.

  Birds chirped overhead in the forest canopy, calling out warning cries as he trudged onward. Every few paces he stopped to sniff and rummage. He was getting closer.

  Demetry could gauge how long something had been dead just by the smell. In this instance, the putrid scent of rot had given way to a musty staleness. It spoiled the air with its foulness much like a damp cellar filled with mold. Three weeks, maybe a month, Demetry guessed. There wouldn’t be much left — just skin and bones.

  The foul odor led him to a shallow stream. He parted the fronds of a fern growing along the bank and smiled.

  There you are.

  The remains of a large doe lay curled around the base of a tree, the body half buried by debris. The unlucky creature must have drowned when the river flooded its banks a few weeks earlier. The carrion birds had long since had their fill. The ants, maggots, and grave worms had come and gone. All that was left were reddish bones and crisp leathery skin covered by thin patches of fur. Demetry was pleased to discover that the skeleton was largely intact. The specimen would suffice.

  “Demetry, where are you?” called a voice from further downstream.

  “Soon,” whispered Demetry to the carcass. He let the brush fall back into place, concealing the body, and waved his hands in the air. “I’m over here!”