Karolina allowed them to blind her with a hood and was led through a maze of corridors. The smells of the surroundings changed so many times that she could not tell whether she was in a sewer or a dirty latrine. The smell of candles and then that of a torch being extinguished flooded her senses. She heard a chair sliding on a stone floor, then she was gently seated on it. The hood was taken off and she was able to look around.
She was sitting on a very ancient wooden chair surrounded by shadows. She could not see the walls or the edges of the room but, judging by the echo of many people whispering and footsteps moving around her, she understood this was a small room—no more than a few strides across.
The table beside her was simple and years of neglect were visible in its decayed surface. At the center was a single candle that barely illuminated the room.
From the shadows came a man she had never seen before who sat down in front of her on the opposite side of the table. He smiled at her and folded his arms.
“I apologize for our hospitality. It is limited and in a very unexpected place, but this is the way it has to be.”
The voice, she realized, came from the shadows. The man in front of her did not speak.
“The man in front of you is one of my loyal thieves. He’s in front of you for the simple reason that my guests feel more comfortable when they have a face to look at while I talk to them from the shadows. You must understand that I’m here beyond the edge of the light so that nobody sees my face and identifies me. These are unsafe times full of betrayal and evil intentions, and we can’t afford to lower our guard. You’ve seen what’s happened to us as a result of having been over-trustful.”
“Where are we?” was all Karolina could say.
“That’s irrelevant,” the Baron explained. “It’s somewhere we’ll never visit again and we’re only using it today for this meeting.
“We’ve lost the palace and a number of our allies are dead, buried by an intelligent enemy who used our weaknesses in his favor. The Mandrake Empire has always been strong because it has a great many soldiers. The problem is that, as it grew, the process of checking identities was replaced by the desire to fill suits of armor with bodies able to wield a weapon as long as it enlarged our army. Now, we don’t even know who our soldiers are because we never got to know them. We always knew this was a weak point. By ‘we’, I mean the Dungeon of Thieves. Part of our plan was to bring all the traitors, spies, and assassins out into the open, and slowly, we were doing just that. But we were over-confident. We didn’t act with the haste the problem required.
“Mórgomiel has sent thousands of spies to infiltrate the palace. The Dungeon has also been infiltrated by them. Not only do they have talent, but they also wield the power of the Black Arts. They tried to hunt me down, but thanks to my excellent thieves, they didn’t succeed. Although we lost a number of our people in our efforts to escape. Many of our cousins are now dead. And now the regent who commands the Mandrake Empire has been imprisoned and an impostor was created so accurately that if they were to stand side by side, you wouldn’t be able to say which was which.
“Leandro the Impostor has applied the ancient but effective strategy of divide and conquer. With his entry, he managed to put an end to the Interworld Committee, imprison Gáramond the Philosopher, insult his most powerful allies, and replace the king’s garrison with assassins.”
Karolina shuddered. She could not believe it.
“Leandro the Impostor has taken it upon himself to call the Council of Mages to life. He’s sent messenger birds to every city of the Empire to call them to the battlefield as soon as possible. This way, he’ll manage to summon all the soldiers of the largest houses in the most important cities together with the Imperial Army, and he’ll march with the biggest army the Empire has ever seen.”
“We must stop him!” Karolina cried, her hands clenched. She was furious.
“It’s not that simple. If we murder Leandro the Impostor, which would be quite difficult as he’s constantly surrounded by his assassins and the Black Arts, we might start a civil war and break the Empire into fragments before the war with Mórgomiel begins.”
“Then, we’re lost.”
“Not necessarily. It’s our firm belief in the Dungeon of Thieves, and it’s a lesson that every thief learns sooner or later, that every adverse situation has some aspect that can be used in our favor.”
“There’s nothing positive in this, Baron,” Karolina interrupted. “My husband is in a miserable dungeon and the Impostor is preparing to march on the Portal of the Worlds.”
“And what do you think he’s going to do with the armies there?”
Karolina had not thought about this, but the moment she gave it two seconds of consideration it all became clear. “It’s a trap! He’s leading the armies to destruction. Concentrating them in the one spot where Mórgomiel can easily find them!”
“Exactly. It’s an enviable strategy. I give due credit to the evil ones who thought out this attack because it’s been very effective. The Empire’s been upside down since Mórgomiel’s attack, and for Leandro the Impostor, it’ll be easy to convince them that marching is the right thing to do. When you have a group of frightened people, doing something violent is sometimes the most logical solution. So the people won’t oppose him. What’s more, plenty of them are celebrating because Háztatlon seems, at last, to have its fists at the ready. The people want revenge. They want to see bloodshed.”
“And what’s the solution?” Karolina asked resignedly.
“We’re coming to that. Listen, Leandro the Impostor has made himself some enemies. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? Before Othus and Düll Donn declare war against Leandro the Impostor, we need to show them that evil has played a trick on them.”
“And how on earth do you plan to do that?”
“First we have to free the prisoners. Leandro, the real Leandro, must be freed from the dungeon as soon as possible and taken away from that place with all its danger. Secondly, we have to rescue the philosopher. With the two of them, we can begin to recruit for our army under the impostor’s very nose. We’ll get all the thieves together with some allies I have in the north and south, as well as the armies of Düll Don and Othus.”
Karolina began to laugh wildly. “You can’t be saying you mean to set yourself up against the Mandrakian army! You’ll be crushed. Mandrake has no rival.” Her hysterical laughter died out when the Baron spoke again.
“The Mandrakian Army is lost. At least, that’s the way I see it. They’ll march and be destroyed in the trap Leandro the Impostor is going to set for them.”
“Unless,” Karolina said. “We set a trap for his trap.”
She could not see the Baron’s smile, but she felt it. From the shadows came the reply. “I knew that bringing you here was no mistake. It’s not just a coincidence that you’re Leandro Deathslayer’s wife. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Karolina said, “I think the trap involves assembling the army in front of or around the Portal of the Worlds, where Mórgomiel’s sending his armies, and he’ll launch a surprise attack on Leandro the Impostor from whichever flank. Or, perhaps his legions will come out of the Portal itself to flood the area.
“If we allow the enemy to believe we’ve fallen into their trap, then they’ll start the attack. But suppose during the battle, several armies come to the rescue? During that period of confusion, where the Impostor wouldn’t be expecting to be caught, we kill him and replace the impostor with the real Leandro. When the real one is in the general’s post, he’ll already have the army under his command and he’ll be able to lead the defense. So that what started as a trap would turn into an advantage for us.”
Karolina’s eyes were lost in the infinite as she imagined the sequence of events.
“Hah! It’s a plan that only the wife of the most respected strategist in the realm could come up with! Now you say it, it sounds so obvious, so simple! It’s absolutely brilliant. All right then, on with
the mission to rescue Leandro and the philosopher. Afterward, let’s hope we have enough time to convince Othus and Düll Donn to join our side. Then we’ll go on to set a trap for the trap.”
“All right. And what do I do?”
A hood fell over Karolina’s head. She felt that the presence of the Baron had gone the moment two strong arms led her away in a hurry along a labyrinth of corridors. Before she could say a word, she was already back in the room where she had left her sons with Atha and Nana.
“We’re going to rescue Leandro,” was all she could say when they took the hood off, her eyes brimming with tears.
Chapter XLI — An Evil Premonition
The weeks went by like liquid flowing between the hands, and for an old man like Ulfbar Üdessa, fatigue was catching up just as quickly. At nearly eighty, he was advanced in age. But since Strangelus’ death, Ulfbar had known that his days were numbered. Something in the old mage had been extinguished with the death of the most powerful spellcaster of all Mandrake.
For Ulfbar, reaching the Old World had been an honor, a surprise, and a challenge. The honor of visiting the origins of the Mandrake Empire was the main reason why he had accepted the challenge of banishing the demons from old Flamonia. Visiting the ruins of that great civilization, seeing its architecture and religious sanctuaries, appealed to him. Perhaps it would give him more information about who the Mandrakians were and how they had come to be who they were.
He was still wondering why it had never occurred to them to make the journey across the Early Sea to reconquer Flamonia and its ruins. Why had they not done it? Perhaps because they had been involved in a lengthy war with the neighboring nations, particularly Némaldon. But now that there was a peaceful union between the nations, it was their allies who had provided the ships to carry out that migration.
The journey across the Early Sea to the other side of the world, led by Captain Ságamas (an old man with a wooden leg, thick white beard, an adventurous spirit, and a talkative tongue) had been a long and unpleasant experience. Most of the Mandrakians were not used to the heavy storms and the ups and downs of the open sea, still less to the sea creatures that, on two occasions, had sunk a ship and killed their crews.
No sooner had they set foot on solid ground than the problems had begun. The worst of these was setting up camp since the place was bewitched and full of evil spirits. Several men went crazy, another group panicked, and others met a terrible death when wraiths enveloped them in their lethal embrace.
Ulfbar did not know why a cloud in the shape of a spiral was floating above the ruins of Flamonia. He studied it for a whole day until he came to understand that it was the remnant of a powerful spell. Hence, the first step was to dissolve the cloud. When he had done this, the light of the sun shone brightly as never before. When he deactivated the cloud, a sea of demons flocked from their shelters as if infuriated by its dissolution. Since that moment, the mage had created more spells than he had ever done before, destroying demons day and night without rest. His special knowledge of magic had never been so fruitful.
His staff was scorched from overuse and his energies were sucked out to the point where he thought his death must be imminent. When they were at the edge of the lost city, the decision to advance on Flamonia was taken without any sensible strategy. On three occasions, arcane mechanisms were triggered.
On one of them, three Mílikin activated a trap which set off a terrible spell. This turned them into walking dead so they had to be eliminated at once.
On another, a Dakatak who was foolish enough to open a tomb was swallowed by a walking corpse and died.
On the last, they set foot on broken land which collapsed into an underground cavern. Thirty Mílikin and three Dakatak fell into it and were consumed by a gigantic and horrifying worm, a relic of the demons that had been left dormant after the conquest of Flamonia during the War of One Lament. The horrible worm was eliminated efficiently and its flesh was used to feed the now-starving army of conquistadors. The Mílikin ate the worm-meat without any problem. The Dakatak, on the other hand, fed almost exclusively on the fungi created in their caverns, and given the lack of that food, they had no choice but to eat the meat, no matter how disgusting it was.
After those unfortunate incidents, there were no more major surprises. The insects, impressive soldiers who were obedient and unscrupulous, gave the finishing touches to the process of reconquest. House by house, building by building, they cleared the ruins of any living creature of flesh and blood—tangible demons, evil men, and other beasts that had taken shelter in that product of the destruction caused more than four centuries earlier.
When the Dakatak had cleaned out the ruined city, the Mílikin joined in the task of leveling buildings, houses, and all the structures of Flamonia, a business that took over a week. But with a great deal of brute force, the process of clearing the debris went quickly. Fire, heavy hammers, rocks, spades, picks, and a little magic were enough to reduce the ruins of Flamonia to gravel, which was easier to clean.
Ulfbar was tired to death. He was so thin, his flesh so eaten away, that he looked like an aged patient in a hospice. His beard could not have been whiter and his eyes had sunk far back into his skull. But the old man, even though Meromérila begged him to stop and eat something to restore his strength, would not listen. It seemed that he wanted to leave his mark on the world, just as Strangelus had done, and at the rate, he was going his name would no doubt be engraved in the history books as that remarkable mage who had helped reconquer Flamonia.
Meromérila kept actively involved in the cleaning up of Flamonia. Between the periods of fighting, destruction, and reconstruction, the queen would sing in her sonorous voice and that voice became a melody that soothed her subjects and protected them from the poison of evil. The insects, accustomed to living underground, soon found many secret entrances to buried tunnels which at times emitted a green light.
It was thanks to Ulfbar that no living being went into the tunnels. The Dakatak were eager to go down there to create a shelter and grow food, but the mage explained that the place was bedeviled. Now they knew this was Kanumorsus, the structure Mórgomiel himself had created thousands of years earlier to make himself a world of portals to transport his legions. Ulfbar sealed these tunnels as best he could with debris and enormously powerful spells. What the Gardakians least wanted was for a legion to creep in through the tunnels to invade them once they had established their new empire.
After a couple of weeks in Flamonia, the ancient city had been leveled and the ruins almost fully cleared. Ulfbar Üdessa was watching from his seat in his tent. The time had come to begin the business of creation. Destruction and creation. The symbiosis between the forces of the cosmos was underway here.
The Dakatak created a subterranean duct in which they stuck their saliva on the walls, taking care to avoid any connection with the tunnels of Kanumorsus. From this substance, as the days went by, a fungus sprouted that looked like the old mold that grows on damp, forgotten logs. With that mold, the insects fed themselves, so the mage learned from the queen. And with the mold, the insects were able to generate with their saliva glands a substance like rubber which was a kind of resin. This resin accumulated in their mouths, then the Dakatak removed it with their forelegs. When fresh from their salivary glands, it was soft and could be molded, but once dry, it was harder than iron. It was dark amber and slightly translucent so that the sunlight was visible through it.
The insects molded this resin easily, using their saliva to keep it moist. Standing on their lower legs and using their upper limbs and those of their torsos, they molded this substance as an artist molds clay.
The first step toward rebuilding the palace that the Gardakians would use as a shelter was to make a vast platform of that liquid so that it would crystallize, then to make the great columns and beams that would support the structure of the growing palace. Day and night, the insects labored unceasingly.
Ulfbar could not tell whether they we
re working gladly or grudgingly, since those triangular heads with their two powerful jaws, six eyes, and two antennae were impossible to read. But Meromérila assured him that the creatures were happy, particularly when they were working in contracted service and not as forced labor. Meromérila’s poetic chanting helped the workers to work more efficiently. The Mílikin helped in their own way, especially by planting new trees around the periphery and gathering timber for future use. As far as the construction of the palace was concerned, there was little the Mílikin could do but watch.
The process of creating a palace out of resins was a long one and would not be finished for several months. Seeing it grow day by day was an impressive sight which Ulfbar would never forget. In fact, he did not understand how the insects had been dominated by the Mílikin, as they looked far stronger and more dedicated than their old enslavers. They could easily have been the dominant species on their home planet of Degoflórefor.
On one of the many evenings when they talked and exchanged details of their culture, the Queen of Gardak told the mage that it was very easy to dominate the insects, particularly as they depended entirely on their queen, a gigantic pupa that could be easily tortured. But for this, the pupa must be kidnapped by distracting the soldiers, and then, once they had the queen imprisoned, you could afford the luxury of killing her offspring, since she would lay more eggs. The new eggs, she explained, would hatch into new workers and soldiers, and these would be loyal and obedient to their new master, the queen’s captor. Meromérila explained that the only female of the Dakatak was the queen. The rest, workers and soldiers, were male.
This information about the differences between the Mílikin and the Dakatak kept Ulfbar entertained. The Mílikin were fertile in the same manner as humans and children were born of any couple who wished to unite.
It was one of those many afternoons when the powerful mage was watching the Dakatak building the palace with their resins, that he felt a change in the direction of the wind. Rarely had he felt anything like this in his long life and almost always it had coincided with the creation of evil spells using the Black Arts.
Necromancer’s Sorrow: (Series Finale) Page 34
