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

by Lee H. Haywood

  On his way out the door, Cendrik would often hand Jeremiah a letter. As soon as they could hear the telltale thunk, tap, thunk, of Cendrik ascending the stairwell, Jeremiah would retire to his desk and break the seal on the letter. He would spend the rest of the evening hunched over examining the letter with rapt interest. He would set into the parchment with a pen, underlining words, circling letters, and jotting down a cipher in the margins. It didn’t take long for Demetry to figure out these were no ordinary letters — someone was feeding Jeremiah secrets from the outside world. Sometimes Jeremiah would laugh, at other times Demetry could detect a hint of moisture in the old man’s eyes. Whoever the letters were from, they were bittersweet, that was for certain. Jeremiah never let Demetry read a single one of the letters — he would always burn them immediately after he was finished. When asked about the letters, Jeremiah would change the subject, and when that didn’t work he would grow hostile.

  “A boy ought to know when to keep his nose out of someone else’s affairs.”

  Demetry could only shrug and add this mystery to the lengthy list of unknowns he already had concerning the old man.

  The anniversary of Demetry’s imprisonment came and went. Demetry stopped bothering to gauge the passage of time. He focused on his training every waking hour, sleeping only when he was too tired to move. Jeremiah often had to remind him to eat. Demetry would do so grudgingly — there was always more to do, more to practice, more skills to hone.

  Jeremiah watched Demetry’s progress with a mixture of pride and worry. Demetry was growing restless, and he was having a hard time hiding it. He began to see the cavern, which at first seemed like a grand space filled with fine furnishings, for what it really was — his tomb. He wanted to try his powers in the real world, to show his strength to those who condemned him to the depths of Coljack. But he had promised Jeremiah he would not attempt to escape. Even so, the thought was always there, gnawing at the back of his mind like a cancer.

  “You did nothing wrong. You deserve to be free,” the voice in his head would whisper when Demetry was feeling especially disheartened. “Cages contain the weak. You are strong. You are powerful. You must break free.”

  On most days, Demetry woke before Jeremiah so that he could get a few minutes of practice in before Jeremiah began his daily lessons. One morning Demetry was practicing levitating books — a feat made all the more difficult by the distracting sound of his mentor’s incessant snoring — when a roll of parchment came shooting through the locking portal beside the cell door. It landed on the floor with a hollow thud. The sudden commotion broke Demetry’s concentration, and the collection of books he was practicing with came crashing to the ground.

  He winced, half expecting a firm scolding from Jeremiah, but the old man remained silent. Demetry was pleased to discover Jeremiah had somehow managed to sleep through the ruckus.

  He quickly returned the books to their shelf. “Wake up, Jeremiah. You have a letter,” called Demetry, once everything was back in order. Jeremiah did not reply. If anything, his snoring grew louder.

  Demetry gave Jeremiah’s shoulder a gentle shake. “You have a letter.” Jeremiah muttered something unintelligible, and then rolled over and continued to snore.

  Demetry’s eyes wandered back to the piece of rolled parchment lying by the door. It was sealed shut with a red wax stamp.

  “Don’t you want to know who it’s from?” Demetry scowled. Joshua’s voice always seemed to creep into his consciousness whenever his advice was least welcome.

  Demetry collected the letter from the floor. The wax seal bore two symbols — an eagle and a rising sun. This was the seal of some great house, no doubt, but Demetry couldn’t remember which one. He cursed himself for not paying more attention to such matters in school.

  “Break the seal. Read the letter,” whispered the nagging voice. “How can you trust Jeremiah without knowing who these letters are from? Maybe he and Cendrik are playing you. The two seem chummy enough. Perhaps their games of bones are just a ruse. Their true communications come through the letters.”

  Demetry grunted with frustration. Why couldn’t he trust anyone?

  He slid his finger along the crease in the parchment and broke the seal. Demetry felt guilty the moment he did it, but there was no going back. His eyes quickly darted across the page, catching snippets of the letter’s contents until he came to the end.

  Yours Always, Calycia.

  Demetry had only a second to wonder about the name. The letter suddenly flew from his hands, whipping from his grasp so quickly it cut grooves into his finger tips. Jeremiah snatched the letter out of the air.

  “Mind your own matters,” snapped Jeremiah, rising from his bed. “You know full well this letter was meant for me. I...”

  Demetry raised his hand. “You might want to hold your scolding for later,” said Demetry. He was beginning to piece together some of the words he had caught while scanning the letter — none of the news sounded good. “The letter brings dark tidings.”

  Jeremiah scowled. He hurried over to his desk and pulled the brazier close, illuminating his face with orange light. He unrolled the parchment, setting a small stone on each corner to keep it flat. His eyes quickly wandered over the text. For once his pen was idle — he didn’t bother to jot down a single note in the margin. A look of deep concern creased his face when he reached the end.

  “There is plague in the Nexus and parties of dragoon raiders south of the wall,” said Demetry, reciting what he had gleaned from the letter before it was snatched away.

  With a heavy sigh, Jeremiah let the parchment roll shut. “What you say is correct. But there is more hidden by the cipher. The plague is running through the cities like wildfire, killing most who show symptoms. People are fleeing the cities in droves, spreading the plague further afield. The king speaks of quarantine, and all this while the main host of the dark enemy is amassing north of the wall. War is coming. The plague is just a precursor, meant to sow chaos and weaken our defenses.”

  “Our defenses?” Demetry’s eyes narrowed. “That is spoken like a man who still serves the king.”

  “I serve no one but myself,” said Jeremiah, his voice taking on a dangerous tone. “Still, there are some matters where the king and I share a common enemy. Dragoons are friend to no man.”

  Of the three races of dark children, dragoons were largely considered to be the most dangerous. Bred by the Wyrm to be duplicitous and deadly creatures, dragoons had more in common with crocodiles than they did with the race of men. Demetry always found it amazing that Jeremiah had somehow managed to control vast legions of the beasts during the War of Sundering.

  “What threat could the dragoons truly pose?” asked Demetry. “I thought they were slaughtered nearly to extinction during the War of Sundering.”

  “If only that were true,” said Jeremiah. “Thousands of dark children managed to flee into the wastes of Eremor. If they’ve been breeding and multiplying all this time, their numbers could be great, enough for an invasion.”

  Demetry snorted. “Let them come. It would be fair justice for the king to meet his demise at the sharp end of a dragoon’s talon.” He tried to peek over Jeremiah’s shoulder and get a second look at the letter.

  “Don’t say such things,” said Jeremiah. He waved his hand, shooing Demetry aside.

  “You were the general who once marshaled dragoons into battle, not me,” snapped Demetry, growing frustrated by Jeremiah’s hypocrisy.

  “Aye? Well I regret that choice. My biggest mistake was not seeing the Wyrm for what they were from the start. I have lived the rest of my life struggling for penance.”

  “Its easy to speak of regrets, yet why did you serve the Wyrm in the first place?”

  “May you never be so tempted,” said Jeremiah with a solemn shake of his head. “The Wyrm promised me knowledge and power beyond compare. In my youthful ignorance I could not say no. Would you have acted any differently?”

  Probably not, Demetry had
to admit. He had taken the Paserani Haote from the headmaster’s study, drawn by the allure of hidden knowledge. If the gods of old had offered Demetry unbridled power, he probably wouldn’t have hesitated.

  Jeremiah placed the letter atop the glowing coals of the brazier. The parchment curled in on itself like a dying spider. Demetry caught the signature at the bottom one last time before it vanished into flames.

  “This Calycia, who is she?” asked Demetry, growing bold.

  Jeremiah seemed reluctant to answer. He sat in silence as the letter was slowly reduced to white ash. “She is someone I had no right to love,” he said finally, his voice hardly a whisper. “Someone who made the mistake of loving me in return. We have both paid dearly for our indiscretions.”

  “Why does the warden allow you to receive the letters?”

  “As far as I know, he has no say in the matter. The king is the one who ordered the letters to be delivered. It’s his way of reminding me of the stakes. After all these years he still has ways to hurt me.”

  “He could have her killed.”

  Jeremiah nodded.

  “Yet the king refrains. Why?”

  “The king still believes he can wrestle the whereabouts of the Orb from my head. If he kills her, he would have nothing left to use against me. He would be a snake without venom.”

  “And this Calycia is the reason you haven’t tried to escape?”

  Jeremiah raised an eyebrow at that. “Need I remind you of the nature of this cell. A thousand tons of rock hang overhead. As powerful as I might seem, I cannot hold the weight of a mountain upon my back.”

  “What if I could open the door?”

  “Say you could. The alarm bells would toll and the floodgate would open. You and I would drown before we made it halfway up the stairs. Or have you devised a spell to sprout gills?”

  “Anything is possible with the Old Magic,” said Demetry, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

  Jeremiah’s whole body shook with frustration. “I’m teaching you the Old Magic so that you can find purpose in your confinement,” snapped Jeremiah, “not so you can daydream about ways to get yourself killed. Stop being so foolish!”

  Demetry stared at his feet. He had never seen Jeremiah so angry.

  “Besides, maybe I deserve this,” said Jeremiah, taking on a softer tone.

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “Don’t I? I served the Wyrm, Demetry. I killed countless, burned cities, led legions of dark children. Have you ever seen what a squadron of dragoons can do to a host of unarmed villagers? I have, because I was the one giving the orders. My sins are too numerous to count. Perhaps a dank hole in the bottom of the earth is precisely where I deserve to spend my final days.”

  “What about me? I’m young. I have decades of life ahead of me. Would you condemn me to this same fate? One day you will die, and I will sit here in this cell suffocating in the darkness for the rest of my life.”

  “You know of my crime, what about yours?” said Jeremiah. He looked all too similar to the instructors at Taper, his eyes glinting with self-righteousness. “I’m no fool Demetry. Innocent men don’t end up at Coljack. What did you do?”

  It was the first time in all these months that Jeremiah ever asked the questions.

  “N-n-nothing,” stuttered Demetry, quailing beneath Jeremiah’s stern gaze. “It was a mistake. A misunderstanding.”

  “How many men did you kill?

  “None.” The scars in Demetry’s back began to throb.

  “What forbidden spell did you perform?”

  Demetry shook his head, refusing to answer. “What I did, I did out of love,” he finally whispered.

  Jeremiah sneered. “We all find ways to justify our dark deeds, Demetry. Forgiveness comes to those who accept their own failings and direct the blame where it truly belongs.” He turned his back on Demetry and returned to his desk. “I will hear no more talk of escape. You made me a promise when you began your training. I expect you to keep it. A man is only as good as his word.”

  Demetry bristled with rage, but held his tongue. How could Jeremiah be so blind to the injustice staring him in the face? This cell, this prison, this sentence — none of it was fair.

  There was no justice in this world, Demetry surmised, only men, and the kings that lorded over them like gods. Jeremiah might be willing to accept his place in the world. Demetry was not.

  CHAPTER

  IX

  PLAGUE AND WAR

  DEMETRY KNEW HE WAS DREAMING when he saw his mother’s face. Her cheeks and forehead were covered with scabs. Her hair, which she typically kept braided and raised in a bun, was a disheveled mess. Her eyes were pale and rheumy, lifeless. No breath passed her lips.

  Demetry tried to feed her anyway, smashing up a bundle of carrots he had stolen from a market vendor until they formed a thin paste. It was what his mother would have done if he was sick. He tried to force a spoonful of the orange paste into her mouth, but her teeth wouldn’t part. She’d been like that for over a day, and Demetry didn’t know what to do.

  When his mother first took ill, he ran to his neighbors begging for help. No one would even open their door. They all barked instructions from behind closed doors, their voices muffled by the thin wooden planks they hoped would protect them from the plague. “Keep her warm,” they advised. “Place a damp cloth on her forehead to ease the fever. Make sure she drinks plenty of water. Pray.”

  Praying was never a problem for Demetry. Like most who lived in the Warrens, his mother was a pious woman. She made certain Demetry had the entire pantheon of gods memorized before he was old enough to form coherent sentences. By the time Demetry was four years of age, he could recite several dozen prayers by heart.

  He prayed to Vacia first. She was the patron goddess of the sick, and thus, the most likely to come to his mother’s aid. When that didn’t work, he tried the Weaver. She was responsible for orchestrating the fates of mankind. Surely matters of life and death fell under the goddess’s purview. When his mother’s fever didn’t break, he grew fearful that he might have offended one of the other deities. The god-saint Yansarian was the most likely culprit. It was well-known that Yansarian was a fickle god and prone to wrath when ignored. To make up for his ignorance, Demetry recited ten Divine Blessings, and then proceeded to flagellate himself with a whip he fashioned out of horse-leather. Once again, his prayers went unanswered. If anything, his mother’s condition was worsening.

  Demetry made several trips in search of fresh water, but each time he ventured from home he found guards stationed at the community well. “The wells are poisoned,” Demetry heard one woman say. “The gods are punishing us for our sins,” lamented another. During his final trip to the well, he discovered that the guards had vacated their post. They were no longer needed — the well was entombed in a fresh layer of bricks and mortar.

  Sheets and blankets they had aplenty, but his mother kept soiling the bed. By the end of the third night the only remaining clean linen was a threadbare sheet that was only suitable for the summer months. His mother’s teeth were constantly chattering, and her body would go through fits of uncontrollable tremors. Demetry tried using his own body heat to keep her warm, but she kept shoving him away, muttering in a barely comprehensible voice that she didn’t want to make him sick. When she finally stopped shivering on the sixth day, even Demetry, though just a child, knew it was a bad sign. Her body had run through its reserves. She teetered now on that fragile line between life and death.

  He spent the rest of the night praying for divine intervention. His youthful mind could only wonder why the gods continued to ignore his pleas. Had he recited the prayers improperly? Had he asked the wrong gods for help? Perhaps he was too tarnished by sin to deserve aid — he had stolen the carrots from a merchant, after all. He fell asleep first cursing the gods, and then begging for their forgiveness.

  He awoke the next morning to a ruckus in the alley. Women were crying, children were screaming. The last time t
hat happened a mob came rushing through the Warrens breaking down doors and looting houses. Demetry was horrified. He grabbed his mother’s stiff arm and pulled it around his body, nestling into the hollow between her arms and legs.

  There were more voices in the alley; this time it was the deep-throated growl of men. The handle to the door rattled as someone checked to see if it was locked.

  “Is anyone alive in there?” The man beat at the door with the flat of his fist.

  Demetry considered begging the gods for help, but decided they were likely still mad at him from the previous night. Instead, he hid his eyes against his mother’s chest and hoped the men in the alley would just go away.

  “Hand me the axe.”

  The heavy thwack of metal striking wood filled the air. The door rattled on its hinges until it finally gave way, swinging inward in a hail of splinters and shattered planking.

  A hulking figure stepped inside with an axe dangling in his hand. His clothes were filthy, stained with nightsoil, blood, and the gods knew what else. A handkerchief covered his mouth and nose.

  “Fetch the cart. There are two more in here,” said the man, calling over his shoulder.

  “The cart can wait,” replied a voice from outside. A second man shouldered his way into the room. He was similarly dressed as the first, but his frame was thin to the point of being emaciated, and his face was narrow and sharp like a rat. “Fill your pockets before the magistrate comes to investigate.” The thin man’s pockets were already so full they looked ripe to burst. He began to rummage through the drawers, pocketing anything he found of value — a coin purse, his mother’s favorite ring, a glass perfume bottle, a tarnished spoon.

  “Fine, don’t help me,” said the hulking man, shaking his head with disapproval. With a weary sigh, the hulking man went to work. He grabbed Demetry’s mother by the leg and began to drag her toward the door. This left Demetry lying all alone on the floor.