King of Chaos

by Dave Gross

  He shrugged. I saw mischief dancing in his golden eyes. It was a relief to see him in good humor after the trauma of Viridio's return, but not at the cost of my dignity.

  Oparal cleared her throat. "What is it you found downstairs?"

  I bowed my thanks for her returning us to the more pressing matter. "Come with me, Captain. There is something I wish to show you."

  Chapter Seven

  The Ossuary

  Oparal

  Bastiel blew and struck his hooves upon the stone floor.

  The unicorn wanted to accompany me everywhere, but he was simply too large to enter the crypt stairway. When I reached up to soothe him, he tossed his head to avoid my touch. He danced aside and pushed once more toward Radovan.

  "Take it easy, big fella." The hellspawn raised his empty hands and stepped behind a granite pillar. The muscles of his neck tensed. The torchlight reflecting in his yellow eyes gave him a wolfish cast, and I feared as much for Bastiel's safety as for his if they should fight.

  Again I felt a fluttering against the ceiling of my stomach. The sense of surrounding evil had persisted ever since we set foot in the accursed city, so strong that it made me second-guess my gut reactions.

  From our first meeting, I had detected an aura of intense wickedness from the hellspawn. Count Jeggare later persuaded me that what I sensed was not Radovan himself but the result of his ancestral connection to Hell. That revelation did little to reassure me, but later events in the City of Thorns persuaded me that these Chelaxians were both foes to demons and allies to elves. And when the veil of deception was finally lifted on our expedition, I found it was not the Chelaxians but the elves who had most deceived me.

  Perhaps Radovan was not truly evil, but the butterflies didn't know.

  "Bastiel," I called. Ignoring me, the unicorn positioned himself for a clear charge at Radovan. A glance at the count and his hirelings told me he would remain patient a little longer while I gained control of my unruly steed. "Bastiel, come to me now!"

  Before Bastiel could obey, the count's wolfhound rushed to Radovan's defense, barking furiously at the much larger unicorn. While I could not fully trust the count or his hellspawn henchman, that hound had always seemed to be a paragon of courage and loyalty. If only Bastiel could have demonstrated a fraction of the hound's obedience.

  "Bastiel!"

  At last he withdrew, but he did not come to me. Arnisant herded him like a shepherd, cutting him off each time Bastiel took a step in Radovan's direction. They ended up beside the horses who stirred, still frightened, in the eastern wing.

  "Jealous old thing," Alase clucked at Bastiel.

  "You don't know what you're talking about," I said, bristling.

  "Right." Alase looked at the hellspawn and back to me. She rolled her eyes.

  While I sensed no evil in her, nor from the night-black wolf she summoned, Alase struck me as reckless, even dangerous. From the writings of Pastor Bromon Shy, which were popular among the crusaders, I knew that these self-professed "god callers" of lost Sarkoris were simply arcane summoners who thought of their eidolons as gods. Therein lay their true danger: Superstition blinded them to the truth. They could not distinguish good from evil.

  Jelani smiled at Alase before glancing back at me to see whether I'd noticed. She saw that I had and tried to smother her smile.

  After all these weeks of forging squadron unity, we would soon be undone by gossip and misfortune. I had hoped for better from Jelani. A woman can be a perfectly rational being. Put her with another woman and remove the bonds of discipline, however, and suddenly their collective maturity drops to the level of goblins, small children, or men.

  I glanced at Count Jeggare as I went to calm Bastiel. Whatever else one might say about the count, he was almost as clever as he believed himself to be. With a gesture, he called off his hound, while I spoke quietly to the unicorn who had graced me with his service.

  "You've nothing to fear, Bastiel." He allowed me to stroke his nose as I murmured words meant only for his ears.

  Some mistake them for beasts, but unicorns understand elven and human speech perfectly. According to song, they can even speak, but I had never encountered another unicorn, and I had never heard Bastiel utter a word. Before we met, Bastiel had suffered grievous wounds at the hands of the fiends of Kyonin. Perhaps the trauma had taken away the power of speech. "I won't be going alone, and I need you here to guard our backs."

  Bastiel nosed my hand. I removed the gauntlet and let him nuzzle my palm. His body bore the faded scars of a hundred battles, but his pink lips remained perfectly unblemished. "You're the one I trust," I said. "You know I'll always come back to you."

  He raised his head to look down on me. His eyes were the perfection of blue, halfway between the color of the sky and that of the deep sea. After one last instant of fear, Bastiel's gaze dissolved into one of uncomplicated acceptance.

  Count Jeggare ordered his swordsmen to remain on watch beside my troops. The Kellids seemed reluctant to remain behind, except for the enormous Kronug, whom I'd seen rubbing a bruised lump on his shaved skull. The crypt ceilings must have been too low for the towering warrior. Despite their celebrated courage, after witnessing the magic of their employers, the Kellids must have wondered whether they were the guards or the guarded.

  Jeggare activated the light on one of his rings, but rather than lead the way he passed the light to Radovan. The hellspawn and the wolfhound descended while Jeggare waited for me to join them.

  Alase whispered to her enormous wolf and pressed her suddenly glowing hands upon its flank. "Wait here, Tonbarse."

  The gigantic beast regarded her with a paternal attitude before nodding like a human. Alase gripped his midnight fur, which glimmered here and there with a light not of our torches, but of the unseen stars. "I'll be right back," said Alase. She followed Radovan down the crypt stairs.

  To see her bid the animal farewell gave me an unwanted pang of sympathy. Wolf, hound, and unicorn, I thought. Was the presence of our inhuman companions a sign that we were meant to work together?

  Wolf, hound, unicorn, and fiend, I reminded myself. Perhaps Radovan's devil was the real sign. One of these inhuman companions could not be more unlike the others.

  Dragomir exchanged a glance with the man who claimed to be the reincarnated Porfirio, who stood awkwardly in the ill-fitting clothes taken from his own saddlebags. I did not recognize his body, but the way he held the borrowed sword and shield were familiar. Neither the butterflies nor Jelani's spells revealed deception.

  I beckoned my sergeant over and quietly asked, "What do you think? Is he really Porfirio?"

  Aprian shrugged. "It seems incredible that the hags would actually reincarnate him only to return him to us."

  Lingering by the crypt stairs, the count raised an eyebrow, reminding me not to underestimate his half-elven hearing. I sighed, exasperated as much by my mistake as by his eavesdropping. I beckoned him over, and he readily obliged.

  "I presume you have an opinion on the matter."

  "The cruelty of hags rivals that of the most depraved devils," he said. "I would not be surprised in the least to learn they did in fact slay and reincarnate him. Beyond using him to reinforce their illusion, murdering him a second time before his lover's eyes is exactly the sort of sport a coven of hags would relish."

  "His lover?"

  "Pardon me," said the count. "I thought it was obvious."

  I looked again at Porfirio and Dragomir, who remained standing close, speaking quietly. They had always seemed close, but I had taken their bond for the camaraderie of soldiers. I looked at Aprian, who nodded confirmation without any indication that I was the last to understand.

  "Oh." I recalled his words to Dragomir and felt embarrassed to have been oblivious to their unusually strong bond. I had no sense for such things, as I had proven in my last friendly hours with Ederras. Whether between men, women, or a man and a woman, the mysteries of romance held no allure for me. Beneath the shadow
s of love lay only deception, pain, and the sundering of genuine friendship.

  "Aprian, take command here."

  He nodded acknowledgment.

  I considered leaving both Porfirio and Dragomir with Aprian. Keeping them together would give them an opportunity to recover from their shock, yet I wanted another paladin with me before exploring the crypt. In Cheliax, it was considered bad for morale to put paired couples in the same unit, yet the Kyonin rangers would never separate lovers in the field. The choice was infuriating, yet in the end I chose to leave Dragomir. "Porfirio, Jelani, Urno, you're with me."

  With a borrowed sword at his side and a spare helm upon his head, Porfirio responded without hesitation. Despite his larger size and strange face, he moved more or less like the crusader I had seen dragged away by ghouls only hours earlier. He followed me down the stairs.

  Jelani illuminated her dagger with a touch and held it up as a torch. We descended the stairs, following the light of the count's magic ring. Within ten steps, the walls changed from polished granite to rough-hewn stone.

  As the count moved forward to meet Radovan and Alase, Porfirio came close and whispered, "Excuse me, Captain?"

  I nodded.

  "Is this Count Jeggare the one known as Abrogail's rat-catcher?"

  The question shocked me because I should have known the answer. At Porfirio's prompting, I remembered the name Jeggare from the Children of Westcrown's caution list. At the time I gave it little mind since the Jeggare in question operated in Egorian, not Westcrown.

  Now I realized I might have allied myself with one of the wicked empire's most notorious servants.

  In the weeks we had spent in the Fierani Forest, Count Jeggare had more often defied than confirmed my expectations of a Thrune loyalist. Furthermore, he had surprised me more than once with his knowledge of the Inheritor's teachings. At the time I thought he was revealing a secret, but I considered that he was also well versed in Abyssal and infernal lore. Perhaps his familiarity with The Acts of Iomedae was the result of his studying the enemy.

  "We will discuss it later," I whispered close to his ear. "Keep in mind that a half-elf's hearing is better than yours, and sound carries far in narrow passages."

  His eyes widened. He nodded. Again, despite his strange features, I knew those expressions for Porfirio's own.

  Jeggare's party awaited us at the base of the stairs. We joined them in a roughly circular antechamber. Despite the late summer warmth above, frost rimed the rough stone walls, and our breath formed fleeting spectres in the air. I suppressed a shudder.

  In the center of the floor was graven a cluster of bones winding out into the outer passage, which also appeared to spiral outward. I glanced up at the vaulted ceiling. Its architecture shared the stately grace of the cathedral above us, with the addition of a chandelier composed entirely of yellowed bones.

  Jelani transferred the light from her dagger to the chandelier, but could not suppress a shudder. "Is this a Sarkorian or Ustalavic crypt?"

  "An astute question," said Count Jeggare. "The founding clergy came from Odranto after an Ustalavic priestess received an unexpected inheritance when her entire family was killed. She sold the estate and used the resulting wealth to lure the most celebrated architect of Kavapesta here to build Nekrasof Tower. Unfortunately, neither the priestess's largess nor the architect endured long enough to see the cathedral to completion."

  "The stone of the walls looks like the same used in the wardstones." I traced a silvered rune upon the wall. "And these sigils appear Sarkorian."

  "Once Storasta was a melting pot of Sarkorian and foreign architecture." Jeggare indicated a prominent carving on a rose-colored stone set into the wall. "This marble marks the founding of the cathedral in 3851. When Adyson Stormont came to Storasta six years earlier, he brought civilization with him."

  Alase snorted.

  "Perhaps I should say he brought southern culture with him, and those who joined him here brought more. Before the Pharasmins erected the tower above us, this site was already dedicated to the gods. Perhaps you saw the pits outside."

  I nodded.

  "They were once standing stones."

  "That's so," said Alase. "They stood in a ring around this tower till mighty Carrock pulled them out to decorate his how."

  "His what?" said Radovan.

  "An old word for ‘hollow,'" said Jeggare. He fixed his eyes on Radovan, as if expecting a retort. When none came, Jeggare seemed both relieved and disappointed. Since his transformation, Radovan had remained distracted, even after he ceased muttering to himself.

  "Carrock? The fiend who chased us here?" said Jelani.

  "He was the hero of Storasta, once." Alase chanted, "‘Carrock enduring, valorous.'"

  Jeggare nodded agreement. "The final passages of ‘The Song of Sarkoris' describe his fall and corruption as the fiends fell upon the city."

  "With respect, Count Jeggare, while I enjoy your illuminations of history—"

  "Yes, time is a factor. Allow me to show you what we discovered before you arrived."

  He led the way down the outward-spiraling passage. To either side, the keepers of the dead had crammed bones into alcoves four ranks high. The nooks were not home to individual skeletons but instead to collections of similar bones: shins in one, thighs in another.

  "Ghastly," remarked Porfirio. This time, I did not mind his sharing the sentiment with the others, but I was surprised when Alase was the first to agree.

  "This is not right," she said. "The people of Storasta would not gather the dead in such a manner. Our shamans released the bodies of our dead into the river."

  "For the Sarkorian dead, so did the Pharasmins. The clerics of the Lady of Graves respect local customs." Jeggare pointed to rows of names engraved between the catacomb cells. "These are southern and Ustalavic names. No doubt these are their bones."

  Jelani gasped as she peered into the shadows before us.

  "Ah," said Jeggare, shining the light of his ring down the corridor. "The first tableau."

  Cemented into the wall were the skeletons of half a dozen figures, including a rearing warhorse. Their bones had been tinted to suggest clothes, armor, hair, and even blood streaming from their wounds.

  Atop the horse rode a man as tall as Kronug. Beneath his steed's hooves, a skeleton decorated in shamanic designs lay fallen on the ground, a shattered headpiece beneath his cracked skull.

  "Uloric Dziergas," Jeggare translated from the legend carved beneath the scene. "After the shamans of Storasta burned the city's bridges to protest southern trade treaties, the warlord gathered the witch-wardens of Sarkoris's other cities and overthrew them."

  "That is so," agreed Alase. "He conquered, but he did not rule. He left Taare Trathen in charge of Storasta."

  "Trathen's Gate," said Jelani.

  The count rewarded her with a bow, bringing a smile to Jelani's lips. I would have preferred to see her brush off such a courtesy with a military demeanor. "After he rebuilt the bridges, Trathen put up that wall and spent the rest of his life expanding the city's trade with southern nations."

  "Half of the rest of his life," said Alase. When Jeggare raised an eyebrow, she said, "He spent the other half in the brothels on the strip of land just west of Carrock's How. And so the Storastans called it ‘Trathen's Finger.'" She wiggled her smallest finger in front of her crotch, in case we did not understand her inference.

  At first, only Radovan chuckled. Infected by his laughter, Jelani joined in.

  Radovan and Alase were threatening to become bad influences on my sorcerer.

  "But this makes no sense," said Alase. "Ulori Dziergas didn't die here. He didn't even remain after the battle. How can these be his bones?"

  "They are not his, nor are the bones in the other tableaux those of the figures they depict. The Pharasmin sects who create such monuments believe that, after death, an individual's bones lose all spiritual association with the departed soul. Like wood, feathers, precious stones, or other be
autiful materials, they are natural material to be used in holy art."

  "And southerners think us strange," complained Alase. "You're the strange ones."

  "Sweetheart, you got no idea how right you are." Radovan gave her that crude grin he thinks is so irresistible.

  Alase grinned back at him. "Maybe I'll find out."

  "Maybe you will."

  "Let's move along," I said.

  Jeggare appeared ready to express a similar sentiment, but I noticed Jelani's gaze kept returning to Alase and Radovan. In her eyes I saw a mixture of amusement and longing. Maybe the unrestrained banter of the summoner and the scoundrel provided her a welcome release from the regimen of the past few months. Yet it was that very discipline that helped us survive the perils we faced.

  No matter, I decided. Alase and Radovan were definitely bad influences.

  We followed the spiraling catacombs outward. Between long ranks of bone depositories, we encountered several more tableaux, each more garish than the last. Without pausing, the count explained that the dyes were fresher than those we observed at the beginning, where the images were hundreds of years old. We were moving forward in time the farther we traveled along the spiral passage. At last we came to a place barely a century old. Farther along the passage, empty crypts gaped like mouths to either side. Farther still, the stone supports gave way to rotting timber frames and walls of dark clay.

  "Here," said Jeggare. He stopped before a tableau of a ceremonial procession beneath a great tower whose parapets disappeared into the clouds. Three skeletal figures walked arm-in-arm, each adorned in symbols of witchery and arcana. One bore a cudgel, one held a pointed knife, and the third walked with a staff with an elaborate, bejeweled head. Behind the trio, a pair of bearers carried away a litter. The first held his bony finger to his lips, as if slipping away from the scene of a burglary. Rather than a human occupant, the litter held stacks of books, scrolls, bundled sticks, pots, and urns—all carved of stone and dyed in startlingly bright colors. On each item I noticed a Sarkorian pictogram.

  With his long index finger, the count indicated a line of engraved text. "This tableau was created only a few years after the first opening of the Worldwound. Unfortunately, the legend was never completed. However, if you are familiar with Storastan history, it seems apparent that—"