Claw hesitated a moment, lips squirming. “Nothing worth mentioning.”
Senka frowned at him, rubbing her round chin with dirt-creased fingers. “If I win this… it will settle the differences?”
“Yes. It will.”
“And if I lose?”
“The king threatened war. I don’t think he’d be foolish enough to send the Falcon against our walls. I know from past dealings with the king that his madness holds no bounds. He assured me that honor would be the winning faction’s prize, the loser only having to hang his head.”
Claw blew a cloud of smoke from the corner of his mouth. “She won’t lose.”
Nyset clasped her hands against her chest. “It is a fight to the death, Senka. If you change your mind—”
“I won’t, Mistress,” Senka said, voice iron.
“Good.”
“And the Shadow Princess? Do we just wait around until she decides to lay waste to the Tower?” Claw said brusquely. It was as if speaking of the North awoke the mad barbarian he’d been the day they first met in Helm’s Reach. He’d grown softer over the years, likely due to his time with her son Gaidal. He was patient now, loving even.
Nyset furrowed her brow at Claw. He was acting strange, hiding something about Bezog no doubt. “No. Of course not, Claw. We’ve increased recruiting efforts and doubled down on our apprentice training, not because the stress is enjoyable but because we need to prepare for war. But you already knew that.” She regarded him with narrowed eyes.
Claw grumbled something incomprehensible, lowering himself into his chair.
Nyset took a deep breath. “Juzo. This is going to sound crazy, but I was toying with the idea of asking you to—” Dare she suggest it? Could she be so bold? Spit it out, girl.
“To do what?” Juzo asked, drawing her eyes up from the table. Nyset saw everyone was giving her suspicious stares. “To create Blood Eaters. Would you be willing to create Blood Eaters for this war? Not many, of course, but only as many as you think you could control.” She let out a measured breath. And there it was.
A few jaws hung open, Juzo’s being one of them. He slowly rose up and started pacing around the room. “No! By the Dragon, Ny. No. You’re insane. Do you not realize this is a curse? What I have to do… you’d ask me to create a group of ravenous, insatiable killers. What happened in Shipton…” He shook his head. “The world doesn’t need more people like me.” Juzo’s lips trembled, gaze flicking from Grimbald and back to the Arch Wizard. “I can’t believe you’d ask.”
Grimbald crossed his arms, shaking his head at her.
Nyset heaved a sigh, nibbling at her lower lip. “Juzo, we all make mistakes. You must remember that in war, sacrifices must be made. I wouldn’t ask this of you if I hadn’t thought hard on it. You know this.” She sent a knowing gaze to Grimbald.
“No,” Juzo said, crossing his arms, shaking his head, and leaning against the wall. “I won’t do it. You can’t make me.”
“There are prisoners destined for the guillotine, Juzo. They can be useful before they die,” Nyset said flatly, the words coming out but feeling like someone else’s. She had to be stone, had to be harder than everyone else. She had to do what others could not.
“No,” Juzo said, temples flexing. “Not going to happen.” He uncrossed his arms and walked half-way around the table toward her, the bottom of his coat fluttering. He stopped and pointed at her with his index finger. “You know my struggles, and still you ask?” His expression twisted in pain, scarlet eye narrowing. “You’ve changed, Ny. And I fear for the worse.” He strode to the double-doors and jerked them open with a creak before sweeping into the hallway.
“Juzo!” Nyset called after him, but his only response was the sound of his boots scraping down the stairs.
“I must side with your friend,” Thalia said, voice tranquil. “Uncontrolled Blood Eaters running loose about the realm is a risk we cannot afford to take. Their growth can become problematic. Unless there was an alternative method you had in mind for managing them, I can’t say I think this idea is sound.”
Grimbald had ceased in his feasting, and leaned back in his chair, staring at her. He cleared his throat. “Ny, I know you only meant well, but this is a bad idea. What more can we do?” he asked with upturned palms.
“I don’t know,” she said with defeat, leaning over the table. “We’ve reinforced our defenses, fortified the walls. We stay vigilant. Dividing our forces and leaving our respective strongholds would be foolhardy. Can’t predict where she’ll strike… nor when.” Nods and mutters of agreement went around the table. “Whoever is attacked first must help the other. I’ve tried to reach the king about this on countless occasions, but he won’t hear my concerns. I’ve been tempted to weave a portal to his damned audience chamber, but I don’t think my unannounced visit would help our tenuous relationship.”
“Agreed,” Claw said. “But what if Midgaard is the first to be attacked? Then what? Do we provide aid?”
“Of course,” she breathed. “We must.”
Thalia’s lips peeled back to show her teeth. “The Great Tree will not be providing aid in this case. Cowards deserve death. The king hid in his castle while we bled upon the Tower’s bridge. The king and his people can bleed on their own.”
Nyset could only nod, perfectly understanding Thalia’s frustration with the kingdom. She glanced back at the opened doors, wondering if she should’ve said something different to Juzo. She was a fool to have suggested Blood Eaters. What was she thinking? She was tired, so terribly tired of this war.
Thalia rose to her feet, the feathers on her headdress shifting. She raised two fingers to press her lower lip. “Did you call this meeting to convince the Great Tree to aid Midgaard?”
Nyset raised an eyebrow at Thalia. “No, Thalia. Well, there were many reasons—”
“It would be logical, wouldn’t it?” Thalia said over her. Claw groaned in protest. “For the Great Tree to assist Midgaard. We’re closest. And if they needed aid, who else better to help?”
“I honestly hadn’t thought of that, Thalia,” Nyset said. “But yes, that would seem the right course.”
Thalia scoffed with a thin scowl. “For the Great Tree, this meeting has come to an end. Midgaard deserves whatever fate befalls it.” Thalia’s advisors rose from their seats and deeply bowed, eyes set on Nyset. They followed Thalia as she marched from the room, a triumvirate of swaying headdresses.
Once they’d departed, Nyset slumped into her chair. She closed her eyes and rubbed them with her palms. “Diplomacy is always a joy,” she muttered.
“Nothing I would’ve done differently, Mistress. I’ve found Treefolk to be a sensitive lot,” Claw gruffed.
“Everyone is sensitive to you,” she said to him with a smirk. “I need to speak to Juzo. You can all go.”
“You’re right to be angry. I’m sorry, Juzo, I’m not sure why I asked that of you.” Nyset found him waiting on a landing a story below the meeting chamber, peering out at the Far Sea with an arm draped against the window’s edge.
“Yeah.” He nodded, lips pressed into a line. The wind played at his hair.
Nyset frowned as she descended the last few steps to join him at the window, turned and faced his side. “You don’t have to go. You should stay here a while. I won’t ask anything of you, I promise.”
He pulled his gaze from the glimmer of the sea to regard her. A half smile tugged on his cheeks. “I’m sorry too. I overreacted. The isolation… sometimes I forget how to relate to people,” he said with a wry snicker.
“Believe me when I tell you that I wholly understand.”
“I know.” He nodded. “Isa tells me there are a few good taverns in New Breden. I think I’ll spend some time in the city tomorrow, see how it’s developed.”
“Good.” She smiled. “I’m glad you’re here. And I’m sure Senka would like your support for the duel, given all you’ve been through together.”
Juzo sighed. “Wouldn’t miss it.”
NINE
Villains
“Heroes are forgotten, and villains remembered. Villains are not always hideous; some even have pretty faces.” - The Diaries of Nyset Camfield
Terar hobbled out of his chair with a groan, his upper back producing a series of pops and clicks followed by spikes of pain as he forced himself to stand upright. He discovered a moment ago that a few hunters he’d sent westward had fallen, their essences gone from this realm and moved onto the Shadow Realm. His hunters were the men he found most fit for leaving the Bone Tower, those that would remain loyal outside of the sphere of his influence. He felt no loss at their demise but wondered if they’d found their mark. He was unable to find them while scrying for their whereabouts.
Upon his workbench in his laboratory was a porcelain white bowl filled to the brim with blood, now starting to congeal at the edges. He didn’t care that the blood came from a dedicated Purist who’d slit his own throat for the cause. He only cared that there was blood when he demanded it. He’d used it for the past hour to glimpse through the eyes of his fifty or so hunters. When it came to the last three he’d sent toward Breden, the scrying spell revealed nothing, which could only mean they were dead or the spell was somehow blocked.
His laboratory was a cramped space a floor below the topmost floor of the Bone Tower. It overflowed with shelves and tables stuffed with components needed for spells. To the uneducated eye, it would appear a disorganized mess, but each set of items were arranged by their necessity. A withered Death Spawn hand sat beside a vial of wizard’s blood for a curse. A jar of pickled eyes lay adjacent to a stack of cat skins. The room was filled with an aroma of a dozen burning oils, combining into a mixture that carried a sense of welcome. He had always loved his laboratory.
He limped up the stairs to the topmost level, his cobra staff dragging on every step. He lurched over to the balcony’s edge, placing his hand on the rail and peering down at the men milling about his great construction. “Purists,” he spat, voice edged with hate. All men needed some cause to follow. Give them enough story and lore around it, and they obey like children, he thought. Those who’d lost their family during the Shadow War were the easiest to recruit, their hearts still fresh from Asebor’s wounds. Men were always the same, searching for tribes to ally with, never able to take the reins on their galloping minds. It was too easy.
A ring of twenty torches were driven into the ground below. Within it, hundreds of men and woman gathered for tonight’s fighting. The thumping of a pair of men hurling their bones into each other’s bodies carried up the Tower’s twisting walls, caught between whoops and cackles. Farther beyond the ring of fire, hundreds more were nude, sprawled upon the earth and seeking pleasure in each other’s craters. Their moans and screams of ecstasy were a backdrop to the fighting, a wall of endless sound.
His Purists were free to let their appetites roam wild. Nothing was forbidden. He gave men what they’d always wanted: freedom to safely explore those dark recess suppressed by the weight of civility. He gave them freedom, and in turn, they gave him unrelenting loyalty.
Something ancient awoke in the back of his mind. It was like the sudden awareness of a mosquito buzzing in the dark before you settled into sleep. You knew it was there, but you couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it at the moment. That mosquito had a name: Law. It seemed his ability to detect his traitorous pet had returned.
“Law, law, law…when will you return to my fold?” Terar asked the night sky, a shimmering blanket of spilled diamonds. He scoffed, “The bearer of Blackout. You strengthen yourself with the blood of men, and with that strength, I again, it seems, feel you,” he drawled to himself. He gazed down at his remaining arm, etched with the demon Prodal’s strange branding.
He knew it was a mistake to bargain with Prodal. Law, the name he used to refer to the man who once called himself Juzo, had cut him with Blackout. If it weren’t for Prodal, he might’ve still been trapped in that blade’s grim world. Prodal saved him, offered him a way out for the price of eternity. It was a better life, wasn’t it? Still alive, but always a slave. First a slave to Asebor, now a slave to Prodal. “Masters, always masters,” he muttered, scarred face launching into a flurry of violent twitches. He raised his hand to it, massaging the muscles on his cheeks until the twitching relented.
Terar no longer wore his mask, no longer cared who saw his face. Asebor burned him once when he’d opposed his command. It was a mistake he’d only made once. His burns covered the majority of his face, the skin spotted and puckered from head to throat. The pigment was dimmed to a ghastly collage of pinks and reds.
He’d learned to like fire again. He felt, in a way, that he had been reborn in it, not unlike perhaps the Phoenix god. He learned a great lesson from Asebor’s torture. There was no pain he could not survive and endure. There was no hindrance he could not overcome. He had an indomitable will, a tireless desire to succeed. There was no distraction that could take him off course. That was why, he reasoned, he was the last remaining member of Asebor’s Wretched, despite the high cost.
If he ever hoped to find the Shadow Princess again and prove his loyalty, he’d need a bigger army. The first problem to be solved was how to absolve himself of his debt to this strange creature that seemed to have an ability to transcend time. How did Prodal do it?
As far as Terar knew, he was the oldest living Necromancer, a wizard of the Old Magic. His source of strength was the corrupted hearts of all men. He harnessed the dark energy of their desire to rape, pillage, and murder. The more they let their souls run ragged with lust and rage, the stronger he grew. As their numbers increased, so did his strength. Once, he was granted some of the Shadow God’s power, but that vanished when she fell to the Shadow Slayer, Walter Glade.
Terar caught whispers in his travels of Prodal’s story told time and time again by the Northern barbarians but dismissed them as one of their many false gods, spread about their campfires. He’d only found one of their stories to be true besides this one. Their Oracles appeared to have an ability to predict future events with a measure of intriguing accuracy. Each Northern village possessed an Oracle, and always, it was a woman. His curiosity had been piqued, but other matters were always at hand.
“Lovely night,” a silken male voice said from behind, shattering his reverie.
Terar’s hand slipped from the edge, stomach thumping against the heavy wood railing and pressing a gust of air from his chest. “Who… dares!” he growled, dragging himself up and snatching his staff. He drew on that black energy coursing out from the hearts of his men, sucking it in through his nose like devil’s smoke, preparing to cast the spell One Thousand Spines. The eyes of the snake head at the top of his staff glowed like coals. He turned to face the voice, staff half-raised to release the spell. “Ipstu—” his voice froze in his throat before he could complete the utterance to finish the spell.
Prodal leaned against the balcony, arms crossed as he bobbed his eyebrows. “That wasn’t intended for me, was it?” His head was hairless, eyes shimmering like pools of oil from black to violet and emerald. He wore simple brown leathers from top to bottom, his feet bare, hands covered in fingerless gloves. His feet were no mortal’s. They were scaled like a lizard’s with a twin pair of toes at the front and a third thicker toe at the heel, both tipped with obsidian talons. Hanging from his hips were a few pouches, and around his neck, a series of dessicated finger bones.
Terar’s hand was wrenched open, bladed fingers splayed open by an unknown force, and the staff clattered to the floorboards.
“Be a good boy,” Prodal said, clapping his hands together and walking toward Terar, toenails clacking on the wood.
The force pressing against his throat relented, allowing him to speak. “What do you want?” he snarled. “Have I not complied with your demands?”
“You need to build faster,” Prodal said, strolling around the balcony. “What you have here will not be enough. You’ve done well by obeying the king’s
wishes. This little… rogue army will not be enough against the Tower. I’ll need something more, something greater.” Prodal sucked his teeth, placing his back to Terar to peer over the balcony.
Terar had no qualms about Prodal’s demand to build an army to fight the Silver Tower. The Shadow Princess would need it. He could crush two men with one stone. He would simply hand the Purists to her once she’d made herself known to him, damn Prodal’s consequences.
“The king is letting us grow unhindered. If we grow too fast, we’ll arouse Tower suspicion. As it stands, I think it likely the Arch Wizard watches us,” Terar said, feeling himself shrinking under this creature’s presence.
“Yes, perhaps you’re right,” Prodal said, turning to face him, regarding him like a maggot to be crushed under his boots. Did he know his intentions? No, he couldn’t read his mind, could he? He’d placed a spell on his thoughts to block mind reading just to be sure.
“I have influence on the king. His daughter came to visit before the son. She whispers our needs in his senile ear. She tells me the son has the Shadow’s touch.” It was another wrinkle in his plans. He didn’t know the implications of Greyson’s infection.
“I know.” Prodal smiled, mouth lined in shark’s teeth and inky shadows. “He may be enough if he isn’t slaughtered before he can accommodate the host. There’s been an uprising in Midgaard. Many of the Falcon know about you, how you’ve welcomed their deserters. Purists, as you call them. I like the name. No, you can’t recruit any faster, or it’ll all crumble. What to do?” He tapped his fingers to his square chin.
“I… could turn more to Blood Eaters, though they become difficult to control even at twenty,” Terar offered. Tuning into them sent an overwhelming whirlwind of thoughts crashing through his mind. He forced himself back to the present, an endless tide of thoughts and needs pressed back to the recesses of his mind.
The Shadow Age (The Age of Dawn Book 7) Page 15
