by A. Evermore
They walked silently back to Jarlain’s dwelling. Unfortunately for Marakon her answer to his question only served to create more questions and his mind was still reeling from the onslaught of memories from other lives.
‘Are you hungry?’ she asked when they came to her house.
‘No,’ he mumbled, ‘thanks… I just need to sleep.’
He certainly did, he was dog tired. But when he lay down upon his hard bed all he could think about were those memories. They went through his mind over and over.
King Marakazian… no, my name is Marakon, I am no King. King Marakazian of the Banished Legion…
Chapter 28
They Call Her The Raven Queen
HAMEKA came to a stop where the dusty road leading from the Castle Elune wound to the right down the hill. The amulet pulsed hot and bright. He looked into it and saw what the Dromoorai saw. From the Dread Dragon’s back he had a bird’s eye view of a fair-haired woman fleeing through the woods not far from the castle.
‘Capture her!’ he commanded, ‘None shall escape!’ The Dromoorai silently obeyed and steered the Dread Dragon lower.
‘Alive!’ he added grinning like a cat. We have caught a mouse.
He held his breath. Through the Key Stone he watched the Dread Dragon descend upon the woman, tearing trees apart as it did so. She screamed as its giant claws reached towards her and snatched her up in a crushing grip. Hameka lost the woman from view as they now soared up into the air.
He let his breath out, something good had come of today. Hameka waited patiently back in the grounds before the castle for the Dromoorai to deliver his prize. The great black bulk shook the ground as it landed, wings billowing dust and leaves all about them. Hameka shielded his eyes from the flying debris. Black webbed wings folded back over metallic black scales as the dust began to settle.
Hameka blinked to clear his eyes as the woman was released from the Dread Dragon’s grasp. She rolled limply to his feet. She wore a night dress made of fine silk; a thin gold necklace adorned her neck and a plain gold ring announced her marriage. Not the clothing of a servant, Hameka deduced.
‘Lady Eleny, the castle’s keeper,’ Baelthrom breathed. His Lord’s ability to read so much about a person always unnerved Hameka. He can see into the mind, probably into the soul as well!
The woman stirred, a groan escaping her throat. Hameka bent over her thoughtfully as she opened her eyes. She blinked up at him and tried to sit up. Hameka smacked her across the face, splitting her lip and flinging her back down on her side. Driven by fury rather than fear she struggled to sit once more.
Defiance? Hameka grinned, defiance was always more fun. Blood flowed freely from her lip and she tried to stem it with a shaking hand. She looked at him with pure hatred and spat the blood at him. Hameka recoiled in disgust and wiped his cheek. He grabbed her by the hair and hauled her to her knees. She screamed and kicked at him weakly.
‘Where is the dark-haired girl?’ he growled, gripping her hair tightly and bending her head back.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she snarled and struggled in vain to be free of his iron grip.
The amulet on Hameka’s chest flared into a great burning ball of red light. He angled her head, forcing her to look into the red glow. After a moment or two she stopped struggling and her eyes became wide and vacant in the red light. A moment more and her pupils clouded over turning completely black as Baelthrom locked onto her and began to sift through the contents of her mind.
‘They call her the “Raven Queen”,’ Baelthrom whispered, the sound of wind blowing through dry autumn leaves.
The Raven Queen… I should have killed that bloody raven!
Ely felt the probing mind as a painful stabbing in her head. She fought desperately to resist, to somehow keep that mind from penetrating hers but she could no more stop it than she could hold back the tide. And so she tried to hide her thoughts, to flee from the corruption that sought to find her secrets and unravel her very being. That too she failed.
The dark mind that entered hers searched for all her memories of Issa, casting aside anything that was not. From the day she arrived half-drowned on the shores of Celene to the time she left to face Keteth. All was seen and taken from Ely.
I knew they would come for you, Issa, my friend. I have seen this in my nightmares. I could only try to delay them. Thank Zanufey that you are not here now.
She couldn’t stop him and she wept as that red light burned into her soul, finding even what she believed the woman to be; Zanufey’s chosen one of prophecy, the one who could destroy the Immortal Lord and lead Maioria back into the light.
You are the Raven Queen, the spirit of Zanufey incarnate, and you can lead us through the darkness to the light, you can free us from the curse of Baelthrom that has plagued us for millennia. Tears spilled down her face. I have betrayed you, though I did not want to!
The mind that gripped hers through the amulet released and she slumped to the floor, sobs shaking her body. I have betrayed Issa, through no will of my own, but still I have done so. Never had she betrayed anyone and the feeling broke her more than anything they could do to her. My time is near, just as I saw it in my dreams. As a priestess of the Great and Loving Mother, I accept my death.
Who’d have thought that now, in her darkest hour, her training as a priestess all those years ago would be of most use. They could and would do what they wanted with her body now that they had already ravished her mind, but they would never have her soul. Already her body felt distant as she closed her eyes and began to detach her consciousness. She was surprised at how easy the old skill came back to her.
In the past priests and priestesses spent years training their minds to travel free of the body. They were also taught how to sever the silver cord that bound the consciousness to the body should they need to. Such a severing could not be undone. But, as Ely and many others who had left the Temple saw it, since the degradation of the Temple from the spiritual into the control and money making mechanisms of a business, the Order of the Goddess no longer focused on sacred esoterics, preferring instead to study the cold ordinary logic of the mundane.
‘Thank you,’ the man smiled indulgently, but to Ely’s half-closed eyes his face was a blur and his words echoed from far away, ‘we have no use for you in our ranks so you shall be made an example of, for all those who dare to fight against the Immortal Lord, the only true glorious God!’
‘We will never stop fighting,’ she heard herself say. She smiled, they were good words, the best words she could have said, maybe even had ever said. It was a shame there was no one there to hear them that would write them on her gravestone. It was a shame they would be her last.
Hameka smiled cruelly and motioned to the dark dwarves beside him. To Ely’s dimmed consciousness they were little more than greyish blurs with small yellow orbs for eyes. They were growing dimmer by the moment. They lunged for her, gripping her painfully in their thick strong groping hands, tearing at her clothes.
She snapped the silver cord.
The distant world where her body was quickly dimmed and she turned her thoughts fully away from it as a hazy light surrounded her. Faces, indistinct but somehow familiar and recognisable, crowded into view, all smiling and beckoning to her. Then one face became clearer. She looked up into the tanned face of her husband, Dargan.
‘My love, how I have missed you! So long have I walked this barren world alone. Bring me home, let us be together once more,’ her voice was airy and light. He smiled back at her. The light began to fade and she no longer remembered she had a body, no longer felt it at all in fact.
Another face formed, hooded. First only a smooth luminous chin was visible but then white hands drew back the hood revealing a long slender nose and then incredible eyes. Eyes that were beautiful, dark and deep, and within which stars and galaxies swirled. Love seemed to flow from those eyes and wrap around Ely.
The darkness that surrounded Ely glittered with stars and she opened he
rself to the love and joy and wonder around her.
Hameka was almost bored by the time they were done with Lady Eleny. The woman seemed to have died before they could torture her, much to Hameka’s annoyance. The older priestesses and priests were able to depart the body quickly, which is why they were rarely used for the Elixir of Immortality production.
Some revenge that was!
He ordered her body to be hung, bloodied and naked, from the oak tree that stood in the grounds before the entrance to the castle’s courtyard.
‘Filthy Goddess worshippers,’ Hameka spat. With his knife he carved the symbol of the Maphraxies, the three mountains of Maphrax, upon her chest. Her blood flowed little now her heart no longer pumped it. ‘How fitting,’ he said with a crooked smile for the symbol looked like a crescent moon, a symbol of the goddess, but lying on its back and impaled by the central mountain.
‘Lord Baelthrom?’ he spoke aloud into the amulet, ‘Our symbol of Maphrax appears to symbolise the death of the goddess, the destroyer of life.’ The amulet glowed dark red and a low laugh rumbled from within it.
The Dromoorai that had brought the woman still stood grounded beside the Dread Dragon. Hameka stepped lightly towards it.
‘Take to the skies, destroy the place. Anyone not matching the description of the girl or able to wield magic is yours to feed off. Remember to collect the younger children.’
At his command the Dromoorai climbed onto the Dread Dragon’s back, lifted the heavy chains as easily as if they were rope, and they leapt into the sky. Sand and dust flew around them as before. The Dread Dragon was so big it appeared to move in slow motion towards the castle. Red flames bellowed out of its mouth and covered the courtyard. The other Dromoorai closed in and soon the castle, the symbol of peace upon the sacred Isle of the Goddess, became a furious battle of flames, a fire so hot that the stones it was built of began to melt. Anyone alive or hiding in there would soon perish.
Hameka split his horde of Maphraxies into three groups. One would move along the north coast, the other the south, and he would take his group through the centre of the island. Burn everything, kill everything, those were the orders.
The first village they encountered was very small and in a state of panic. There were people running everywhere carrying bundles and loading wagons. They must have seen the smoke from the castle or Dread Dragons in the sky, Hameka thought. Not that it mattered, this was a small island, there was nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. Soon the village was on fire like the castle and all the inhabitants slain apart from two children.
The Maphraxies moved swiftly through village after village, killing, ravaging and burning as they went, leaving nothing untouched, leaving everything spoiled and destroyed and dead. But their acts did no go unseen for throughout it all they were followed by the raven who kept just out of sight watching, waiting, its intelligent eyes faithfully recording the devastation.
The fog was now beginning to clear as the necromancer’s magic waned. It would have brightened too had the air not been filled with the black smoke of burning villages. But still they had not found that woman and Hameka’s mood was darkening again. Finally they reached the last settlement, the glistening white spire of the Temple of Celene poking up through the trees, surrounded by smaller buildings and gardens on the east coast.
His group was not the first to arrive and already all of the buildings were on fire, even the temple itself. Dragon fire could set alight even rocks! Bodies of grey, brown and white-robed priests and priestesses littered the ground, ready to be eaten by the Dread Dragons. Terror was rank in the air as was the smell of burning flesh. The dark dwarves heckled a small group of priestesses they had rounded up and there was a line of unconscious bound men which the harpies were gathering around. One of the young priestesses in grey robes had dark hair to her shoulders.
Hameka pointed at her, ‘Bring her!’
Two Maphraxies dragged her like a toy towards him and held her. She hung limply in their grasp, her head lolling to the side and her feet not touching the floor. Hameka grasped her chin and forced her to look at him but her eyes were dark brown and not the colour of the sea. He snapped her head back viciously and sighed in exasperation. Her head flopped back down.
‘Wait,’ came Baelthrom’s deep voice.
The amulet burst into life once more. Hameka grasped the girl’s chin until her eyes locked onto the red glowing amulet. Her eyes were wide and raw with terror as they turned black. Sweat beaded her brow, her cheeks, until it ran like rivulets down her face. Blood began to trickle from her nose under the pressure but still she could not look away. She began to convulse and then the amulet grew dim.
‘Not her and no useful memories of her,’ Baelthrom’s voice was hard with disappointment.
Hameka cursed silently. He could not let his Lord down. He dropped her head and with a motion of his hand the Maphraxies dropped her. They had not found that cursed wizard either! He looked down at the woman, her body was quivering though her eyes were closed. She was pretty enough though and his interrogations needed perfecting for when he found the real one.
‘Some fun perhaps?’ Baelthrom said.
Hameka had never gotten used to Baelthrom knowing most of his thoughts and it still unnerved him somewhat though he tried not to let it show.
‘Bind her and set her aside,’ Hameka ordered, ‘No one is to touch her, understand? I’ll not have anything touched by filthy dwarves. See to it.’
‘Yes, Commander,’ the two Maphraxies replied, their thick guttural voices almost unintelligible. The woman was bound, gagged, set aside and closely guarded by the dimwitted Maphraxies.
Hameka stalked towards the temple for a final search. The bodies of those who had tried to fight were strewn about the place, lying where they had fallen. He trod carefully, stepping over bodies, limbs and bloody mud so as not to ruin his newly cleaned boots. War and killing, a filthy messy business! Blood splattered up the sides of the once glistening white temple, now blackened and charred from fire.
The harpies circled above, their hungry squawks filling the air, the very sight of them turned Hameka’s stomach. The temple’s entrance was a blackened hole where once the door had been. Hesitantly he stepped inside. He hated any place of goddess worship and his skin crawled to be gone from here, but he pressed on. Their goddess was full of fake promises, useless powers, and death. Who’s to say she even existed? There wasn’t any proof to speak of. They would wipe away all memory of this goddess, in all her guises, from Maioria and raise up Baelthrom, a true god who promised life everlasting and a power never seen or felt before.
Hameka’s footsteps echoed off the walls. The temple was still pristine inside, a sharp contrast to the blackened bloodied walls outside. It was eerily empty and cold. He shivered and pulled his cloak closer about him, right hand gripping his crossbow at the ready. Somehow he had expected it to be filled with chairs and flowers, rich tapestries and flowing drapes.
Had they been like that when I was a boy? Perhaps they had, he had a feeling they might have been. But now all memories of his life before Baelthrom was very hazy, he had spent years trying to erase it through necromantic black art.
Still, this cold empty place was a surprise. Perhaps there is no goddess, perhaps she has abandoned this world, if she had ever really existed at all. The thought made him feel much less uncomfortable and he walked confidently. He came to a stop in the centre of the great domed hall and the amulet against his chest grew brighter.
‘There is an enchantment here,’ Baelthrom whispered.
Hameka looked around but could see nothing out of the ordinary.
‘Beneath,’ Baelthrom breathed.
Hameka looked down at the black and white marbled floor shaped into a flower with a blood red centre. The amulet grew too bright to look upon and Hameka shielded his eyes. Energy moved. There came a deafening crack as the floor split in two. The huge crack continued to lengthen across the marble stones in opposite directions and all the way
up the white walls. It snaked up into the spire and was lost from view. The now weakened floor began to crumble and Hameka stepped back from it. The black and white petals crashed down into the crack, sending marble and dust into the air, and then all was silent.
That was not the first time that Baelthrom had used magic through the Key Stone but it was not a common occurrence. The amulet was burning on his chest from it. Hameka could feel some magic but could not wield much. Each time he tasted the Elixir his magical abilities grew a little more. The magical charge dissipated and the dust began to settle. He cautiously made his way over to the four-foot wide hole that now severed the marble flower and peered down. A faint cool breeze came from below speaking of an exit down there somewhere. The petals had crumbled but were still mostly usable as steps leading down into the darkness.
‘Search down there,’ Baelthrom said.
The eagerness in his Lord’s voice was both annoying and worrying. What if she was not down there? There was nowhere left to search.
Then three Maphraxies shuffled into the temple cautiously, following where their commander had gone. They lumbered over, their black armour and twisted grey faces a stark contrast to the pristine white walls of the temple.
‘There was funder and noith,’ one slurred, unintelligibly, the others nodded. A thick wound had slashed part of his top lip in, making it even harder to understand what the numbskull was saying. I bet he didn’t even feel the blow to his face!
‘The thunder and noise was magic, our Immortal Lord’s magic. The noise was the splitting temple,’ Hameka explained witheringly, motioning to the great chasm before them. ‘Now we go down there. You first.’
‘We go down there, Mafter Commander?’