by Aaron Pogue
I led a dozen of our best men over the rough slope of the crumbled archway and into the courtyard of the ruined fortress. The morning was strangely quiet as we all dismounted and stood in the awesome immensity of the rubble-strewn courtyard. I closed my eyes and looked with the wizard's sight, searching every shadow in the place for any sign of a lurking drake, but there were none this time.
Too far from men, too far from wealth, too far from any power except the memory of man. The drake I'd met before had been a hunting scout of Pazyarev's. But he had seen me all across the south Ardain. With any luck at all he was still scouring the mountains or the plains where I had slain his greens. I would face him. With this army, I could face him. But first I needed time, and a stronghold worthy of my power.
I stretched out a hand and brushed aside a pile of rubble paces tall as though it were just dust. I remembered the staggering toll it once had taken for me to raise a wall of earth, but here with far less effort I did much more work, and none of it with borrowed Chaos. The men behind me hushed with awe, and a smile touched my lips as I pressed forward, clearing off a hundred square paces of courtyard floored with the chipped and crumbling paving stones that the FirstKing had placed more than a thousand years ago.
When Caleb and Lareth arrived at the head of the column, my bodyguard was already busy scouting the vast premises of the fortress, trying to define its exact dimensions among all the ruin. I sat waiting at the foot of the broken stronghold. A quiet satisfaction stole over me as I watched the trotting column slow without an order to a reverent walk, just as we had done, every neck craning as the tired men filed through the gateway gap.
They looked on rubble and ruin barely distinguishable from wild nature, but every eye carried a far-off look as they mentally reconstructed the old glory of these crumbled stones. They could see the reality that wasn't yet real, and they thrilled at the chance to play a part. They knew what I meant to do—or at least some part of it—and I saw the faces of men I had forced into service suddenly glowing at the thought of the future.
Perhaps I had a chance.
Caleb had little time for me, then, as he began the process of securing the perimeter as well as setting up an orderly camp for so many men. I didn't envy him the task, but he had found a competent staff of officers among them, and he seemed to have a plan.
I needed to speak with Lareth, though. He'd entered the walls a step ahead of Caleb, at the very front of the column, but he seemed as overwhelmed at the power of the place as I had been. He stood transfixed just inside the gateway while the soldiers came flowing in around him. They parted to avoid him, hundreds of men walking past, but Lareth ignored them all.
When he finally moved, it was with a slow and measured step that carried him directly toward the tower. I watched him come, his eyes searching the sky above for the fabled floors that no longer stood. His eyes were on the reality of the past, not the shadow of the present. I understood.
When he reached me, he stopped. He said, "It's real."
"Yes. And it is mine by right."
His eyes met mine, and I shrugged. "It was, at least. And I will make it mine again." I waved a hand at the empty sky, where a tower should have stood. "And I mean the tower to stand."
He nodded, his eyes far off again, but then he looked at me sharply. "All of it?"
"All of it. I mean to rebuild the whole fortress."
"And they say I am mad."
"Lareth, I mean to fight the dragonswarm. Brant's rebellion, the king's petty vendetta, all the politics of men cannot compare with the horror that is rushing on the world."
"It has arrived," the wizard said. "Perhaps you know. But these last days the men have shared their rumors. They think it odd that such similar stories reached such distant parts of the plains, but every camp has heard it now."
"They're to the plains?" I said, not really asking. "That is not the beginning, Lareth, that is the end. They started in the mountains, in the depths, in the high dark passes. I shudder to think what has transpired in the Northlands, or high along the western coasts."
"There have always been dragons," Lareth said.
"One or two, perhaps. But now they all awake. Across the world. In their thousands. Whole broods that strike with one mind and unimaginable power. And they do not look to capture thrones. Their only goal is to set the world on fire."
Lareth looked past the rubble of the tower, the ruins of the walls, to the huge black mountains that clawed at the horizon to east and west. "And you brought us into their midst?"
I nodded slowly. "I brought us out of the world of men. When we strike, they will strike back."
He turned his eye to me. And then I saw the subtle change in his expression as he looked on me with his wizard's sight, and the tiny, hungry tremor that shook him. "For that you've gathered all these men?"
"And men are just the start," I said. "They are a tool, but I need more. I need—"
"You need a fortress of legend. You need an army unafraid of any power. You need a man like living death to be your shadow."
I smirked at that. "You mean Caleb?"
"He terrifies me," Lareth said, his voice far away. And then he snapped right back to reality, and his gaze dropped shyly away from mine. "And you will need as well a...a wizard?"
"I need a wizard, Lareth. I do not need a madman drunk on the ecstasy of power." He blinked at me, and I took a heavy step closer to him. "I do not need a conniving rat scrabbling for every scrap he can get. I do not need a traitor or a monster. I need a man who is willing to fight against the darkness."
I raised a hand and touched one of the sleek black shards still pricking at his throat. The skin beneath its point had raised a jagged, star-shaped scar. Lareth's eye followed its every subtle motion as I lifted away the shard, thin as paper, and considered it for a long moment. Then I let it dissolve into dust.
"Can you be a man, Lareth?"
His eye snapped to mine. He swallowed hard, and a handful of the shards I'd left pressed dents into the scars they'd raised. Then he dipped his head once, and a wheeze touched his voice. "For power like you have—"
"No," I said, firm, and he cut off sharp. I held his gaze. "I do not believe that you are mad. I have seen too much of you. It serves you well to play the part, but I demand sanity. As your master, as your lord, I demand you give me reason."
His mouth fell open. After a long moment, he gave a tiny shake of his head. He looked away. "You ask too much."
"Find it in you," I said. "I have been a monster. I have tortured men and I have killed with glee. I've been a puppet in the power of mighty things, and I have tasted Chaos on my tongue." I bent a thread of air to turn his head until he faced me again. "I know every shade of your madness, Lareth, and I will not allow it in my tower."
I raised a hand, and another of the shards lifted away from his throat and floated to me. I called them one by one until they rested in a pile in my palm. Then I turned my hand, gripping just one between thumb and forefinger, and let the others melt to ash. He flinched as though I'd struck him.
I held the one remaining shard out to him. "I should have done this days ago. Keep this as a talisman or drop it down a well, but I tell you this: I will not keep a man like a dog upon the leash. I will not keep you here if I must do it under threats and promises of power."
He took the shard and turned it over and over in his hands. He tested the edge of it with the pad of his thumb and drew a tiny line of blood. He shrugged pathetically. "But that is just the nature of a man. Every kind of king—"
"I am not a king," I told him. "I am a protector, and I cannot do that if I let the dark abide. If you can be a man by your own will, you will have a place here. If you can only be a monster, mad with power and hungry to burn the world, then I must destroy you as I will the rest of them."
He shook his head, and his words came out in a whisper. "It can't be tamed."
"It can," I said. "It can be crushed. Humanity is stronger than the darkness."
"Then look to me!" I said, throwing my hands up in frustration. "I'm using all the strength I have to make humanity stronger. Perhaps I save some farmers' lives. Perhaps I save a kingdom. Perhaps I save your soul. It's all the same. It all comes down to fighting off the madness and standing up for hope."
For a long time he only stared down at the black shard between his fingers, while blood pooled in his palm. At last he met my eyes again and licked his lips and said with a dry, thin voice. "I will try my best."
"Good." I nodded, and shook myself as if waking from a dream. I looked around and saw my army in the courtyard, busy at whatever tasks Caleb had given them, but every man in earshot watched us with surreptitious glances. I frowned and met the wizard's gaze.
"I did not mean to call you down in front of them," I said, my voice cast low.
"But it is good," he said. He swallowed hard, then raised a hand to touch the star-shaped scars on his throat. His eye snapped up to mine. "You have powers in your head that I have never even glanced, don't you?"
I shrugged and looked away, and the wizard gave a sigh. "I would have a moment."
"You can have a morning," I said. "Meet me after lunch. There will be work to do."
I felt him slip away. A moment later Caleb's shadow came to stand by mine, and I felt a bitter smile twist my mouth.
"None of that was planned," I said.
He nodded. "It was well done, and better today than tomorrow."
"But all the men heard—"
"Just a handful," Caleb said. "But with any luck they'll spread the story far and wide. And now they're firmly yours. His portals brought us clear of the king's forces, and you've secured the loyalty of his men." He clapped me on the back. "You've taken all you needed from him, in only days. Well done."
"It was not a ruse," I said. "It came of what you and I discussed last night, but I meant it for him. He can save himself if he will try."
"And if he won't?"
I closed my eyes. "I cannot keep a man on fear of execution. It would be a nobler thing by far to kill him clean and be done with it."
Caleb nodded again. "Good. I do agree. And now, I know we'd planned a council, but there is more to do than I had guessed. I'd be more use to you working with the men, if we're to have a reliable defense ready before nightfall."
"Tonight?"
"You'll be amazed what two thousand men can do, Daven. Even with this."
"Very well," I said, "but use your reason. They'll be useless to me if they don't get some rest."
His eyes glittered in a dark reminder, but he didn't say a word.
"I know, I should leave you to run the army. But we will need our strength in the days we have ahead."
"Of course, my lord." He clamped his teeth so tight the muscles on his jaw bulged out, but he dipped his chin in a shallow nod and slipped away to oversee the work.
And then, surrounded by nearly three thousand men, I found myself alone. The soldiers all had jobs to do, and my lieutenants both were hard at work trying to find some hope for a future in the rubble of long, slow devastation. I glanced in the direction Lareth had gone, and back across where Caleb stood in quiet conversation with a handful of his men. Then I turned to the soaring mound of stone at the heart of it all. The ruined tower.
I looked with my wizard's sight, tracing the shape of worked stone beneath a thousand years of detritus. Even after so much time and buried under layer after layer of accumulated nature, the shape of the artificial construct revealed itself.
A human will had exerted its authority upon the environment—not by sorcery or arcane force, perhaps, but by the strength of two hands and the vision in a desperate heart. Palmagnes had been built as a bulwark against a different tide of destruction, but the shape of it still burned beneath the dirt and creeping vines.
I waved a hand again as I had done before, as one might brush the dust and cobwebs from some relic long in storage, and soil and stone rolled back across the courtyard into two great heaps. More paving stones were revealed, but then a solid line, a crumbled step that stretched ten paces left and right, and then another step, and above the third a wide platform half a pace above the courtyard floor and thirty paces end to end.
Around me, soldiers hard at work stopped their tasks to watch, but I could barely notice them. My focus followed the clean, straight lines of human will beneath the jumbled piles of time and nature. I cleared the whole platform, and two or three paces of paving stones all around it on three sides to define the shape. The fourth side, the south, was a soaring spear of broken stone. The tower itself.
But there, too, I could see the shapes that were meant to be. What looked like solid stone as heavy as a mountain concealed its own tunnels, its own caves and caverns deep. I stood in silence for some time, measuring, exploring the weight of earth and the traces of structure, and then I pressed two hands together before me, caught my breath, and pulled the hands apart.
Stone creaked and groaned and set up a rumble like thunder, and then it flowed apart. I could not brush this stone aside, but I forced it back, folding its energy up and out into the great arched doorway that should have been.
After every gesture I waited, head cocked, and curiously tested the muscles of my back and legs, my arms and shoulders. I felt nothing. No twinge of pain, no sapping weakness. I pressed ahead.
There was clutter sprawled for paces and paces between the base of the fallen tower and what had once been the door in its wall. I stretched my will in a line straight ahead of me and forced the clutter aside or propped it up on its own energies, so that instead of a pace-thick doorway to the interior of a tower, I created a long, irregular tunnel into darkness. I kept it up, reaching past the remade doorway into what should have been a wide open chamber, forcing rubble back by strength of mind until at last I breached the inner darkness.
I felt it happen. One long sigh of life-warm, musty air rolled over me, and then it was done. I opened my eyes and looked deep into the darkness, and a smile touched my lips. I stepped forward into my lair.
Or, at least, I tried. Behind me, Lareth shouted, "Smoke and shadows, man! What are you doing?" Lareth had climbed the steps to the tower's wide porch and now he came to join trotting toward me, terror in his eyes. "Don't dare set foot in there!"
"It's safe," I said. "I made it safe."
"That?" Lareth asked. "It's not a building. It's not a manufactured thing. It's a pile of rocks."
"Can you see its energies?" I asked, genuinely curious. He frowned at me. He frowned at the fallen tower.
After a while he shook his head. "No. And that is odd enough. I can't see anything near here. It's blank right to—"
"Right to the walls that don't exist," I said. The thought turned up the corners of my mouth. "Come with me. I'll make it all make sense."
He caught my sleeve, nervous fear in his voice. "Can you see through the stone?"
I nodded and let my gaze drift up the ruined tower once again. I could see the remains of the fabled Tower of Days in the skeleton of this mound of rock. I could see the broken gaps of six floors at least, see where the pillars had been, and interior walls, and the great wide stairways climbing up the outer walls, the narrow spiral at its center like a spine.
I couldn't turn away. The heart of the tower pulled me like affinity. Deep down inside I felt a need to see this through. The dark vastness of the tower's interior cried out to me, and to my shame I knew precisely why.
A shudder shook me as I realized that this was what had dragged me ahead of my men, had filled my heart with hope. Not the journey's end, not the promise of some refuge, not the fortress or even the dream of rebuilding a tower out of legend. It was that vast and midnight cavern under stone.
I needed to go inside and take possession of my lair. It felt like home, and I had been too long away. Something like homesickness twisted behind my breastbone, a quiet ache that had lived there for so long I didn't even notice anymore. But now I was so
close, it burned like ice.
Lareth must have seen it in my eyes, because he gave a weary sigh. "You're going to go in," he said. "No matter how I plead. But I could fetch your scary shadow—"
I threw a sidelong glance and half a smile. "Caleb couldn't stop me either."
"It's dangerous, you know?" Lareth asked, but there wasn't much hope in his voice.
I met his eye, shook my head, and left him standing there. The darkness swallowed me up and closed around me and pulled me to its heart. I'd gone ten full paces before Lareth cursed and came stumbling along behind me, nervous fear wheezing in his breath. He summoned a ball of green flame to light his way, but the vastness of the cavern overwhelmed its feeble light.
I needed no light at all. The cavern felt as comfortable, as familiar as my own skin. Lareth came close upon my heel, but I felt almost alone within the quiet chamber as I moved straight into its depth. My footsteps echoed, and the dead, still air washed around me like water. And there, at the center of what once had been a great hall eighty paces end-to-end, I found a dais six inches off the ground.
It held a throne.
The thing was made of gold and marble and silver. Not carved, not inlaid or chased or cast, but made all in one piece. It was like my Chaos blade, one artifact of perfect craftsmanship untouched by age. Lareth bumped against my back, then leaned aside, and then he gasped.
"Is that the FirstKing's throne?" he asked, incredulous.
I shook my head. I turned, and there before my worst retainer—a madman who had tried to kill me more than once—I took my throne. I closed my eyes and sighed, and felt the huge darkness around me gasp and sigh as though the tower itself were a great living thing. And on the exhale, it settled all around me, into me, and in the next moment my senses extended to the great hall's farthest corners.
With a little concentration I could feel the courtyard, too, feel the thousand little lives scurrying over sand and stone, setting tents and scavenging firewood and wondering if any of this was real. I found Caleb standing on the porch just outside the tower's entrance, peering down the tunnel I had made. Worry wrinkled his brow.