The Ruin of Kings

by Jenn Lyons

  “I’ve been here before,” I whispered.

  Tyentso stared at me. “When?”

  I shook my head as I walked toward the building. “I don’t remember.”

  I wrestled with my fear. Tyentso wasn’t possessing me anymore, so it was all a bonus from here on out. Plus, I wasn’t trapped on the island anymore, so that was even more a plus. Yes, if we were in the middle of the morgage-ruled Blight, that was a problem. Yet I still knew how to turn myself invisible, and they couldn’t do anything to Tyentso. So that wasn’t nearly the challenge that it appeared at first. All a matter of perspective.

  Everything was going to be fine.

  I walked inside the building and stopped in my tracks.

  Like the rest of the city, this was probably beautiful once too. Inlaid stonework and graceful statues, all of it in a style very different from normal Quuros ornamentation.

  In the center of that vast space, someone had carved a sphere out of the palace or temple or hall of government. Walls, ceiling, floor, and columns sheared away, as if everything within a fifty-foot distance of the center of the great, echoing hall had simply been annihilated.

  A man floated in that negative space.

  I shuddered even as I stepped forward. I found myself moving to get a better look, ignoring Tyentso’s hissing warning to be cautious. I had to know. I had to see him.

  I couldn’t make out details. He was a silhouette, the blackest thing I have ever seen. He had no features, no clothing, no reflection at all that might give one a sense of depth and shape. That silhouette wasn’t large—shorter than myself—nor was he a big or heavily muscled man. And yet I knew that silhouette, knew that body. It was as if I was looking at something so familiar to me, that if I could just concentrate I’d remember how I knew and why he’d called me there.

  He opened his eyes and looked at me.

  Now, I know what you’re going to say. He was darkness incarnate. Utterly black. He was the opposite of the light that pulsed down from the roof and kept him trapped in floating suspension. How could I even tell he had eyes, let alone that he had opened them? All I can say is that I could tell. His hate washed over me with an intensity keener than the Old Man’s fire. He knew me. I knew him. The pure fear I felt under his gaze was fear such as I have never felt before. I had never been as afraid of anyone or anything before or since.

  And then I felt his will against mine, pulling me to him. I felt the overwhelming desire to go to him, to join with him, to be part of him.

  We would be whole. We would be free.

  Nothing would ever chain us again. Nothing.

  “Ty . . . I need your help.”

  “My goddess,” Tyentso whispered. “I think I know who that is. I know . . .” She stared for a moment, shocked into absolute stillness. Then she shook it off. “Kihrin, we need to leave.”

  “Possess me,” I said, grinding my teeth as I stepped forward. “Do it right now.”

  To her defense, Tyentso didn’t demand to know what had changed from just a few minutes earlier. She simply took control of me.

  The next few seconds were shaky. I think I was screaming, or trying to. I might have cried. I know I struggled to run back to where that silhouette waited for me.

  None of that mattered, thankfully.

  Tyentso sprinted me right back out of the prison and kept running until we reached the edge of the city. I felt her loosen her control, just enough that I could talk and move on my own but not so much that she couldn’t reassert herself if I proved to still be under that monstrosity’s power.

  I bent over and was sick all over the stone walkway.

  “Scamp,” Tyentso said, “I think that was Vol Karoth.” She sounded numb. “You brought us to Kharas Gulgoth itself.”

  I shuddered and was sick again, sick until I dry heaved. Logically, I had no idea who Vol Karoth or Kharas Gulgoth were. Although as the son of a minstrel, you’d think I’d be slightly more familiar with stories concerning the destruction of an entire race. Yet it didn’t matter: I knew this place. I knew that creature. I knew him in my soul. She was right.

  “Gadrith used to talk about this place all the time,” she continued. “Kharas Gulgoth is where the King of the Demons, Vol Karoth, is imprisoned, trapped by the gods themselves. Gadrith wanted to use him. Evil bastard dreamed of coming here, but never had the guts.”

  Images formed along my peripheral vision, phantoms that had been summoned, not from the living world, but from Tyentso’s memories. One of her phantoms, a tall man in black robes, strode down the avenues, his face hidden in shadows.

  Then the full meaning of what she said sank in. “Gadrith? How do you know Gadrith the Twisted?”

  I felt her surprise. The phantom wizard of House D’Lorus seemed to echo that surprise, turning his head to stare at me.

  I recognized him: it was Dead Man.

  “How do I know—?” Tyentso laughed. “I thought you realized, Scamp. He was my husband.”

  “Dead Man—” I’d have thrown up again if I had anything left. And it all came crashing back. Thaena had said Tyentso’s true name was Raverí, which meant that she was Raverí D’Lorus, Thurvishar’s publicly acknowledged mother, apparently never executed after all for her role in the Affair of the Voices. She still probably knew more about Gadrith’s methods and motives than any other living being, save his gaeshed adopted son.

  What were the odds that I’d run into her on board The Misery by accident?

  I knew enough by this point to recognize Taja’s meddling touch when I felt it. Just this once though, I didn’t feel upset by that fact.

  “He’s not dead?” She’d been following the train of logic as if it were her own. I felt her dismay, her disgust, her shock. Tyentso hated Gadrith, hated him with a pure emotion I couldn’t hope to match for the man. I think she was ready to open some sort of magical portal to take me back to him right that instant, and rid the world of him once and for all. The only thing stopping her was the small and inconvenient matter of still being dead herself.

  Besides, she was never any good at opening gates.

  “We have to return to Khaemezra.” I stood and leaned against a wall for strength. I felt drained, as if just being in the same room as Vol Karoth had pulled away some of my life. Then my fingers felt an odd shape in the rock, and I realized that it was a bas-relief.

  Someone had carved away at the rock with a chisel, smooth, beautiful work that didn’t match the style of the city. Curious, I looked at the rest of the scene. A long story had been carved down the street, filled with figures engaged in combat. Eight people, four men and four women, gathered around a glowing crystal that threw off rays of light. Another eight figures, the same figures, followed, but each one was holding a symbol: a skull, a coin, a sword, cloth, an orb, a wheel, a stream, a leaf, and a star. I stepped farther down the street and traced out more patterns: the eight figures fighting monsters with the heads of bulls or hands like talons, creatures with serpent tails instead of legs and tentacles instead of arms. Then another scene, where just one of the eight, the one with the star symbol, left the battle escorted by a ninth person. Another ring of eight people followed, each one carrying a crystal, this time with the star-symbol man at their center. The ninth man was there too, only he held a sword. The next image showed the ninth man plunging that sword through the man with the star symbol.

  The next scene . . . I swallowed as I traced it. The man with the star symbol was gone, nothing left of him but a silhouette carved into the stone, a negative outline with angry chiseled lines radiating out. No sign of the nine men and women who had been there, just nine undulating shapes, each crawling away in a different direction. There were eight shattered pieces of crystal, and a single, twisted sword. After that, images of people dying, demons everywhere, fire raining down from the skies.

  This wasn’t a story with a happy ending.

  “Who carved these?” I asked, touching the images. I looked around. It wasn’t chance I’d found these s
cenes, because they were replayed on every stone surface along the thoroughfare. Again and again, as if generations had spent their energy recording a single, horrible event.

  The boom of drums echoed through the city.

  “I’ve heard the morgage who live in the Blight view this city as sacred,” Tyentso said. “You need to hide, and you need to do it right now.”

  I heard footsteps, approaching fast.

  I flattened myself against the wall and began repeating my invocation of invisibility. A second later, a dozen male morgage warriors jogged down the avenue. They were giant men, easily the largest I had ever seen, and their inhuman nature was evident. Their skin was a mottle of yellow, brown, and black, and their noses ended in tendrils above each nostril. These fell down the sides of their mouths in a way that—from a distance—might be mistaken for mustaches. Their eyes were quicksilver without iris or sclera. And, of course, they had the famous spikes on their lower arms. Poisonous spikes, as Roarin back at the Shattered Veil had taken great joy in demonstrating back in the day. Not all half-breeds had them. He’d been so proud.

  These weren’t half-breeds though. They were full-blooded morgage, the same warriors who had terrorized the dominion of Khorvesh. Quur only became the military power the world fears today due to the urgent need to put them down.

  The morgage are the only force who still regularly invades Quur.

  They trotted down the street, heads swinging from side to side as they looked around.

  They were hunting.

  I was confident they wouldn’t be able to see me, but then those nose tentacles twitched. They stopped. The tentacles twitched again.

  One of them bent over near the spot where I had vomited up my breakfast.

  “Run,” Tyentso whispered to me.

  I swallowed and stayed where I was. “If I run,” I thought back, “they’ll find me for sure.”

  There was commotion, talking. None of it was in a language I understood, but the quality of their voices sounded like something Khaemezra might call family.

  “Then I suggest prayer, Scamp,” Tyentso said.

  I’d heard worse ideas. Taja might even answer. I kept my spell playing in the back of my mind but I didn’t know if I had to pray out loud for it to work. Would Taja hear my thoughts? I wasn’t sure. I thought about her, and rescue, as hard as I could without breaking the spell.

  Nothing happened.

  Another figure strode down the main street. The warriors scattered to make room. This figure was smaller, dressed in a yellow robe decorated with tiger stripes. One of the warriors called out and pointed to the mess I’d left on the streets.

  “Laaka,” Tyentso whispered. “That’s a woman.”

  “Yeah?” I didn’t understand. Yes, it was a woman. I couldn’t see what she looked like under the robe, but from the scale I could assume either a woman or a child. “So?”

  I felt her exasperation. “Have you ever seen a morgage female before? Ever? I knew a professor back at the Academy who was convinced the morgage have no women and reproduced through some sort of asexual budding. Given how the morgage seem to hate our women, I thought they must keep their own prisoners, locked away somewhere.”

  “She’s not a prisoner. She’s giving orders.”

  Indeed, while Tyentso spoke, the newcomer flipped back the hood of her robe. Underneath was a morgage woman, probably of middle years. She had the same eyes, the same tentacle nose as her brethren, but her skin was black. That is, except for a stripe of silver scales that ran down one side of her face. It began at hair that wasn’t the iridescent ribbons I’d seen on the goddess Thaena, but sharp spikes. The men bowed their heads to her in respect, while one of them gestured, clearly indicating they wanted her help finding the trespasser.

  I slipped my vision past the First Veil. “Ty, she’s a sorceress.”

  “Oh, of course she is. We need a distraction,” she said.

  As if on cue, a dragon flew overhead.

  The morgage reaction was immediate. They were not happy to have that sort of visitor, for which I couldn’t blame them: I wasn’t thrilled myself. My first thought was disbelief that the Old Man had followed us so quickly. Then I realized that this dragon was the wrong color—a rainbow of metallic shimmer overlaying white, as if someone had spilled oil on top of marble.

  Not the Old Man.

  The morgage shouted, pointed, and began running, clearly intending to organize a defense.

  “Now!” Tyentso yelled in my head.

  I ran.

  I heard shouts behind me immediately. I didn’t think they could see me, but sound or smell or some other quality gave me away. I pulled a dagger out of my belt as I dashed, slashing back behind me as I heard footsteps slamming down in chase. I dodged to the side as one of the morgage came crashing through the space where I’d been a second before. I slashed across again, this time making contact along his back as he passed. He roared. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’d done much more than confirm my presence and make him mad. I certainly hadn’t slowed him down.

  “If you feel like helping, be my guest!”

  Tyentso snapped, “Are you going to freak out on me this time?”

  “No!” I hope not . . .

  Easily five more morgage were in pursuit. I shuddered as Tyentso took over my body again. In some ways, she made the situation worse. In any event, I stopped being invisible. The morgage screamed in triumph as they saw a target. The Stone of Shackles around my neck turned to ice.

  Tyentso chanted something long and unpronounceable, but I felt my mind shift as she cast her spell, felt what she did. It was a more effective magic lesson in under two seconds than I’d ever had before in my entire life.

  The closest morgage fell back with his hand to his neck, eyes bulging, and gasping for air. Tyentso had pulled all the moisture from his lungs, and without that lubricant, his air passages were sticking to each other, closing—effectively giving him an asthma attack. One of his fellows stopped to help him while the others advanced toward us, if more cautiously.

  Then I felt an agony of fire pierce through my leg. One of the morgage had thrown a spear right through my right thigh, pinning me to the ground. My own momentum pulled against the wound before I could stop myself, making it worse. There was blood everywhere, all of it mine.

  “Tyentso!” I screamed

  “I’m working on it!” The next spear impacted and shattered against an invisible wall of air. I felt myself (under Tyentso’s direction) putting up a wall of fire to keep our pursuers back.

  But even through the flame I could see that morgage sorceress making her way toward us, and I didn’t think that fire would keep her at bay for very long.

  “Concentrate on what’s happening right now,” Tyentso admonished. She was right of course. I had more pressing problems.

  “First, the spear,” Tyentso said. She put my hand on the shaft and I felt her changing the tenyé of the wood until it was brittle and weak, easily broken.

  “Ty, if that’s nicked the artery and you pull it out . . .”

  “Think I’ve never seen a wound before, Scamp? This is going to hurt.”

  I bit back on a scream as the edges of the wound started to sear. She was burning the wound, cauterizing it. My vision blacked around the edges as I threatened to pass out.

  “Stay with me, Scamp! We’re not out of this yet.”

  I blinked away the darkness. I must have been out for at least a few seconds though, because I’d already pulled out the spear. I’m pretty sure the damn thing had chipped bone. It sure as hell had done a lot of muscle and blood-vessel damage. I needed to splint and bandage it. I needed to clean out the wound. I needed to treat it for the poison or toxins almost certain to be used to coat a morgage spearhead.

  I didn’t have time for any of that.

  “You don’t know how to fly, do you?” I asked as I limped in retreat.

  “You wouldn’t enjoy the landing . . .”

  “Pretty soon I’ll be wil
ling to take the chance.” I laced the invisibility back around me, although it wouldn’t do too much good to stop anyone from following since I was leaving a trail of my own blood as a marker.

  I heard the morgage behind us, the low chanting as that sorceress did her job, the shouting of the warriors. I started looking around for ruins that might make reasonable hiding spots.

  Then the glowing lattice of energy that had covered every wall and floor of the ruins leaped upward and formed a cage around me. I slammed into the web of energy as I tried to escape, and arcs of pain slashed through my body.

  A ball of smoke flew toward me, coming not from the center of the city where the morgage were, but from the outskirts. That ball lengthened and grew darker, swirling up into a man-sized shape.

  A voice from inside the smoke said, “You’re a long way from home, little brother.”

  A spike of panic welled inside me, and I thought for a terrifying moment that it was somehow Darzin. Darzin had somehow managed to track me down.

  But it wasn’t.

  The man who stepped out of the smoke was Relos Var.

  60: THE INVITATION

  (Talon’s story)

  The two half-brothers sat cross-legged on a makeshift blanket, spread out on the stone floor in Galen’s secret hiding spot. A single tallow candle wedged near the base of the statue of Thaena illuminated their meal.

  “The Culling Fields?” Galen exclaimed. “Why would you want to go there?”

  Kihrin had stolen a basket of fresh-baked sag, fruit relishes, and peppered meats meant for the serving staff. He’d suggested they come here so their father wouldn’t catch them eating “common food.” Galen had leapt at the idea for many reasons, not least of which was that their father was in an even more foul temper than normal. Galen thought the harder his sons were to find, the better.