Metal clanged against stone, and it wasn’t Nazir; Lossarnakh had sat down next to me on the sun-warmed stone.
The assassin’s eyes flashed, and his hand slipped to his belt, but I shook my head at him. He understood me, freezing once more.
“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?” the king asked me quietly.
“Really is.”
It was spectacular—the forest bursting with leaves, the bending river, the soft sunlight bathing it all. If I’d been an artist, I would have already been hard at work.
“I don’t really like this spot in the castle,” he said, turning to the fortress wall and pointing at the end of the passage. “My friend was killed there.”
“Then, why did you come?” I asked in surprise.
“To talk to you. We’ve had a hard time making that happen, lately, what with you being gone half the time and me busy with affairs of the state. Days pass, and we haven’t been able to get in touch. I came as soon as I heard you were here.”
How does everyone know? I was the only one without eyes and ears everywhere.
“That’s life,” I said. It wasn’t exactly what I was trying to say, but Lossarnakh got it.
“Sure.” He paused before asking me a question. “Hey, are you sure we’re doing everything right?”
“No,” I replied with a smile. “How can I be sure of anything? On the other hand, I know that if we weren’t doing this, a lot of good people would already be dead—with more to die later. My sister would be a concubine for that MacPratt pig; and my clan would be all dead, to the last of us. You probably would have ended up dying in the South without ever becoming who you were meant to be.”
“A lot of people have already died. Just take the battle in Tuad Valley.”
“Okay, but they didn’t die like animals at the hand of a butcher; they died for something they believed in. That’s a big difference.”
The king looked up at the sky in thoughtful silence.
“Okay, if that’s all, I have a question for you,” I asked a little while later. “I’d like to do some fighting for the greater good, too. Do you have a spot for me in one of your raid groups?”
“Sure. I wanted to ask you to take charge of one of them as it is, actually. The job is tricky, and I can’t entrust it to anyone outside my family, but that’s just you, your sister, and me. Abigail isn’t a warrior; my advisors won’t let me do it; and that just leaves you.”
Apparently, I jinxed myself. “What do you need done?”
“I need you to get Dullakh’s axe.”
What axe?
Chapter Seven
In which the past intrudes on the present.
You unlocked Legend of Ancient Times.
This is the first in the Ruling Axe series of quests.
Task: Listen to Lossarnakh MacMagnus’s story about the ancient days of the Borderlands.
Reward:
1100 experience
The next quest in the series
Reward for beating the entire series:
8000 experience
7000 gold
Random legendary or epic item from the MacMagnus family treasury
Legendary equipment item matching your class from the MacMagnus family treasury
Title: Legendkeeper
Action: Borderland Secrets (variable, only if this action has not yet been unlocked)
Additional benefits for your clan from the possible king of the Borderlands
Note! This is a reputational quest series, meaning you unlocked it because the NPC quest-giver picked you from among the player mass. By completing it, you can improve or worsen your relationship with the NPC quest-giver.
Note! You can decline this quest series without being assessed any penalties. Still, bear in mind that doing so could lessen the faith in you held by leaders of the Borderlands who are loyal to Lossarnakh MacMagnus.
Accept?
That was odd; reputational quests usually went the other way around. I didn’t have to build up to a certain reputation level to receive it; instead, I’d unlocked it because of what I’d already done for Lossarnakh. I guess that happens, too.
I did have to wonder what those “additional benefits” were. Also, the quest description was a bit contradictory. One part said my reputation wouldn’t change if I declined it; the other said that I needed to make sure I gave it a good shot. Of course, one part was talking about failing the quest, while the other was talking about declining it. That wasn’t the most important thing, though. It looked like yet another yoke was being put on me—another one with plenty of twists and turns. I wasn’t going to turn it down; the clan heads wouldn’t have understood. They were a simple people when it came to misunderstandings, too, since they just took something heavy to the back of your head and dumped you in the next ravine over to feed the wolves.
Jokes aside, there was nothing I could do but accept the quest. Okay, my friend, let’s hear yet another family legend about a miracle weapon from the distant past.
“If we need to get it, we’ll get it,” I said to the king as I hit Accept.
“I knew you’d help,” Lossarnakh replied, clapping me on the shoulder. “There wasn’t a doubt in my mind since you know better than anyone how important it is to stick together.”
“To the VDV!” I barked at the top of my lungs. Nazir jumped up, the king looked at me sharply, and a few swallows took off screaming into the air.
“What?” A perplexed look flashed across the king’s face.
“That’s what the warriors in my lands say.”
“Daring men, that’s for sure. I can tell without even meeting them. It’s a good motto, short and sweet, like an order or the clash of a sword.”
“You’re right about them.” I laughed. “They’re the first when it comes to everything, from fighting to jumping in fountains.”
“Got it,” Lossarnakh nodded. “Really, it’s a good motto. Do you think I should start using it for my troops?”
“Just be careful using it in the East. Otherwise you’ll scare all the traders. Okay, so what about that axe? A family heirloom lost a long time ago, something we desperately need in order to get everyone in the right mood?”
Lossarnakh shook his head. “No, it never belonged to my clan. What could we do? None of the clans have ever dared take possession of the axe, even the MacFraggs, and their intelligence is only barely this side of the squirrels. It’s a weapon of the Black Rider from ancient legends, and nobody would envy whoever took it for their own. The curse it comes with would fall on both them and their clan.”
“Then, I have no idea what you’re talking about. If nobody needs it, why did you decide that we have to find it now? Even if I find it, I’ll just pick up that curse and bring it back here with me. What’s the point of that? What use do we have for a cursed weapon?”
“You aren’t a gelt,” Lossarnakh said, dead serious. “Yes, you’re the head of a clan in the Borderlands. Yes, you have a voice in our council, and you’re even the brother of my future wife. But you aren’t a gelt by blood, and the curse on Dullakh’s axe will have no power over you or your clan. That leaves you free to find it and claim it for yourself.”
That was just what I’d been dreaming of—the chance to find a cursed item and pick up a nasty debuff.
“You know, King,” I started, getting ready to try and wriggle my way out of the quest, “I’m glad you picked me for the mission, but are you sure the axe will be okay with me? No offense, but I don’t need more problems. I have enough of them as it is.”
“I’m sure.” Happily, Lossarnakh didn’t turn a suspicious, frowning eye in my direction. “The axe is a curse for the gelts and nobody else.”
“Why is this the first time anybody’s thinking about it?”
“The godi.”
“The what?”
“In the West, you call them mages or wizards; in the South, they’re high priests. We don’t have many of them, but there are some, and they call themselves the Circle
of the Enlightened,” the king said darkly before spitting over the edge of the wall.
“Anyway, Godi Talien, head of the circle, stopped by yesterday and told me that the axe had woken up after centuries spent asleep. It’s been sleeping ever since the battle on Snatt Field when our ancestors destroyed Dark Rider Dullakh and the remains of his army.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said, waving my hands in the air. “Seriously, it’s like we’re throwing puzzle pieces around here.”
“What kind of pieces?”
“A mosaic. We’re filling in sections with stones, but I still don’t see the big picture. Let’s start from the beginning. What is a Dark Rider?”
I had an unpleasant feeling that I’d already heard of him or even knew him personally. That feeling turned out to be right on the money.
Dullakh was one of the Lords of Death. I wasn’t sure which of the four he was, though, without knowing what he was called in other regions.
He appeared back in the Borderlands when Fayroll was ruled by the last Black Lord, served by the Lords of Death. Things got off to a rough start for him. The East fell when some partisans made up of the remains of the unruly Bedouins stirred up the people. They may not have even been partisans; they just didn’t recognize anyone trying to sit in a position of authority over them, and so they cut the throats of everyone they could get their hands on.
The West fought to the death, but the hordes of the Dark Lord pushed deeper and deeper into their lands. In the North, the Light races had a better time of it, but the fact that they had more land meant that their lines thinned until the enemy was nearly to the cold waves of the sea. The South simply laid down their arms at the feet of their new master, the Borderlands formally doing the same since they were then a protectorate of the bokor, as the ruler of the Southern lands was then known.
The Black Lord was too busy with world domination to worry about setting up local puppets, so he assigned that task to his closest associates, the Riders of Terror. They were sent out to inspect the new holdings and execute anyone who stood up to them. That went well throughout much of Fayroll, especially in the East, where the people were more understanding and less prone to fighting back.
But that wasn’t the case in the Borderlands. The gelts were on par with the ones I knew, and each of them spat three times in the direction of the cowardly federal center, showing what they thought of the South and the bokor. Then, they declared independence and got to work cutting down anyone coming to the Borderlands from the Black Lord.
When the Black Rider finally rode up to inspect the locale, he found nothing but the smoldering remains of several outposts with the heads of orcs and goblins stuck on poles. He headed back toward Maykong without saying a word, returning in a week with ten thousand troops.
The gelts put aside their centuries of infighting and combined, marching shoulder to shoulder into battle. Given the fact that they were all excellent warriors bereft of fear, they could have beaten the evil horde had it not been for the presence of one of the Lords of Death. The hillmen were broken, fifty of their leaders were executed on the spot immediately after the battle, and the rest of the gelt army fled into the hills and dales to begin waging guerilla warfare.
A short time later, the course of the war for Rattermark had changed, with the Black Lord suffering a defeat at the hands of the New Gods, who would later be renamed the Departed Gods. That took place somewhere near the Rina Mountains, though nobody knew exactly where. Two Lords of Death fell, with a third killed on the right bank of the Crisna by Illi Murrom, one of the great heroes of that time. The fourth, the one the gelts christened Dullakh, headed for the Borderlands to fortify it and make it an impregnable bastion of Darkness. He did have the right to do so, at least formally, as the Black Lord had given him the Borderlands in recognition of his victory over the local peoples.
But then, something happened. The gelts were aware of the turn the war had taken and were in no hurry to become a stronghold of the Great Shadow. Once again, they cobbled together a militia, which met the Black Rider and the remains of the dark army—already so demoralized—on Snatt Field. The gelts emerged victorious after a brutal battle, and the Black Lord and his power no longer stood behind the Lord of Death, leaving the latter a vulnerable, if deadly opponent.
Only one out of every five gelts walked away from the field of battle. No one in the dark army survived. That was the last reference to Dullakh’s weapon, an enormous black axe capable of sending gelts to meet the gods with a single blow. As the godi said later, it held part of Dullakh’s power, as well as, possibly, part of his black soul.
It turned out to be cursed. Murrokh MacClay, who finished off the wounded Black Rider and took his belongings, died the same night with his entire clan. When the godi investigated the pestilence, they found what had caused it, confiscated the axe, hid it from everyone, and informed the clan leaders why they’d done what they’d done.
Anyway, nobody had any designs to take the weapon for himself. The gelts were highly suspicious and leery of witchcraft.
Years passed, and the events of that time were forgotten. Only the Circle of the Enlightened remembered what had happened, and their head had come to see Lossarnakh. Hey, at least the occult is on our side—they don’t choose the wrong leader. The godi’s message had disheartened the king. Having examined the innards of a ram, the godi had found nothing good of note. To the contrary, he was sure the black axe had awoken and was thirsting for blood because its master had returned to our world.
“Wow.” I laughed. “I’ve always thought people like that were frauds, but it turns out they’re right about some things.”
“What do you mean?” Lossarnakh frowned.
I sighed. “Just that; your priest is right. They’re back in our world, all four of them. I’ve seen two of them myself. Just make sure you keep that between us. There’s no point sowing panic.”
“Are you lying?” The king grabbed my hand.
“I wish,” I replied, carefully freeing my appendage from the king’s iron grip. “Gunther, Mikh, and I saw them.”
The king smacked a fist into his other hand. “Ah, that’s very bad.”
It turned out that the godi hadn’t stopped there. He’d also told the king that if the axe found its way into Dullakh’s hand, the Borderlands would run with blood. We had to find and destroy the weapon before the Black Rider could get to it.
But even that wasn’t all. The godi was almost positive that Lossarnakh wouldn’t be the only one looking for the axe; his enemies would be, too. Their reason was different, however—they wanted to find the axe, return the Black Rider, and offer themselves as his cronies. They were looking for power, not independence for the Borderlands.
“Wow,” I said again, scratching the back of my head, “that’s no good.”
The king was in dead earnest. “Agreed. So, please, hurry. You have time, but not much. The MacPratts—since that’s definitely who the godi was talking about—will have to spend more time looking since they don’t even know where to start their search. You have the godi, and they’re willing to tell you something, but remember, that’s just a temporary advantage.”
You completed a quest: Legend of Ancient Times.
Reward:
1100 experience
Those quests were the best. You took a seat on some warm stone, listened to a scary story, and picked up a thousand experience. If only they were all like that…
One thing I didn’t know was how the MacPratts were planning to get the axe. They’re gelts, so the curse should work on them.
You unlocked Into the Godi Tent.
This is the second in the Ruling Axe series of quests.
Task: Visit Talien, the head of the Circle of the Enlightened, and talk with him.
Reward:
1100 experience
Light of the Borderlands Amulet
The next quest in the series
“So, where is that godi?” I asked the king immediately. “Is he s
till here in the castle or did he leave already?”
“He pitched his tent in a grove outside the castle,” Lossarnakh replied with a finger pointing toward the forest. “Godi don’t live with people; they’re always off by themselves. He’s waiting for you, brother, so head over there, and then come find me when you’re done. If anyone tries to keep you away, give them a cuff on the ear. There are all kinds of new advisors appearing out of the woodwork these days, and none of them are familiar. Some of them aren’t even gelts!”
“That’s how it starts when you have power,” I exhaled. “When you win, there will be even more of them. Okay, I’m off. I do have to go somewhere else first, though.”
“Hey, boys!” A small, firm hand settled on my shoulder, and chilled lips touched my cheek. The king got a kiss, as well.
“Oh, Krolina,” the king said happily, “my regards. Hagen and I are just talking over some business.”
“You didn’t think to invite me?” The girl pooched her lower lip, her face the picture of righteous indignation. “I’m not good enough for you?”
“No, no, I didn’t think that at all,” the king replied, smoothing his black hair back with one hand.
“Come on, Lane,” I laughed. “Just look at her; she can barely keep from giggling.”
The king leaped to his feet lightly. “Oh, screw you both. Although, you and the leaders are the only ones I feel like myself with. Power is a heavy thing.”
“That depends on how you use it,” I replied, my legs still swinging over the edge of the wall. “If you spend your time with aristocratic girls eating mango cream, it’s easy and fun. If you take the time to think about all the orphan boys and girls, it’s difficult, thankless work.”
“Can I have some of what you’re smoking?” Kro asked as she stared at me. “Looks like you got your hands on the good stuff.”
“What do you mean?” Lossarnakh asked.
The Right to Choose Page 12
