That seemed to brighten Malrich’s spirits a bit, at least enough to get him to stop smacking the wall.
It wasn’t until mid-afternoon that they found an opening in the wall. Emethius had imagined any number of reasons why there would be a break in the wall — none of them matched what they found. A road cut straight through the wall, complete with an abandoned gatehouse to guard the open portal. The road was made of carefully laid red brick. Miraculously, the forest did not encroach on the path. It was all terribly eerie. The Cella Empire had fallen over a thousand years earlier. Anything neglected for so long should have been in complete disarray, yet the road remained pristine, seemingly untouched by time.
“If this is in fact the highway of Atimir, we’re in luck. This road once linked Cesca to Bi Ache,” said Emethius.
Malrich shifted uneasily. “Nothing about this feels right. An unnatural force has kept this road clear. None save the gods have such power.”
“Or the Perim Lu,” said Emethius.
Just as Emethius was about to step out onto the road, Malrich grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him down into cover behind a tree. “Look now and be still. The way is watched!” He pointed to the far side of the road. A figure cloaked in a gray robe was standing just to the right of the gatehouse, its frame partially concealed by the mist. The figure stood as still as a statue, its gaze fixed directly upon them.
Emethius and Malrich froze in place and waited. The figure didn’t budge. “I think we’ve been tricked,” said Emethius, after several minutes had passed. He leapt to his feet and tentatively approached the figure. The figure made no motion to advance or flee; Emethius wasn’t surprised. “It’s a stone sentinel,” called Emethius, feeling a genuine sense of relief. “Come and have a look. Had we arrived from any direction we would have thought we were being watched.”
Between the distance and the fog, the statue looked very lifelike. The sentinel had four faces, one pointing in each of the cardinal directions.
Malrich chuckled and rapped his knuckle against the statue’s stone head. “That was unnerving. I was certain those yellow-eyed bastards had finally caught up with us.”
“I had the same fear,” responded Emethius. There was a disturbing familiarity about the stone sentinel — a hooded cloak that fell to the ankles, a sash that ran from shoulder to waist. This is the same attire worn by the Watchers. He decided to keep the observation to himself.
They followed the road south for the remainder of the day. The road was flat, level, and straight, and they more than made up for the lost time they spent finding a way past the wall. Still, Emethius couldn’t shake his unease. The heavy fog showed no sign of subsiding. Every league or two they came upon another statue; each was identical to the rest. At first, they grew alert with every nearing shadow, but eventually they became used to the figures in the mist. That, in and of itself, bothered Emethius. The statues are lulling us into complacency.
“It’s disconcerting to think that we wouldn’t know foe from stone within this forest,” said Malrich as they passed the sixth statue in as many hours.
“Then let’s pray we don’t find any foes upon our path,” said Emethius. But even as he said this he thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. It was only brief, and when he looked askance he saw nothing but the shadowed form of a stone sentinel.
“Curse this fog,” Malrich muttered to himself.
When they were too exhausted to walk any farther, they cut into the forest, and set up camp for the night. The fog seemed to thicken, if that were at all possible, dousing everything in a fine layer of dew. Try as he might, Malrich couldn’t get a fire going. Even under his heavy fox fur cloak, Emethius found himself shivering.
Malrich volunteered to take the first watch. He was supposed to rouse Emethius around midnight, but he must have fallen asleep on the job, because when Emethius finally did wake up the sky had softened to a light shade of gray. It’s almost dawn, realized Emethius, as he blinked in disbelief.
Emethius’s eyes wandered to the pile of pine needles Malrich had settled atop the previous night. Malrich’s sleeproll was there. Malrich was not. A cold panic entered Emethius’s heart.
“Malrich?”
Va-roommmm! A horn sounded in the distance, blasting a single long and melancholy note.
Emethius sat bolt upright, all of his senses immediately alert. The faint scent of smoke struck his nose, and the forest seemed to crackle, like the sound of ice melting in a frozen bay. He drew his sword, and called again in a hissing whisper. “Malrich, where are you?”
A twig cracked to the east, followed by the rustle of leaves. Footsteps. The gods help me.
Emethius tried not panic. He silently drew his sword and crept after the noise. The fog was the thickest he had ever encountered, and it was difficult to perceive distance. Sometimes the footsteps were merely the quietest of rustles far off in the distance, at other times it sounded like the culprit was only a few feet in front of him.
The fog swirled and momentarily abated, revealing a figure kneeling in the center of a clearing. Relief washed over Emethius; it was Malrich. Malrich appeared to be praying with his shoulders slumped forward and his elbows resting on a stump.
“Malrich,” hissed Emethius. Malrich didn’t move.
With fresh panic rising, Emethius plowed through the dense fog. His mind could hardly perceive what he was seeing. Malrich’s legs were tied at the ankles, and to Emethius’s horror, an ax handle jutted skyward from where Malrich’s head should be. The ax-head was sunk into the stump, its rusty steel face lay flush with Malrich’s severed neck. Malrich’s head was laying face down in a knotted tangle of roots.
Emethius’s skin went pale as he held up the head for inspection. The face of Lithius Lunen sneered back at him. “No,” was all Emethius could manage. “No, no, no...”
His father’s lips parted. “The Shadow creeps as it ever does, Son, and here you are marching happily alongside it.” He laughed. “Can you feel the taint coursing through your blood, perverting everything you do?”
Emethius threw the head off into the woods and bent over gasping for breath. “An apparition, that’s all it is. It’s this forest. It’s not real.”
Va-room! Va-roommmm! The blast of the horn sounded again, this time to the south.
Emethius looked in the direction of the horn only to spot another stump and another decapitated body. He frantically thumbed at the hash marks in his vambrace, hoping to rub out all evidence of his sins. He could feel himself beginning to hyperventilate. “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.”
“Whoa, you all right, mate?” cried a familiar voice.
Emethius awoke to find Malrich holding his shoulders. Night was still upon them, and a small fire was crackling at their feet.
“You were sleepwalking,” said Malrich, his face pursed with concern.
“Sleepwalking?”
“You nearly walked into the fire.” Malrich pointed to Emethius’s hand. “Your thumb, Emethius, it’s bleeding.”
Emethius looked down; his thumb was a bloody mess, and his nail was only hanging on by a shred of flesh. His vambrace was streaked with blood. He tucked his thumb into the hem of his cloak and looked about himself in wonder. This could still be a dream. How could he ever know for certain? His eyes settled dubiously on the fire. “Where did the fire come from, Mal?”
“I finally found some dry brush.” Malrich was looking at him queerly. “Emethius...”
Emethius checked Malrich over from head to foot, his mind still not trusting his eyes. Seeing nothing out of place, he finally accepted this reality as the truth. “Something’s going on, Mal.”
“Horns?”
Emethius nodded. “In my dreams, at least. I followed them into the forest until I found a stump. My father was there. His head spoke to me...” Emethius let the words die in his throat. The story sounded even crazier when he said it out loud.
Malrich laid an understanding hand on Emethius’
s shoulder. “When I heard them last night, they led me to my son’s body roasting in a fire.” He shook his head. “There’s something in this forest, Emethius, and it somehow knows our greatest failings. It’s fucking with our heads.” He pulled out a length of rope. “I think it would be wise if we tied our wrists together. That way one of us can’t go wandering off in the middle of the night without the other waking up. Not that I’d go walking off on purpose, or anything, its just that... you know.”
Emethius did. They spent the remainder of the night huddled together with their backs pressed against a tree. Not trusting themselves, they set their blades just out of reach on the opposite side of the fire.
Twice during the night Emethius heard the sad wail of a horn, once to the east, a second time to the south. Each time, Emethius pinched himself to guarantee he was still awake. I’m just imagining things, he reassured himself. He let the fire die down to embers, just in case.
• • •
The next morning they trudged back to the road feeling bone-tired.
“My neck is sore, my legs ache to the bone, and I feel like I didn’t get a wink of sleep,” complained Malrich, as he lifted himself out of a ditch and up onto the level plane of the road.
Emethius joined him on the road, but froze mid-stride.
“What is it?”
Emethius could only point. There was a stone sentinel where there had not been one the night before. It stood some twenty paces down the road in the direction they had come from the previous night. Or did we come from the other way? Emethius suddenly felt turned around, and he had to check the sun to make sure he had his bearings straight.
“We must have missed it last night,” said Emethius. “The fog was thick, and our eyes were tired.”
“No, I don’t think that’s the case,” said Malrich. Suddenly, his sword was drawn and he marched straight toward the stone sentinel yelling brazenly. “You’ve haunted us long enough, you yellow-eyed demon. Look at me!”
The sentinel’s four-sided face turned, the foremost mask settling upon Malrich. The figure wore a cloak designed to resemble stone, but there was no hiding the shifting yellow eyes; they stood in stark contrast to the gray markings of the mask.
“Perim Lu,” spurted Emethius in disbelief. He frantically gestured for Malrich to halt, but Malrich was belligerent with rage. Seeing no other option, Emethius chased after his friend.
“Damn you, and the gods you serve,” shouted Malrich. He pointed his blade with menace as he marched toward the figure. “You’ve dogged us for every leg of this journey. This ends here.”
“This ends here,” agreed the Watcher, his deep voice emanating from beneath the stone mask. He stepped out onto the road. The folds of his cloak parted, revealing a suit of glistening mail beneath. There was a crossbow in his hand. The Watcher leveled the weapon on Malrich’s chest.
“Wary should be those who enter the Ador unbidden,” said a second voice. There was a rustle in the underbrush on the far side of the road, and figures began to materialize from the mist. There were a dozen in total, all of them multi-faced and cloaked. With blades drawn, the Perim Lu cautiously formed a circle around Malrich and Emethius.
Emethius cursed, unsure of what to do — one rash move and Malrich would be dead. “We have no business with you, nor your clan,” said Emethius. He knew his empty words would not prevent what was going to happen next, but he spoke anyway, hoping to buy time. The truth was, blades were drawn, and arrows were aimed; someone would die before this was through.
“Wrong. Your business and ours are one and the same,” said the Watcher with the crossbow. “You seek the Sage. So do we. He sniffed the air, as if there was a scent trail he could follow. “We were foolish not to see that he was nigh all along. You will take us to him, or you will pay the blood price.”
Emethius lowered his head and pawed at his vambrace, feeling each of the ten grooves. “We can’t help Meriatis and Ali if we’re dead, Mal,” he said finally.
Malrich nodded in understanding. “It has been an honor, captain.”
With a weary sigh, Emethius turned toward the Watcher bearing the crossbow. “We yield. We’ll tell you all.”
“Honesty is one of the five virtues. Compassion is another. My master will be quick to remember this, but even quicker to punish if you lie to him. Your weapons, gentlemen.”
A Watcher stepped forward to collect their swords. Emethius offered his blade in surrender, but as the Watcher reached for the handle, Emethius spun around with the edge of his blade and slashed the Watcher’s outstretched hand.
Before anyone could react, Emethius twisted to his left and came down with his sword as if he were chopping wood. The Watcher beside him was taken completely by surprise, an although he leapt backward to avoid the blade, he did not go far enough. The tip of Emethius’s sword sliced through the Watcher’s mailed shirt, cutting him open from navel to groin.
After that, everything seemed to happen at once. The crossbowmen fired on Malrich. Malrich stepped aside, catching the bolt in his left bicep instead of his chest. Malrich simultaneously stabbed with his sword, driving his blade through the mouth of the Watcher’s stone mask. When he withdrew the blade, the Watcher looked like he was vomiting up blood.
“Run,” screamed Malrich, as he whirled around, parrying off another Watcher’s attack.
Emethius dropped his shoulder, knocking a Watcher to the ground and clearing a path through the throng of enemies. They broke into a dead sprint.
“Curse the day,” said Malrich through clenched teeth.
A second arrow hissed through the mist, cleaving the air between them. A third caught the tip of Emethius’s right ear, nearly cutting his ear in half. A fourth embedded itself into Emethius’s travel pack.
“Into the woods!”
They leapt off the road and kept running.
The top half of Emethius’s ear was bouncing up and down with every step, dangling by a thread of flesh. He ignored the ghastly injury — Malrich was in far worse shape. “How badly are you hurt?”
“I won’t die if I can get the bleeding to stop,” answered Malrich between forced breaths. The crossbow bolt had punctured through the inside of his bicep and exited through the backside of his arm. A gush of blood spurted from the wound, soaking his shirt red. Without breaking stride, he tore a strip of cloth from the hem of his tunic and used it to bind the wound in a tight tourniquet. “A drink would be nice to cut the pain,” said Malrich, grinning like a crazy person.
Another bolt hissed through the air, this one catching in the trunk of a nearby tree. Words spoken in the old tongue echoed throughout the forest. The Watchers were not far behind.
“There were eyes within the stone sentinels all along,” called Emethius between breaths. “I was worried about this yesterday, but I didn’t say anything because it seemed so foolish at the time. I’m sorry, Mal.”
A horn blared in their wake, the same horn Emethius had heard the prior night. Emethius could hear the heavy thud of booted feet trailing right behind them, but each time he turned to catch sight of their pursuers all he saw were the trunks of trees. Sorcery! Their cloaks have changed colors to match the trees, realized Emethius, as he discerned a bark-colored object sprinting after them.
“Emethius, look out!”
It was the only warning Emethius received. One moment he was running on solid ground, the next, his feet were churning in empty air. He looked down just in time to see roiling black water rushing up to meet him as he tumbled over the edge of a cliff.
Emethius plunged beneath the water’s inky surface. The chill dug straight to his bones, like a thousand pricking knives. He resurfaced, gasping for air.
I’ve fallen into a river, Emethius realized, once his brain had time to process what happened. And not just any river. This is the Puttdale! Bi Ache wouldn’t be far.
Malrich was farther downstream, struggling to fend himself off of a rocky shoal that jutted from the water near the center of the channel. H
e waved for Emethius to keep going. “To the far shore,” ordered Malrich, before he plunged back beneath the water. A moment later a crossbow bolt splashed into the water where Malrich had previously been.
The Watchers had come to the edge of the low cliff that Emethius and Malrich had fallen over. One was busily trying to set another quarrel to his crossbow. The rest were looking for a way down to the shoreline.
Emethius swam for the far shore. But as he did, the old wound in his back knotted, sending a spasm galloping down the length of his spine. It took everything Emethius had to ignore the pain and fight the rapid current. Finally, he managed to swim into an eddy that back flowed against the bank. He crawled trembling from the water.
Malrich lifted Emethius to his feet and pulled him along. “We have to keep going!” he shouted between puffing breaths.
Emethius glanced over his shoulder as he stumbled after Malrich.
The Watchers remained on the far bank, appearing hesitant to give chase. They were conversing with one another, waving their arms with frantic motions. One pointed angrily at Emethius and Malrich, while another gestured to the forest behind them. A conclusion seemed to be made and the Watchers slipped back into the forest and vanished from sight.
“What are they doing?” asked Malrich. He gripped at his bloody arm, still trying to staunch the wound.
Emethius immediately understood why the Watchers didn’t cross the river once he examined the shoreline. The fog had cleared, replaced by a reeking foulness that seemed to hang over everything. Where the Great Northern Ador was silent and still, untouched and timeless, the bank they now stood upon was stained and vile, slick with slime and filth. Briers choked the forest floor. The tree branches were vine strewn and their trunks knotted with cancerous growths.
“Do you not feel it?” said Emethius. “We have left the realm of the divine. We are no longer in the Great Northern Ador. We’ve entered the Cultrator.”
Fractured Throne Box Set 1 Page 35