The Wrath of Heroes (A Requiem for Heroes Book 2)

by David Benem

  “Good evening, Borel,” Gamghast said.

  “Evening?” Borel said, jowls swaying. “Gamghast, it’s well past midnight. You need sleep.”

  “Sleep?” grumbled Gamghast. “Sleep?” He smacked a hand upon the old tome, sending a shower of dust from its cover. “Sleep is the last thing we should worry over! We’ve been sleeping for centuries, Borel. We’ve slept while our enemy has awakened and thrived in the shadows. We’ve slept and have allowed ourselves to forget the very things we need most.”

  Borel thumbed his chin. “You’re certain? You’re certain those old spells exist?”

  Gamghast lifted the book before him with a grunt. “This account speaks of such things. There must be secrets we’ve forgotten, secrets buried somewhere within this place.”

  “You and I have only four eyes between us, Gam. It could take us years—decades—to find such things.”

  “That is why you will summon every able body in the Abbey. Summon them and tell them the stakes of this war. Tell them the truth, the truth of Castor and our charge. All—”

  “But the Crown! Such would be deemed treason by the Crown!”

  “Damn the Crown!” Gamghast spat. “You will tell the acolytes the truth! All of it. And tell them to empty these shelves—every one of them—and read every word written in every book and every scroll of this library. Tell them to turn over every stone in this tomb we call our home. Tell them the whole of the world depends upon them finding the precious secrets we have lost. Tell them to find our old weapons against the enemy.”

  Prefect Gamghast leaned upon his staff near the library’s entrance, watching as more than a hundred acolytes scoured the massive chamber. The place, generally one of quiet contemplation, had become a chaotic mess the moment dawn streamed in colored ribbons though windows of stained glass. Brown-robed acolytes tore down shelves and flipped through pages of countless books, discarding irrelevant tomes in great, heaping piles. The rare books holding a hint of promise stood in stacks upon a table manned by Prefect Borel and a few of the Sanctum’s more senior acolytes.

  Gamghast strode inside with a click-clack of his staff. “Do not ignore the scrolls!” he demanded, gesturing toward the library’s northern end. “Scour every word in this musty cave!”

  Several acolytes darted toward those shelves and in their eagerness managed to send a dozen or so scrolls rolling haphazardly across the library’s floor.

  Gamghast shook his head. Ah, Acolyte Bale, he thought, smoothing the wisps of his beard. You would have reveled in this work and no doubt would have had a better idea where to search than this sad lot. I pray that by the grace of Illienne you’re still alive.

  He thrust his staff ahead then dragged himself forward, shuffling his way deeper into the chamber. The shelves were in shambles, now, their old order overturned. Gamghast grunted, finding the sight well suited to the times.

  “Tear this place apart!” he shouted, guiding his way about a jumble of books. “You know now the Lector’s true identity and you know that he was slain! A Sentinel among us—a Sentinel slain! If that doesn’t impart to you the urgency of this task then you should be sifting through sewers rather than shelves.”

  The acolytes hastened their work, some even trying to rifle through two books at once. Prefect Borel, too, hunkered closer to his tome, dragging a pudgy finger across lines of text.

  Gamghast drew near his fellow prefect and braced himself against the table. “Anything?” he asked.

  “Only prayers and incantations we already possess,” Borel said, his heavy head still lowered over the book. “But there are histories… histories with unusual accounts. Accounts of the Necrists and of members of our order using prayers of great power against them.”

  “But no recitations of those prayers themselves? No descriptions of the gestures and reagents employed? Such texts must exist. Lector Erlorn was always digging around in here, always digging through so-called ‘banned texts.’ Certainly he wasn’t just reveling in tired nostalgia.”

  Borel raised his eyes to Gamghast. “He did have an odd fascination with our lesser-known volumes. A blasphemous fascination, if you believe Dictorian Theal.”

  “Do you?” Gamghast said, striking his staff upon the stone tiles. “Do you believe Dictorian Theal? That most pious and pompous soul who is no doubt lounging in the Elder God’s heavens as we speak?”

  “Gam, you know how I feel about that. I would have left with Prefect Kreer if I felt otherwise. I’m merely recalling what many thought of the Lector’s interest in old books.”

  “Perhaps he, too, was trying to remember how to defeat the enemy. Perhaps not, and perhaps we will never know. Regardless, we must keep searching. The Crown can’t have burned every book of value, and Castor or Erlorn or whoever must have known something to have spent such time here. Acolyte!” he said, leveling a finger at one of the men seated beside Prefect Borel. “Fetch me a chair and a stack of books not already deemed worthless.”

  Gamghast rapped his knuckles on the table, the sound jarring now that night had dulled the day’s commotion. “Still nothing?”

  Borel looked up from his candlelit book, eyes baggy and bloodshot. “Just more histories,” he said weakly. “Little different from what you discovered earlier. There are more detailed descriptions of the Necrists than I’ve ever encountered—they’re quite frightening. And there are stories of battles against them. There are accounts of pilgrimages to ancient shrines and of the use of forgotten prayers and powers. But not a detail on the means and methods of more potent spellcraft. Not things we don’t already know.” He rubbed at his eyes with thick thumbs. “I’m sorry, Gamghast.”

  “There are poems, too,” muttered an acolyte seated beside Borel. “Poems and—”

  “And not a word of sacred spellcraft,” interjected Gamghast.

  The acolyte shook his head. “No, Prefect. Not a word.”

  Gamghast gripped his staff and arose, frustration stifling all other thought. “Then perhaps the gods, and Castor, have forsaken us indeed.” He turned from the table and trudged away.

  “Gamghast?” Borel called after him.

  Gamghast made a shooing motion and walked, leaning heavily upon his staff as he exited the library.

  Gamghast found the Abbey’s corridors had surrendered to darkness at this late hour, the stonework lit only by occasional, sputtering torches. Most of the acolytes had abandoned their efforts, the doors of their quarters shut and showing no hint of candlelight beyond. He moved along, wondering if they, too, felt bound by the shackles of futility.

  He walked aimlessly through the shadows, listening to the thud and clack of his uneven stride. His journey lacked purpose, aside from what he guessed was some effort to either hide from others or become lost himself. He wandered and as he did his thoughts drifted back to his conversation with Tolem. “How can I have faith in the absence of hope?” he recalled asking.

  He worried over that question again, that question of faith. He’d devoted decades—every good year of his life—to the Sanctum, and now it seemed that time was coming to an end. An end with an ancient enemy’s hands at his throat and his kingdom in ruins.

  He came to a stop and closed his eyes. Will this be how we’re remembered? Old bones in an old grave, powerless against our foe?

  He straightened his spine as much as his aches would allow. No. I will meet my end with dignity, and fight until the end.

  He looked about his surroundings, an intersection of cramped corridors hazy with the smoke of torches. Though nearly identical to many other crossings in the Abbey, Gamghast knew this one. He’d visited it many weeks before, just hours after receiving word of the Lector’s murder.

  He found the door to the Lector’s quarters and approached. Curiosity seized him. He grasped the knob and turned it, pressing open a creaking door to reveal the dark room beyond. He squinted and spotted a candle on a desk inside. He snatched it and fired the wick on a coughing torch, tugged in a breath and entered.

 
; The Lector’s quarters were as he remembered, small and simple. Erlorn’s few personal effects had been sent to his family—a sister and two nephews near the Waters of World’s End—shortly after his death. What remained were neat piles of ceremonial garb and ornamentation, a shelf bearing a careful arrangement of statuettes, and a haphazard assemblage of books.

  Gamghast bent close to the jagged stacks, bringing the candle’s flame as near to the wild wisps of his beard as caution would allow. He supposed these were the last dozen or so tomes the Lector had taken from the library, the last things he’d thought to read before his trek southward. The last he’d thought to read before his death.

  Gamghast had given the books only a cursory inspection when he’d last visited this room, glancing at the spines and the titles written upon them. This seemed the same collection. Books on the divinity of the High King and his line, volumes on the healing of the sick, old hymns to Illienne and the Elder God.

  Before, in those hours after learning of the Lector’s death, Gamghast had searched for journals, for personal letters and notes. He’d not given much consideration to these books. Now the texts puzzled him, for they hinted at nothing of the Lector’s so-called ‘blasphemous’ interests.

  Each of these volumes adhered to the Sanctum’s modern—or at least publicly proclaimed—doctrine on the Old Faith. Each had been scribed after the Crown banished the Sentinels and banned their veneration. These were elementary teachings, the sorts of books read by new acolytes upon admission to the order.

  He furrowed his brow, wondering if the works had provided an innocuous distraction for the Lector, a simple diversion for a soul who’d certainly read every work in the library already.

  He stretched his crackling spine upward to stand. Nonsense. A Sentinel wouldn’t dwell upon such trifles.

  He tapped the butt of his staff against the floor. He recalled when he’d received that terrible news, that news of murder. It’d been the wee hours of morning, the day’s first hour, perhaps…

  Gamghast himself had been first to hear it, to hear the green-cloaked Variden—Ogrund, he was called—speak of the death of Erlorn’s body and the displacement of Castor’s spirit. Gamghast had summoned Dictorian Theal and Prefects Borel and Kreer, and the four of them had listened to the Variden with rapt attention. Borel had nearly fainted, Gamghast remembered. Kreer had quoted old platitudes and hollow scriptures. Theal had fled the room to focus all his soul on prayers to guide the spirit.

  Or had he?

  Gamghast thought of the Dictorian, particularly his mad desire to pry Castor’s spirit from the highlander and possess it himself. It had seemed an act of hubris then, and seemed even more so now. Gamghast worried what motivations would have moved Theal in those moments after learning of Erlorn’s murder.

  He looked again to the stacks of books, the precarious pillars a contrast to the arrangement of the rest of the Lector’s belongings.

  He squeezed his hand about the staff, knuckles cracking as he did.

  With a curse he spun away from the books and stormed from the room. He trampled through the Abbey’s corridors with his crippled, crab-like stride. A couple of bleary-eyed acolytes walked the same passageway and he swatted them aside with his staff.

  Down another corridor he turned and nearly collided with a candle-toting acolyte. “Prefect,” the fellow yelped. “Prefect! There you are! Someone is asking—”

  “Not now!” Gamghast barked, shrugging aside the man and hobbling along.

  “But Prefect Gamghast!”

  Gamghast ignored the words and worked his way through the stony catacombs, through hallways bearing only rumors of torchlight. At last he came upon the doors to Theal’s chambers. The knobs of the double doors were gilded—a rare opulence amid the Abbey’s gray masonry. The room hadn’t been disturbed since the Dictorian’s death, there being no new Dictorian named. Kreer had demanded no decree be made until he’d returned from his journey and lent his voice to the process. Gamghast knew the man’s motives were less than noble in this regard, certain Kreer thought he’d command Castor’s spirit by then.

  He scowled. Can good intention ever triumph over greed when both stir within the same soul?

  He huffed and approached the door, twisted a knob and found it locked. He grunted and dug into his robes, at last producing a ring jangling with keys. He and the other prefects now possessed keys to every door of the Sanctum, including those to areas formerly accessible only to the Dictorian and Lector. He fumbled with them, candle in one hand, keys in the other, and staff squeezed in the crook of his elbow. At last he found a key scratched with Theal’s name and guided his shaking hand to the keyhole. The tumbler turned with only minor protest and Gamghast threw open the door.

  The dark room smelled musty, little different from the crypt beneath the Abbey. Gamghast moved within, his candle’s wax dripping from its narrow holder onto his hand. It seared his age-thinned skin for an instant though he cared not. With bleary eyes he scrutinized Theal’s every possession.

  The room off the main doorway was all bejeweled boxes, imported silks and valued artifacts. A tight grouping of ornate chairs for quaint discussion. A tall mirror no doubt used for the Dictorian’s daily ritual of self-admiration.

  Gamghast turned to the next room, the Dictorian’s study. Its shadows gave reluctant way to the candlelight, retreating to reveal a decorative desk and a wooden case displaying an array of baubles and books. A sheaf of scrolls tied with ribbons lay heaped upon the desk and bound volumes lined the bookcase. All seemed fat with promise.

  Gamghast shambled to the desk, rested his candle atop it and sank to a seat in its plush, red-pillowed chair. As much as he rejected opulence and its comforts, his aching back was thankful for the chair’s design. He eased in a breath and set about inspecting the scrolls.

  A commendation from Thane Vandyl for healing soldiers who’d been gravely wounded in a skirmish near Rellic. Correspondence from an acolyte in Raven’s Roost seeking counsel over worrisome practices in the city, theft and gambling and prostitution and such. Three letters from some confidant in Pyrene inquiring after the troubles in Rune and the devastation of its war.

  All utterly worthless.

  Gamghast forced himself upward and turned to the bookcase with a grimace. He brought his candle near, reading words upon weathered spines, some etched with artful script and others with simple scribbles. These volumes were well-known, innocuous titles holding psalms and hymns and similar dross. Gamghast flipped through their pages in hopes of finding some secreted note but, of course, there was none.

  His shoulders slumped. The weight of defeat—of futility—pressed upon him. He gathered his staff and trudged to the remaining room.

  The door to the Dictorian’s bedchamber rested slightly ajar. Gamghast whacked his staff against it, sending it squealing upon its hinges. Out with you demons, he thought half-heartedly before shuffling inside, candle in hand.

  A four-poster bed with a fluffed mattress dominated one wall and a tall wardrobe another. He tugged open the doors of the wardrobe and was struck by a waft of potent fragrances. Clothing—fine clothing by any standard—hung within, and shelves held ivory combs and hand mirrors and vials of scented oils. Gamghast swept the clothing aside but, alas, the wardrobe revealed no secrets.

  He sighed and turned to the bed. Nothing rested atop it. He sighed again, braced himself upon his staff and sank to a knee. Pain shot through his back and he winced, almost dropping his candle. He grimaced and pressed low and lower still and at last came near enough the floor to spy beneath the bed. He eased the candle outward and opened wide his eyes.

  He gasped. There, hidden below the bedframe, rested a sack or satchel of some sort.

  Gamghast moved the candlestick to his opposite hand, flattened himself against the stone tiles and threw an arm outward. He strained to straighten fingers that’d been bent for years. Still nothing. He shifted closer to the bedframe, wedging his shoulder between its wood and the floor. Finally, hi
s hand found the sack’s cloth.

  He dragged the sack—a heavy thing—across the floor and then pulled it and himself upward with a groan. He drew in a deep breath and dumped the bag’s contents onto the bed’s feather mattress.

  Books. A dozen of them, all worn and weathered and ancient. Even in the dim light of the candle his weak eyes could make out covers telling of spellcraft within their pages. There was another book, too, a seemingly newer volume with an unadorned binding. He opened it and spotted a simple letter, “E,” atop the first page, and handwritten entries beginning beneath it.

  Erlorn’s journal.

  He chuckled and shook his head. How utterly childish of you, Theal. How utterly childish, and how dangerously selfish.

  His heart soared. He grabbed one of the older volumes and thumbed through it, soon finding instructive passages reciting forgotten prayers, their powers, and how to employ them. He held the candle close, reading the passages quickly but with care. His mouth moved with the sacred words—committing them to memory—though he dared not give them voice. These were real powers and his spirit lifted with the confirmation of their existence.

  “At last,” he said, sweeping up the books into the satchel. “At last.”

  He snuffed the candle and shouldered the sack. In the dark he made his way back to the door, leaning as much as ever against his staff. He breathed deeply, relieved, as he turned the knob and exited to the torchlit hallway.

  A few steps away stood Prefect Borel.

  Gamghast smiled. “We have them,” he said. “We have our weapons.”

  “Gamghast?” said Borel, his voice unsteady.

  Gamghast gestured to the sack sagging over his shoulder. “Not to worry. I’ve found what we need.”

  Borel’s entire form trembled. “Gamghast… it doesn’t matter now. There’s a herald at the door. A herald bearing a warrant from the Magistrate Examiner. We are to be tried for treason.”