by T. A. Miles
“By the look of things, this town consists of less than twenty citizens,” Merran commented.
Korsten nodded, undoubtedly making the same observations. “Now we have to wonder what’s keeping them here.”
The answer seemed simple enough. “Morenne, possibly—especially given how near we are to the border. I suspect there’s an agent of one persuasion or another in the vicinity. If no one is possessed or particularly ill, then that determined girl and her companions must be under watch.”
“By a Morennish agent.” Korsten seemed to be tasting the idea, and finding it less bitter than a demon—or demons—already in place and undermining their every effort in advance. “Either way, our stay has probably already overextended itself. Clearly, since someone tried to halt us on our way here.”
“The attempt lacked vigor,” Merran reminded, aware that it could have been a roundabout way to entrap them. “And we were invited to stay overnight. All the same, we’re going to have to ferret the individual out. If they’re not living on the premises, then we’ll have to learn from the villagers when and from where this agent comes around.”
“And that individual will be the one to tell us what became of the soldiers,” Korsten surmised.
Collecting Erschal’s reins, Merran concluded, “One way or another, yes.”
“I shan’t look forward to one way or the other,” Korsten murmured, and they brought the animals across to the inn, where they would leave them while they investigated the town itself.
A stable attendant accepted his responsibilities, and a handful of coins. That would suggest that there was yet some hope for a life beyond whatever was happening at Endmark. It might also have meant that not everyone was aware of the situation. Ignorance and a natural lack of perception from ordinary people had been among the better incidental weapons of the Vadryn.
•—•
Leodyn’s fortress was a labyrinth. Alsaide had not been within the confines of its walls long enough to know instantly where each and every hall led to. For that reason, he had been making a map for himself. He was just adding the lift tower—a recent place he had been introduced to—while he sat upon the scaffolding that lined the extended drop that it was from the top of the tower, to the platform upon which all deliveries were laid. This was the first time he had ever come to the place to receive anything specifically himself, but he had witnessed several things being put into the storage halls. Below the platform was an even greater depth, a dark one that Alsaide had tested with rocks and torches, only to determine that there may have been no base at all.
He was always made to stand so near to Hell’s depths; it made him sick when he thought of it. Not ill or weak …merely disgusted. There were better things for him to do, he was sure. But, as punishments went, he had had worse. In fact, the worst of his recent punishment over losing Lilende and the Master’s prisoner had already passed. He decided while he moved the stylus over his map that he had omitted it from his mind.
That was when the mechanisms of the lift groaned into use. Alsaide looked up to see the panel in the ceiling begin its descent. Rather than let in any light from above, it brought fresh darkness to the tower. That darkness lowered from across the entirety of the ceiling, as if the tower were somehow shrinking on itself.
Alsaide rose at once from the steps he’d been sprawled upon, closing the map in his fist and dropping the stylus altogether. It bounced upon the slats beneath his feet and slipped through a space, into the abyss. Alsaide watched it flash only once and abruptly in the lanternlight, and thought about following after it.
His eyes went to the lift instead, and he watched it lowering intently. It was far too high for him to descry any detail, but he required none. Lilende wasn’t his fault—but that wasn’t why the Master had come. Alsaide had already paid the bulk of that debt—that fee for not finishing what the Master had started. He wasn’t the one who first let Korsten go, in Haddowyn.
The thought was dangerously potent. In Alsaide’s mind, he ran from it, across the bridge leading back to the fortress interior and to his own chambers, where he had been left to work for some time on his toxins. Consideration of what he had lately invented held him in place upon the platform. What he had lately concocted was far more useful than torturing or killing prisoners. It was already in use, and it would win battles for them …better than Loel’s borrowed magic would on its own.
Thoughts of Loel put a scowl onto Alsaide’s face. You homely little backwoods cur—you’ll never do what I have done. You’re the one of less worth, carried around, like a sack for holding trivial items. I’ll be the one to earn my way, and you’ll wind up on the side of the road with a hole in you.
The lift came down enough for its passengers to be in view. The Master was there, of course, his darkness drawing down with him. Beside him was Alsaide’s stupid brother. They weren’t even real brothers—not even by half. Loel had been acquired …adopted over an interest in his ability to play with dead things. Of course, he could—he was half dead himself.
Alsaide was the Master’s actual child—conceived of his efforts—not an accident of feeding. Considerations of how useless Loel actually was fell to the side of noticing the other body on the platform. It was a man—or had been, once. He hulked behind the Master, his arms and legs larger and thicker than even a heavyset man should have had. He had begun to press through his clothes in some places and his feet had come somewhat mangled through his shoes. His apron was intact, though heavily bloodied, veiling a belly that was undoubtedly ingesting itself and feeding something new even as he stood there. The newness of the man had drawn his facial features down somewhat and he had lost an eye. Remnants of it may have been tangled in his beard. His remaining eye was able to focus; it found Alsaide easily.
Alsaide smiled at him, even though he was grotesque and horrid, because he represented success. And that meant that the Master wouldn’t be upset with him. And Loel could rot.
When the lift settled upon the platform, the Master stepped off and proceeded to the bridge. Alsaide edged away from it and out of his path, holding his gaze to the grated floor beneath his feet.
The Master did not look at him as he passed, but merely said, “Your brother has something to share with you. See to it.”
•—•
Leodyn left his observatory and had taken to the passages of the fortress. The darkness that had descended upon his domain was both familiar and unwelcome. It was also necessary. In order to finish out their shared plans, they were required to tolerate one another, even if only for a few moments at any given time.
That Renmyr had come meant that Feidor’s Crest had been successful, at least in part. The raveners had grown, once introduced to a host. Technically, Leodyn knew that they would; they had done so within the fortress already. Would they grow when away from him and would they be able to sustain outside of a whole host? Those were what he actually wanted to know, and their success or failure would be made known to him now.
He entered the Shroud Hall at the uppermost floor, passing through one of many doors that would lead into the cylindrical room. Beneath the ornate dome, he walked to the railing and stood over the depths of the chamber. Shadows pooled at the center, adding weight to the space. Within them was Renmyr.
“They lived?” Leodyn asked, casting his voice into the augmenting acoustics of the vast room.
Renmyr raised his face. The entirety of his shadowed form flexed with the merest of actions. Undoubtedly, he had previously been observing the shroud generator, which was very like the repurposed augmenters he himself had made use of outside of the fortress.
It was true that Leodyn had been quite active, and also quite successful. It would be largely upon his effort that they would return to Vassenleigh.
“One was destroyed,” Renmyr told him. “By priests.”
“And the others?”
“I’ve brought the
butcher, which will sufficiently replace the one you could not control.”
Leodyn flared somewhat, probing the extensions of his being, which were layered throughout the fortress interior. He felt the movement of the spawn of Renmyr and the still embodied ravener. It was growing rapidly, but not as quickly as its predecessor, who had swelled beyond easy control over its incessant hunger. This one would be able to resume the work of the previous butcher. Still, its form was erratic and of questionable functionality. Leodyn had far better examples within the fortress, one of them a soldier. “I can tell already that Shalex is better grown.”
“Under protection, within these walls, I don’t doubt it.”
“What of the rest?”
“Some have been brought back. Others, I decided not to wait for. We’ll learn whether or not they have an instinct to survive when not being directly fed …or coddled to.”
“Your attempts to undermine me won’t be successful. I don’t know why you believe that you can accomplish our goals alone.”
“I don’t know why you believe they’re our goals.”
Leodyn’s grip on the railing tightened, beginning with the host’s hand and wrapping the structure in either direction in tentacles of mist.
Renmyr’s darkness shifted, encroaching. “Agents of Vassenleigh will come.”
Leodyn deliberately withheld that he had seen them, and that there were three within the walls of the fortress already.
“There’s one that I would like detained, should he arrive,” Renmyr continued. “Alsaide knows of which I speak.”
Leodyn was aware that one of them had escaped the tower outside of Dammesreigh not long ago. There was also rumor that another had once been in his midst and gotten away as well. Perhaps those same two had been in the woods.
“What do you want with him?” Leodyn finally asked.
Renmyr answered, but it was in the poise of his darkness that he was growing impatient. “He holds a key.”
“To what?”
“To Ashwin.”
Some part of that was a lie. Leodyn detected that easily. Some part of that was also truth, and he detected that as well. It would be deciphered later. He’d had enough and knew that Renmyr had as well. It was time to bring their meeting to a close. “Where will you be?”
“The troops at the border require motivation. I intend to give it to them. I will return shortly, and we will learn how successful you can be.”
Leodyn tensed throughout his being.
“I expect to take Endmark,” Renmyr continued, bristling in such a way that it abraded Leodyn’s senses. “And to move an army both south and west. I want forces transported by way of the old gates, from here to Feidor’s Crest.”
“The only concern I have for your wants are my own.”
A column of darkness arced upward and across the chamber, careening toward the uppermost mezzanine with velocity to crush. Leodyn drew back from the railing and raised an arm of mist against it, successfully blocking the path of Renmyr’s shadow.
The spontaneous limb formed claws, which raked across Leodyn’s gauntlet of spectral flesh, tearing aspects of it away. Leodyn reinforced the strength of the limb, projecting spikes outward, which passed through the hand of darkness, dragging streams of it across the open center of the room. The shadow recoiled, and Leodyn returned to the railing, aware that Renmyr was glaring up at him.
“I’ll return soon,” Renmyr said, stalking from the chamber. “I’m leaving Alsaide here.”
•—•
The daylight hours were devoted to exploring Endmark, and to interviewing any of its residents who would speak to a pair of priests. Almost no one would, and whenever someone did have anything to say, it was vague and of little use. There was no talk of plague, which would have explained the population’s dramatic depletion. There was no talk of the battle, which also could have accounted for such a loss. And there was no talk of demons.
By sunset, Korsten and Merran were forced to retire to the inn, which in itself was a curiosity, given that the townspeople were so few and seemed to want to deter travelers. Still, it was the owner’s home, so he at least had reason to live there, even if there were typically no guests to take his rooms. Korsten wondered if they might find some hidden evidence of missing townspeople being kept there, owed to illness that no one would speak of—maybe which they even believed would go unnoticed—but all of the rooms they came across were open, unoccupied, and unattended. The amount of neglect they seemed to have suffered suggested that it had been months since visitors had last been housed in them.
The owner—a man by the name Behn—presented Korsten and Merran with a room on the second floor that was furnished with three beds. Two were arranged parallel to one another along the widest wall. The third was set against a jutting block of timber adjacent to the room’s small, squared window. The space was also furnished with a large chest, a small panel of pegs near the door, and an assortment of candle holders, some with candles. A small table with a pitcher and bowl stood in the alcove created by the third bed. The innkeeper did not offer to have it filled, and a glance inside showed that doing so would be displacing a well-established spider.
A wooden frame creaked as Merran seated himself. He yet wore his coat, but he had unstrapped his sheath and propped the weapon against the end of the bed.
Korsten stepped away from the alcove. “No evidence of a demon. No evidence of bodies, or prisoners, and also …no evidence of a manor house.”
Merran lifted his brow somewhat at that last detail.
Korsten carried himself to the bed across from the one Merran had claimed, but did not sit down yet. “I’d like to know why.”
“I’ll admit I had not thought of that.”
Korsten wasn’t surprised. The man was three-hundred years removed from ordinary society, and had come from a small and isolated farmstead to begin with. It was the precise place that a demon would have been drawn to back then, especially for its lack of overseeing bodies, of any kind.
The Vadryn had only become so bold as to lay claim to entire towns and villages in the last century. The success of the assault on both Vassenleigh and the Old Capital had empowered them, and their sense of empowerment had been shared with a country of men who might never have ventured beyond their own borders, no matter how bleak their society had grown over the ages. All history could speak of was the dismal atmosphere of the north country. There had been a revolution of some sort, which had set the classes against one another, and led to an horrific amount of death. Morenne would not have been considered wealthy enough or organized enough to wage war like this, until they did. And they had done so with strength and resources that seemed to openly contradict the pens of scholars. There was little question that their fervor was demonic in nature, as were their tactics.
Korsten pulled his thoughts away from what could easily lead to depression and anxiety over his own experiences with the Morennish people. Focusing on the task at hand, he said, “I’ve never been to a town with a governor, and no governor’s mansion.”
Merran had been watching him think, and nodded. “We’ll look for it, or for what may have happened to it.”
The comment brought forward the possibility that the local manor had been burned and that the governor may have been burned with it, whether intentionally or by accident. That could well have been the meaning behind Sesha Izwendel’s cryptic answer to their inquiry. Had it been over a demon, it was intriguing to consider that the townspeople may have already faced one of the Vadryn, and that they had managed to somehow drive it off, maybe by entrapping the man it had hoped to take possession of and killing him.
Considering Sesha’s apparent contempt for Izwendel’s son, perhaps he had abandoned them and his father, rather than face it alongside them. Or, it was possible that the son himself had been the subject of possession, and the demon had simply taken the body
of the younger man, and left Endmark altogether. Maybe the demon had taken as much sustenance as it was able from the town, leaving them with corpses that had been buried, or that they were forced to burn. Again, if the townspeople had risen against ghouls or lesser Vadryn, then Korsten was impressed. Overcoming fear of the demons would be paramount in overcoming them, and Morenne.
“We’ll begin searching north of the village in the morning,” Merran announced. “This area has been far too active to justify wandering through the dark with very little clear direction.”
The words inspired Korsten to sit down finally. “I agree. Given what we found in Feidor’s Crest, I would be concerned over stumbling upon a cache of bodies the size of what has lately gone missing, only to find it being actively devoured by a growing beast.”
“It was not as stable as it was daunting in its size,” Merran said, lying back. “If it’s a tactic Morenne has been experimenting with employing, I doubt that it will be useful for them in battle.”
“Maybe not in battle, but it did lead to the ruination of a town. And we still don’t know whether or not something like that is happening here.”
The words drew Merran’s blue eyes to him, and Korsten was content to study their color in the fading light. He did so for a long time before lying down himself. It was Merran’s gaze that led him into his dreams.
It was in his dream, that Korsten awoke to the room lit an eerie green that was nothing at all like the smeared orbs of color encountered before. It was colder. Gray mist rolled across the ceiling, like frost evaporating off a frozen lake. Within it, the notion of limbs writhed. Some were long and skeletal, stretching across the expanse as if to center a core form. Others were tendrils of clashing darkness, turning as if just beneath the surface of a shrouded sea. At the point where the skeletal limbs met, an eye opened, greenish-gray with striations of red so deep it appeared nearly black.