The sun set and he slept on the side of the road, in the dirt on his bedroll, the occasional dark elven patrol rousting him out of bed as they passed. For convenience’s sake he used a spell every time to convince them to move on and leave him be, and every time it worked, giving him as much peace as he might find in such a barren place, with the sound of siege and horror on the near horizon.
When he reached the edge of the army the next day, the smell of death was thick in the air. It hung heavy with the aura of rot, of flesh turning soft and falling off bone, a smell he drank in through his nose and wished he could spit out like a bad bite of meat.
He passed a corps of knights that had vek’tag as their steeds, saddles giving away their purpose to any with the eyes to note and the minds to decipher the curious meaning of the spectacle. The spiders hissed at each other, wilder than the vek’tag put to use in hauling carts in Saekaj and Sovar, he supposed.
J’anda rode on, toward the front, the walls of Reikonos growing taller as he went. The projectiles flinging back and forth were close at hand, now, though it all seemed very half-hearted to him, as though neither side were trying very hard. It was as though the humans knew that a simple lobbing of rocks would not turn back the tide of the advance, and the dark elves were saving the city for something else, a darker fate, perhaps.
He was directed toward the General’s tent and found himself face to face with Malpravus a little before the evening hour. His bones ached, his muscles were weary from the long ride, and he stood in front of the necromancer feeling almost as dead as any of the Goliath Guildmaster’s subjects. Still, when the skeletal gaze fell upon him for the first time, he made himself bow as he performed the perfunctory greeting. “I report at the order of the Sovereign, ready to make good your assault however you might use my skills.”
Malpravus did not answer immediately, though his thin smile grew broader as he stared at J’anda with a disquieting satisfaction. “The Sovereign sends me the greatest non-elven enchanter in the land. Where from springs this sudden desire to use you in this service, I wonder?”
“It springs from the recent betrayal of my benefactor,” J’anda said, cutting to the quick. “Apparently, spying for the Sovereign was no longer sufficient to prove my loyalty after Terian’s turn.”
“Yes, that was unfortunate,” Malpravus said, though he seemed little concerned with it. “Not entirely unpredictable, but then the Sovereign and I have never seen eye-to-eye when it comes to loyalties. I have long argued that they are far more flexible and situational than he believes, firmly stuck in his everything-is-treason modality.”
J’anda raised an eyebrow at the admission. “I’m afraid I … don’t understand.”
“We all seek our own ends, dear boy,” Malpravus said, waving his long, thin fingers in trails through the air as though weaving some spell, “and to believe otherwise is mere childish foolishness. Loyalty for the sake of loyalty is the greatest delusion of all, as though you can compel fastidious service with no promise of reward. It is in our natures to always be seeking the better deal, more favorable terms, and the Sovereign misses this under the mistaken assumption that religious motivation can keep his entire kingdom in a tight line.” The necromancer shook his head, tsk-tsking as though he were commenting on a child’s naiveté. “That is a blind spot, a weakness that even his closest advisors can do little about, though they certainly try to exploit it as often as possible.” He steepled his fingers. “I believe you had such an experience, yes?”
“It sounds as though you already know the answer to that question,” J’anda said, watching for reaction.
Malpravus merely smiled, shrugging his narrow shoulders as though caught in the act of some minor indiscretion. “Rumors do circulate, naturally, and it would take less sensitive ears than mine to let pass so juicy a tidbit without parceling it away for later consumption. Still, though, I think you know well the flaws within the system that keep us … constrained.”
“Perhaps,” J’anda conceded. “You’ll forgive me for not indulging fully in this conversation given the current thin limb I find myself out on with the Sovereign.”
“But of course,” Malpravus said, fully understanding. “And allow me to reassure you—you need do nothing here at present.” The necromancer’s smile was disconcerting in an obvious attempt to be comforting. “The situation is well in hand. I have arrangements in the works that will deliver this city to us in a matter of short months, with no illusory tricks necessary.” He pulled his fingers apart. “I am not the Sovereign, and I do not demand you surrender all fidelity in this instant, merely that you keep an open mind for what is in your best interest when the moment comes to make your next choice. This city will fall, because the Sovereign commands it. Sit back, watch, take credit … save the lives of as many of the beleaguered humans as you wish.” At this Malpravus grinned. “I promise I won’t tell. Because whether we want to or not—for now—the Sovereign’s will must be done.”
43.
Terian
Months in the cell beneath Sanctuary had done little to improve Terian’s disposition. Oh, certainly, he’d been accorded every courtesy and was fed better than he’d eaten with the armies on the march. Still and all, the cell in the dark was not exactly home, and the overwhelming silence was hardly the place he would have preferred to spend his days.
Especially now that we know the Sovereign has kidnapped Vidara and is using her to make his infinite supply of soul rubies to power that undead army. If we could just eliminate that single support from him, the platform that he stands upon would at least become unsteady, if not collapse utterly. Terian looked at the sand-colored walls. But instead, I sit here, wondering why I didn’t stay in a place where I might do at least marginally more good. Like, say, for example, leading a gnomish army in battle against the tides on the Sea of Carmas.
A low rumbling noise reached his ears, commotion carried along the stones of the ceiling from somewhere above. Whispers at the door to his cell followed moments later as the guards discussed whatever business was occurring, and Terian got up off his cot to try and listen. He walked softly without his armor, which was stacked in the corner.
“… sounds like they’re going to war,” one of the guards said, more than a little excited and youthful, Terian figured.
“I heard something about Reikonos,” came the voice of another, this one female but just as excited. “Did you hear that?”
“Maybe,” came a third. “Couldn’t tell over the ruckus. Why couldn’t there have been one of those grates near us? You know they’re not going to send anyone down to tell us squat until after it’s all over—”
“Greetings, guards!” Vaste’s voice bellowed down the hallway. “I have exciting tidings for you.”
“Whaaa …?” the young man asked, then lowered his voice. “You were wrong. They sent an officer to tell us.”
“What’s going on?” the woman asked.
“Reikonos has been invaded by the dark elves,” the troll pronounced. Terian could almost imagine the energetic delivery that the healer seemed to put into his words, see the half-smile he wore almost all the time. “The Guildmaster is putting together a squad to go into the city to scout things, get some eyes on the ground.” He paused. “Err … eyes in the city. No eyes literally on the ground, unless they were to be ripped out of the dark elves.”
There was a pause as the guards seemed to process the news. “Can I go?” the young man asked.
“We’re on guard duty,” the female guard hissed at him.
“You should go volunteer if you’re of a mind to,” Vaste said. “It’s not as though the prisoner is going to come bursting through the door at exactly this moment, after all. He’s got a solid several inches of steel between him and the cool, underground air of freedom, after all.”
“I want to go with the Guildmaster,” the second man said. He sounded older, his voice low and rough. “I went with him to Luukessia, you know. Once, when we were on the front lines no
rth of—”
“Oh, shut up,” the young man said. “We all know about the time Cyrus Davidon called you by name. You never stop telling the story.”
“Well, it was special,” came the slightly chastened voice of the storyteller. “It’s like he knew me—”
“Ughhhhh,” the woman said. “Forget it, I’m going. You’ll watch the prisoner’s door, won’t you?” Terian struggled with trying to figure out who this was directed at, until the answer came a moment later.
“I’m not getting left behind,” the young guard said. “I want to make sergeant someday, you know. I got left out of the fights at Livlosdald and Leaugarden, and I wasn’t even here during the siege. If I can make a good impression, maybe I can—”
“Forget sergeant. Lieutenant is where the gold really starts, and I’m not that far from being there if I can just—”
“But he already knows your name, apparently, so—”
“I’m not getting left behind—”
“Gentlemen,” Vaste said, booming voice drowning them all out. “And lady. Why don’t I just watch the door for a few minutes while you all volunteer, and then whoever isn’t chosen can come back and resume their post? Problem solved, and you all get a chance to weasel your toward lucrative advancement without having to fight each other to the death right here in the hallway for the opportunity.”
“You’d do that?” the woman asked.
“As long as you don’t leave me here all day,” Vaste said.
There was an uncomfortable pause. “That’s damned decent of you,” the older man said. “You know, for a troll.”
Terian flinched, imagining the look on Vaste’s face through the door. “Yes, it’s almost like I’m a person,” Vaste agreed, surprisingly calm. “Now run along and make your mark, all of you. And try not to make it a bloody mark, either, crushed under the terrifying power of the dark elven army. Shoo, shoo.” Sounds of footsteps retreating down the hall at a run made it through the door, followed by Vaste’s loud sigh. “Idiots. I’m surrounded by idiots.”
“At least you know it and can work around it,” Terian said as he heard a key slide into the lock. The door opened wide and Vaste stood there, staring at him. “Imagine if you were too dull-witted to make it work for you.”
“Then I’d probably be stuck in a cell not unlike this one,” the troll said, leering down at him. “Why aren’t you dressed?”
“Didn’t know I was supposed to be,” Terian said, glancing at his armor in the corner. “It’s not like anyone sent me a formal invitation to anything, and I have been down here for a couple months now without any cause to think—”
“Oh, it’s been a lot longer than a couple months since you’ve thought,” Vaste said, making the motion toward the armor. “Come on, then. It’s time.”
Terian stared at him with suspicion. “Time for what?”
Vaste did not blink away, just stared right through him like he could see to the heart of the dark knight. “Time for you to do what you came here to do.”
Terian stared back. What do you know, Vaste? “Which is?”
“Time to show Cyrus what’s happened to his homeland,” Vaste said, holding his staff to one side. “Time to convince the Guildmaster of Sanctuary to kill the God of Darkness.”
44.
J’anda
The streets of Reikonos were in pandemonium, the armies of the Sovereign moving through at will. If there were defenders behind the walls, J’anda did not see them, but then, he had not seen much in the way of defenders atop the walls in the months that he had been watching, either.
This city has been ripe for the plucking all along, and now plucked it is. Malpravus said he had a plan, and damned if he did not. A knight riding a vek’tag leaped across a building above him, burying a spear in a human man as he passed, the screams lost in the chaos of the street.
J’anda wore the illusion of a dark elf in armor, figuring it was his best defense in the current setting. Only a few people were moving about on the street, the majority of the dark elven army still situated on the main thoroughfare to the city, spreading out like ants leaving the mound, but slowly.
The smell of fire was already in the air, but it had been that way all the time J’anda had been on the siege. Reikonos had burned in segments, a bomb of dragon’s breath powder lobbed across the wall every single day by the dark elven army—whether they needed it or not, he’d heard some crass trebuchet soldier joke while drinking.
J’anda recognized the building ahead of him as one of the shops of the slums. It was a butcher shop, actually, one where they sold cheap meat, proclaimed usually by a cryer that stood outside the doors. He knew this area from his prior travels here, and figured that what he was looking for had to be nearby.
Ah. There it is.
A stream of five soldiers ran past in front of him, screaming bloody murder through at least a few rotten jaws, barely taking notice of him as they smashed through the window of the butcher’s shop, seeing the weakness and kicking their way in as the bandits they were. He knew their kind; he’d been supping with them for months, after all. The dead were a fearsome enemy, all milk of compassion bled out with their life’s blood. Whether Malpravus intended it that way or it was simply a natural side effect of the army being what it was, an undead legion, he knew for a fact that they were more base and vile than most of the soldiers he’d been acquainted with in any army.
A loud clacking noise echoed over his shoulder as one of them smashed his way back through the door to the butcher’s shop. Loud screams punctured the air, causing J’anda to blanch as though they were a knife thrust into his ear. They were far closer than the other screams, the low keening that hung over the city in a repetitive state.
One of the undead was dragging a woman in a dress out of the shop. His soulless, rotten face was exposed, bloodless cheeks and sunken eyes rotting out of his head as he dragged her with a bony hand from her abode. Her cries were loud, frantic, panicked.
J’anda considered his course carefully before deciding to intervene. He decided upon a spell of charming first, to be followed by illusion if that failed, and finally mesmerization. He threw up a hand, weaving together the threads of magic as he spun it around the undead soldier. It pushed into the mind of the wraith with surprising ease, and he decided it was a product of their lack of will. It was, perhaps, the easiest spell he had ever cast.
And then he saw the heart’s desire of the thing holding the woman in its dead hand, and he nearly vomited in his disgust, almost stopping his spell and retching there in the street.
“Gyah,” he said, barely keeping it back, holding tight to the threads of the spell, solidifying them, pushing the illusion of what the thing wanted right into its head. It craved flesh, truly, this far gone, driven by Malpravus and unnatural need. It was like a lesser version of the scourge in its appetite to consume life, but it had not the massive maw nor the teeth for it. It was governed by the nature of the man who had once been at the heart of the mind he now twisted to his own benefit, descending along the primal lines of its progenitor’s basest instincts from a time before civilization. But unlike the scourge, at least the minds of these dead are not unfathomable…
The woman from the shop fell out of the grasp of the wraith, its hand loose around her as it halted under his command. J’anda spun the last threads into its mind, completing his hold over it for now. The creature in his thrall saw its desires fulfilled. J’anda saw them, too, and again barely kept down his most recent meal, the stark horror fresh in his mind. “Come with me,” he said to the woman, whom he now realized was wearing a butcher’s apron. “Unless you want those things to do their worst to you.”
She looked up at him and found his eyes with her own, dull and full of barely contained panic. Her mind was nearly shut down; he could tell simply from looking at her. She had seen the impossible, had it grab hold of her and prepared to sink its teeth into her flesh, and she was not prepared for it in the slightest. She blinked at him, and
he dismissed the illusion of the dark elven soldier and replaced it with a human guard’s visage, just for her. “Come with me,” he said and beckoned her forward.
She responded slowly, getting up off her hands and knees, scrambling toward him. She said nothing as he turned, expecting her to follow as he made his way toward his destination. He ignored the shouts down an alleyway and focused on what needed to happen next, on getting his rescue to the safety he was prepared to provide.
He paused in front of the old barn and looked at the chain across its entry. A chain was hardly the sort of thing that would keep him back, naturally, especially in this moment, and especially because he knew where they kept the hidden key to the old guildhall of the Kings of Reikonos.
45.
Terian
“My gods,” Vaste said from where he stood next to Cyrus Davidon on the balcony of the Citadel in Reikonos. The troll’s voice was small, far smaller than his frame would ever have suggested, almost tiny enough to have come from a gnome, Terian thought.
The air stunk with the smell of flesh—burning, rotting, or perhaps mingled with the simple stink of waste, Terian could not tell. It permeated his nostrils as he stared at the back of the warrior in black armor as Cyrus stared at his city burning. And here, Terian thought, in the ashes of his old world, perhaps we find the redemption for all my failures.
“Cyrus,” Vara said as she came to the warrior’s side. “It will do you no good to look upon this. There is nothing to be done here.”
“Nothing?” Cyrus’s voice was low, anger threatening to spill out of him. He’s about one good second from snapping and leaping down thirty stories to try and fight that entire army himself. Terian could see the dark elves streaming through the streets below, the hordes of the undead spilling through and wreaking their havoc.
Sanctuary 5.5 - Fated in Darkness Page 24