The Complete Rhenwars Saga: An Epic Fantasy Pentalogy

by M. L. Spencer

  Men who had already seen the signal arrows now drew forward to assemble by the shattered remains of the north wall, inferring the nature of the threat that confronted them from the look on his face. Silence fell over the hall as the soldiers gathered to hear him speak.

  “We abandon the keep,” Craig announced.

  The reaction produced by his words was swift. Cries of protest rang from the walls as the men surged forward as one, shouting and brandishing fists, even weapons, in the air. Craig jumped onto a large pile of tumbled blocks, trying to elevate himself above the press of bodies. The upturned faces that glared at him were dangerous in their hostility.

  “That’s the order.”

  Craig stood and waited for silence. It came slowly, but eventually even the rustle of bodies ceased. When he was sure he had their full attention, he took a deep breath and summoned the courage to continue.

  “I’m asking for volunteers: men who’ll be willing to stay behind to offer resistance while the rest of us retreat down the pass. If you decide to remain, know that your death will buy the rest of us a fighting chance. I can promise you that your sacrifice will not go unremarked. Or unavenged.”

  The faces before him darkened, and he could almost feel their righteous skepticism. They knew well, just as he did, how hollow that promise was. The scouts who’d brought back reports from the mouth of the pass had not been ordered to silence. Every man in the keep knew the numbers of the Enemy host that confronted them.

  The scornful faces before him reduced his words to the shameful collection of lies that they were. He knew he couldn’t blame them if not a man stepped forward to volunteer.

  They deserved better.

  They deserved to know the truth: that every last one of them was going to die, and no good account would come from their ends. The vast strength of the Enemy would be like a raging tempest, and they would be simply swept away by that storm. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell them that. In the end, it seemed, he was craven after all. Devlin Craig bowed his head and waited, but no one moved.

  At last, a lone man stepped forward from the back of the crowd, winding his way through the press of bodies toward the front. Craig raised his eyebrows, frowning when he recognized Corban Henley’s red-bearded face. The burly man had one hand clutched on the hilt of the sword that rode at his side, his face as impassive as a cold chunk of stone.

  A murmur ran through the gathered men as they parted to let him pass. When he reached the front of the crowd, Henley stopped and simply stood. He didn’t look at Craig, but stared beyond him, down into the blackness visible through the rift in the wall.

  He was not the man Craig would have picked. Henley was a good soldier, far too good to be wasted in such a futile endeavor. But no one else was coming forward. Craig scanned the crowd, but their hostility was still almost palpable. Even Henley’s example had not been enough to inspire, and it should have been.

  Finally, another man drew forward. When Craig saw who it was, he almost gasped in disbelief. Traver Larsen had come to him as a scoundrel, an insubordinate rogue who Craig had felt certain wouldn’t last a fortnight before getting himself killed, probably by his own comrades in arms. From the beginning, Craig had determined that the best use of the man would be to make a harsh example of him. But Larsen had never given him the opportunity.

  Instead, the man had changed. From almost the moment he’d picked up a sword, Traver Larsen had transformed into one of the hardest-working recruits Craig had ever trained. And now he stood at Henley’s side, just the two of them, alone.

  But then the crowd shifted.

  At first Craig didn’t understand what was happening; the change was subtle. It took him a moment to realize that Henley and Larsen were no longer alone at the front of the crowd. The entire mass of men had moved forward collectively as one. He stared down at the group of soldiers, abashed by their courage.

  Craig found himself in the grim position of having to choose his volunteers.

  He limited his choice to a dozen, selecting mostly archers. He didn’t pick either Henley or Larsen. He wanted both men by his side, not wasted on a hopeless venture.

  When it was done, he looked up to find Garret Proctor standing in the doorway. The force commander stepped forward and addressed the hall in a booming voice:

  “Take only what is necessary. We ride within the hour. Now, MOVE!”

  Craig watched as men scurried in every direction. He lingered on the mound of blocks for another moment before turning away. As he scaled the ladder to the catwalk at the top of the walls, he could feel Proctor’s eyes on him.

  He paused and stared out through the opening of an arrow slit. At first, he thought he could see movement far below, somewhere down in the bottom of the pass. But it was just roiling ground fog, nothing more. The Enemy was not yet upon them.

  He traced his hand over the stone blocks that rimmed the opening. These stark walls had stood for hundreds of years, protecting the nations of the Rhen. In his mind, he could hear Royce’s voice as a distant, haunting refrain, that same speech the man had delivered to every batch of new recruits: Greystone Keep holds the Pass of Lor-Gamorth. If it should ever fall, then we will lose the pass. If we lose the pass, then we lose the North. And if the North should ever fall, the Enemy will sweep southward like a storm.

  It had always been Royce’s duty to hold the fortress. But Royce was dead, and now the walls he’d sworn to protect were simply being abandoned. In a way, Craig was glad his old friend was not alive to see this day. The fall of Greystone Keep would certainly have broken him.

  Craig rode in silence beside his commander at the head of the long column that descended the dark cliffs, heading southward into the heart of the pass. Above and behind him, the fortress was visible as never before, aglow with the light of dozens of fires.

  Proctor had turned Greystone Keep into a death trap. Nothing had been left behind for the Enemy. Nothing, with the exception of a half-dozen bowmen whose arrows hissed down from the high walls as the fortress burned beneath their feet.

  Craig heard a distant crash and turned to see the roof of the tower caving in, consumed by the fierce glow of ravaging flames. Sparks shot upward, wafting high into the sky. He turned away from the sight, fixing his gaze on the black dirt of the path before him.

  He almost brought his hands up to cover his ears as the sound of distant screams drifted toward him, carried by the still night air. The whistling hiss of arrows ceased, and a sad, eerie silence lingered over the remote crackling of flames.

  Then another sound rose behind him, soft at first, then growing to a thunderous, echoing roar. Craig did cover his ears then, closing his eyes as well, against the deafening cry of victory pealed from thousands of Enemy throats.

  Devlin Craig didn’t have to look behind him to know that the fortress that had guarded the Pass of Lor-Gamorth for over five hundred years stood no more.

  23

  Unveiled

  Darien stared ahead at the sheer white train of Naia’s veil, fascinated by the way it was played out at her side, rippled by the gentle current of a zephyr. He wondered at the veil’s significance. It was reminiscent in some ways of a bridal scarf, a badge of goodness and purity. In other ways, it reminded him of his mother’s funeral shroud, elegant even as it was isolating.

  The veil fluttered upward, and for the briefest moment he had an unobscured view of her face. It was as if the clouds had parted, admitting a fragile, transitory ray of sunlight into his dark and winterish world. Then the skies closed again as the breeze ebbed, and the veil fell back into place. It had been but a chance gesture of the wind, nothing more. But to Darien, that brief glimpse of Naia’s face had the magnitude of a sobering epiphany.

  He realized that he loved her. And he damned himself for it.

  They rode in silence into the bleak grayness that preceded the dawn, their horses climbing out of the desert into the green foothills of the mountains. The path they followed was the one that had led them
out of the Valley of the Gods two days before, now rising into the rolling hills that marked the beginning of the Craghorns.

  To the north, Darien could see the sharp peaks of snow-clad mountains in the distance, evocatively familiar. The sight of the Craghorns beckoned him, drawing him like a child intrigued by the candle’s tempting flame. Aerysius was there, somewhere, high up on the vertical face of one of those white summits.

  But instead of taking the northern fork, Darien turned his horse southward. He glanced over his shoulder for one last view of the mountains as he guided his mount toward the center of the path.

  “You’re going to Auberdale?” Naia gazed at him with a perplexed expression.

  “I need Faukravar’s northern army.”

  The confusion on her face turned to a look of comprehension. “So that’s why you sent Kyel to Rothscard. To beg Romana for her army.”

  “Begging was not what I had in mind.”

  Naia pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I still fail to see how you plan to accomplish all that you intend to do in less than a fortnight. Travel alone will scarcely take us to Aerysius and back to Orien’s Finger in that amount of time, and that doesn’t include a stop in Auberdale.”

  “That’s true,” Darien agreed. “There’s not enough time. Aidan will have to wait.”

  Naia looked concerned by his answer. Which confused him. That was the part of his plan he’d expected her to like most.

  She said, “You told me you feared to have Aidan at your back. I wondered about that at the time. Your brother has done little but sit like a spider in his web ever since he gained control of Aerysius. Do you expect him to move against you now?”

  Darien shook his head. “Aidan has not been idle, I assure you. For one, there are no passes above Aerysius to admit a force through that corridor. Aidan has been hard at work creating some sort of passage through the Craghorns. And the Eight are under his command, and they haven’t been idle at all. Arden Hannah told me she came from Bryn Calazar. That stinks of a union between Aidan and whatever dark terror governs the Enemy.”

  This time, the dawn of comprehension on her face was overshadowed by the worried lines of fear he’d been expecting.

  “An alliance?” She looked appalled. “So all of this has been Aidan’s scheme—to use the combined might of the Enemy and the Netherworld to conquer the Rhen for himself?”

  “My family has always had an ambitious streak.”

  Naia shook her head. “To think, all of these horrors wrought by just one man. But you still didn’t answer my question. What is the danger if you put off confronting your brother until after the battle?”

  Darien shrugged. “Aidan commands Renquist. I’m going to have a hard enough time minding the Enemy without having to worry about being attacked by eight demons and their pets at the same time.”

  Naia’s face went pale. “What will you do, Darien?”

  “I’ll have a few things on my side,” he said, trying to reassure her with a smile he simply didn’t feel. “I’ll have two good-sized armies behind me. And Orien’s Vortex will give me some protection. If he wants to take me, Renquist will need to move his mages in close, into the eye of the vortex itself. As I figure it, the battle will be won or lost depending on who gains Orien’s Circle first. Whoever controls the vortex will control the field of battle.”

  “But, Darien, what if they’re there already? The Eight? Even Aidan?”

  Darien shook his head. “They’re not expecting me. I’m certain Renquist thinks I’m dead, or at least Arden ought to. That’s my greatest advantage: the element of surprise is on my side.”

  Naia looked as if she wanted to believe him, but her eyes beneath the veil were full of doubt. It was the best strategy he’d been able to come up with. Using Orien’s Circle, at least he had a chance. But there were so many things that could still go wrong. His first big challenge lay just ahead over the hills.

  And he couldn’t afford to spend much time in Auberdale. Faukravar was known for stalling, miring his opponents in tangles of intrigue. The King of Chamsbrey had given Darien’s mother headaches on more than one occasion, and Emelda had been a strong Prime Warden.

  Darien didn’t kid himself. He’d never had the patience for politics. In Auberdale, he was going to be very much out of his element.

  They followed the road to the south for the remainder of the day. The landscape changed around them, the scattered trees thickening into a densely forested woodland. The sky gave way to a canopy clad in orange and burnished gold. Leaves rained down on the road as the branches stirred above them in the breeze. Winter was approaching swiftly. Already the air carried with it a sharp chill.

  Naia had been silent for most of the day, her eyes either remote in thought or cast downward in a meditative study of the road. Darien thought he knew the reason. Her mood had turned after their conversation that morning. By the time the sunset arrived, he found himself missing her company.

  He guided his horse off the road, looking for a place to set up camp for the night. They could have reached Auberdale easily by pressing on after dark. But Naia’s silence bothered him, and it made him reluctant to enter the city with her in such a somber mood.

  Determined to do something to cheer her up, he selected a spot on the rise of a hill, a patch of green grass in the midst of a stand of trees. The far side of the hill provided a sweeping view of the lowlands below, with the walls of Auberdale visible in the distance against the southern horizon.

  To his disappointment, Naia seemed unaffected by the view, merely glancing once over the rim of the hill as she went routinely about the process of helping him set up the campsite. Darien felt dismayed, wondering what it would take to bring the smile back to her face.

  When he saw her digging through her pack for the dried food stores they’d carried with them from Glen Farquist, it gave him an idea. Leaving her by the fire, he strode off alone into the thicket, eyes scanning the ground and the trees for any sign of movement.

  It took him a little while of searching, but at last he found a hare. Yet, even as he did, he was unsure of quite what to do with it. If Kyel had been there, he would have borrowed his acolyte’s bow to bring the animal down. But Kyel wasn’t there, and all Darien had was his sword. And his ability.

  With the slightest wrench of his mind, the hare collapsed on the spot. There was no writhing or squirming. The animal simply dropped and was dead.

  Darien felt himself shiver involuntarily as he walked toward the fallen hare. He knelt over it, staring bleakly down at the limp carcass. He had never before used his ability to take a life, even a small one. It was a new experience, and unsettling. What disturbed him most was how effortless the act had been. It had taken almost no thought whatsoever to transfer what he already knew from his study of healing and adapt it into a killing strike. He had taken the wondrous gift of life and had corrupted it into its converse: the ignoble gift of death.

  As Darien grasped the limp animal by its hind legs, he felt wretchedly soiled. This was not the use his gift had ever been intended for. He thought of Grand Master Ezras, the mage who’d surrendered his life to pass on his ability to him. What he had just done seemed to slight that great man’s noble sacrifice. Ezras had held fiercely to his Oath his entire life, even in the most dire of circumstances. The man would have gladly yielded his own life before slaying so much as a simple hare with the use of his gift.

  Feeling sickened, Darien took out his knife and slit the animal’s plump belly, scraping its guts out with trembling fingers. He skinned the carcass and drove it through with a branch sharpened into a spit, then knelt to wash up in the crisp water of a brook. By the time he returned to their campsite, his hands had finally stopped shaking.

  Naia looked up as he sat down on the other side of the fire from her, bracing the spit hare at an angle over the flames. Her eyebrows raised in appreciation at the smell of cooking meat. Darien tried his best to smile, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  “Thank you,�
� she said simply.

  Darien just nodded. His entire motive for killing the hare had been to cheer her up. But now that his efforts seemed to have worked, at least a little bit, he found it was he who needed cheering. He leaned forward to turn the meat, but the motion was just a way of avoiding her eyes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She had seen through him anyway. It was an uncanny knack she had. No matter how well he tried to hide his feelings from her, she always knew them. Before her, every wall he threw up crumbled to sand and ashes. Darien leaned forward, folding his arms across his legs as he struggled to think of how to put his emotions to words.

  “I’ve never killed anything with my gift before,” he admitted finally. He felt ashamed. It had been only a stupid, tiny hare. Whether it had died in a trap or by the force of his mind shouldn’t have mattered.

  But it did.

  The priestess seemed to sense it too. A look of sympathy formed on her face. The expression made him angry. He didn’t want her pity. Of all the range of emotions he wished he could elicit from her, that was the one thing he simply couldn’t take. He stared down at the campfire’s flickering flames as if drawn to them, mesmerized by the fire’s orange-yellow glow.

  “I care for you, Naia.”

  The look of stunned shock on her face hurt more than her pity. Darien pushed himself up, not knowing where he was going as he stumbled toward the edge of the hill. He stopped there, surrounded by the whispering branches of the forest. In the distance, he could see the lights of Auberdale, a dim glow on the dark line of the horizon.

  He considered the lights, or tried to. But all he could think about was Naia. Why had he said that to her? He couldn’t imagine what he’d been thinking. Without intending to, he’d been cruelly unfair to her. He hadn’t even considered the decision he was forcing upon her, asking her to choose between his selfish desires and her life’s work and ambitions. He had no right to put her in such a position. He was a fool.