by AC Cobble
“No, you idiot,” snapped Rew. “We—“
The golden-scaled imp was coming toward them. It looked too big to fit through the doorway, but it’d managed to get inside well enough, and without the use of his right arm, Rew didn’t like his chances outside the crypt any more than he had inside of the crypt. They had to close the doors before that thing came out. If the imp got to the door, it could stop them from sealing Calb inside. They had to close the door. Someone had to stay inside to do it.
“I’ll go,” said Rew, but even as he said it, he knew how ludicrous it sounded. If he died, no one else knew how to face the king. He might be able to break the king’s magical hold on them before he fell to the undead swarming inside, but what then? Where would the others go? What would they do? Cinda wasn’t ready to confront Vaisius Morden. None of them but Anne knew the ways of the world. They would be hunted by every power within the kingdom, and he didn’t doubt they would quickly be caught. If the king found them, he would imprison their souls. They knew too much to be safe, but they didn’t know enough to continue the fight. If Rew died in the crypt, the others would have no hope.
“I… I’m the only one who can seal the door, and I have to do it from the outside,” murmured the nameless woman. “I’m sorry, but it has to be—“
Raif put a hand on Rew’s arm. “Valedon needs you. Cinda needs you. It has to be me.”
Then, they both squealed and jumped out of the way from one of the huge copper doors. It slammed with finality, and standing in the doorway, they saw Ambrose reach for the second door. He told them, “I wish you luck, but against the king, I’d rather die in here.”
The necromancer grabbed the second door, and without word, he swung it closed. In the breath before the door slammed shut, Rew saw the imp catch the necromancer. The ranger looked away.
The nameless woman stepped forward and placed both her dark hands against the gleaming copper. She fitted her fingers into the intricately etched, whorled patterns and murmured under her breath. The copper doors began to glow, like molten metal poured from the forge, but there was no heat, just the light. The etchings in the copper writhed, crawling across the metal like snakes climbing over each other, and then she stepped away. The light faded from the doors, but they were no longer a pair. It was now one solid barrier of gleaming copper, impervious to magic.
The doors were magically sealed by the king’s own enchantments. Opening those doors took involvement from the king himself, or more force than even Calb’s imp could muster. The imp and the prince were sealed inside forever.
Rew turned, seeing all of the remaining party there and half a dozen undead beyond them. Calb’s soldiers were gone, evidently fleeing from the imp as it had approached the doorway, and they’d drawn many of the undead after them, but half a dozen foes was a lot when your opponent couldn’t be killed.
“King’s Sake,” hissed Rew. “They’ll be scattered all through the palace now.”
“Cinda!” cried Raif, shuffling in between her and the undead, raising his enchanted greatsword to defend. “Cinda, we need you to release the bindings!”
“She can’t hear you,” worried Anne, still holding the girl upright. “She’s completely unresponsive. She’s caught in the flow of the power, so much of it, so much death. She’s not going to be able to—“
“Raif, look at that,” said Rew, pointing up the stairwell they’d originally entered through.
The fighter spun, searching for the threat. Rew stepped forward and punched Cinda in the side of the head, knocking her from Anne’s arms, knocking her unconscious.
“Blessed Mother, Rew! Why did you…” began Anne before trailing off.
Around them, the undead were collapsing.
“I hoped that would work,” muttered the ranger.
“What did you do to my sister?” demanded Raif, stepping toward Rew.
“Let’s talk about it over a pitcher of ale when we get out of here, eh? These corpses aren’t a threat anymore, and Calb’s imprisoned in a copper tomb that he can’t portal out of, but there’s an army of soldiers in this palace whose last instruction was to execute us. We’ve got to slip out before things calm down, you understand? When we get to safety, you can pound me like iron on a blacksmith’s anvil, but until then, we run.”
Chapter Six
Rew reached out for his ale mug, cringed, and then switched hands and lifted the wooden tankard with his left. He tilted it awkwardly and gulped thirstily. A few more of the frothy pours and he thought he might be able to ignore the ache deep in the socket of his shoulder and the sharper pain where Calb had rammed a spear into him. The bastard.
Of course, Rew had left Calb sealed in a crypt filled with undead and not much else. The entire structure had been encased in copper, rendering Calb’s magic impotent. The prince had his imp with him, though. The imp had likely kept him alive long enough that the bindings were broken and the animated corpses collapsed, but that wouldn’t be much better. The prince would be stuck in the dark with the desiccated bodies and his conjuring. Were imps good company? Probably not. Food and water were going to be problems soon enough as well. Would hunger break Calb’s command over the imp, or was his control strong enough that they would both starve to death, sitting beside each other and a pile of broken bones?
Would Calb eat the imp?
Could you eat an imp?
If Calb’s control broke, the imp would definitely eat him, and that might be a mercy.
Rew shuddered. A chill breeze gusted off the lake, but it wasn’t the cold that affected him. He’d been sitting out on the rooftop porch of the tavern for hours, and the cold felt good. It kept him awake. Gave him something to think about other than the last few days.
He regretted that he hadn’t killed Calb himself. It would have brought him a measure of pleasure, and it was the merciful thing to do, but it hadn’t felt right. That was the core of ancient magic. It had no procedures and no rituals. It was about finding circumstances with potential and utilizing that potential to enact one’s will. It was similar to low magic, where the caster could lean on connections, and far from high magic, which involved bending specific science to specific ends.
Ancient magic was something everyone made a little use of but never understood, except for old men and women whose children and grandchildren had stopped listening to them. Sometimes, ancient magic manifested in lucky totems and omens, or other times in mantras passed down through centuries until the origination was lost. Bold proclamations that came true due to sheer force of will were the fruit of ancient magic. It was ephemeral, but when one paid attention, one could harness it to great effect.
Most hadn’t heard of ancient magic or, if they had, thought it was an ignorant explanation of low and high magic. It was the sort of thing that was discussed in the past. Always history. Of course, most people weren’t the son of the king. Most people couldn’t feel the pull of the Investiture tugging on their soul.
Rew rubbed his chest. He had felt it, but he didn’t now. Sacrificing Calb must have worked to sever King Vaisius Morden’s connections to them. Not feeling the tug was one sign. That they were alive still was the other.
The king, of all people, would recognize what had occurred inside the crypt in Jabaan. He might not fully understand the sort of threat Cinda posed to his reign, but he knew they’d raised the corpses he’d been accumulating for almost two hundred years and that they had drained much of the power which had been stored there. From that alone, the king would understand enough to see Cinda as a threat. Through Vyar Grund’s dead eyes, the king seen her with Rew and the others. He’d have all the pieces he needed now to put the puzzle together.
Rew lifted his ale mug again. Had they destroyed the crypt? Perhaps the king could force his way inside and salvage some of what was left. It was impossible to tell how much of the stored necromantic power Cinda had tapped into or how many more corpses had been held below in the depths of the place. Rew wondered if you could reuse a corpse. He’d ne
ver heard stories about such a thing, but a dead body was a dead body.
Sealing the doors might have damaged the delicate balance of power which formed the crypt. Fashioning such a device wouldn’t have been easy even for Vaisius Morden. If it was easy, someone else would have done it. But there were too many unknowns to be confident they’d destroyed a significant portion of the king’s power. Rew figured they’d done some damage, though. Vaisius Morden would be less than he was before they’d arrived in Jabaan.
Rew finished his ale.
The king had been building what was housed in that crypt for two hundred years. He’d been building it in Jabaan and every other major city in Vaeldon outside of the east. The king had access to a trove of stored power that Rew struggled to fathom. What Cinda had accomplished was a tiny fraction of what the king had planned, and she was untrained, a novice. In the hands of a two-hundred-year-old practitioner? It was strength Rew knew they would never be able to face directly. No one could.
Not head on. Not out in the open. They had to start knocking out the legs which Vaisius Morden stood upon. Take away his support. Remove the tools he used to oppress Vaeldon and the power he could summon to squash them like ants. Before Jabaan, Rew had pondered going directly to Mordenhold and casting the dice and letting the pips decide their fate. After Jabaan, he had a better plan. They would go to the other capitals, confront the princes, and do what they could to destroy the king’s crypts in the process.
Stealth warfare, a battle of attrition. With each strike they executed successfully, the king would be less. It would give them a chance. Maybe. Maybe not. Rew grunted and peered into his empty ale mug. However it went, it felt right. The ranger’s path was a circuitous one, but before they began, they needed time to recover. Even if it wasn’t a fight with the king himself, they needed to be at their best for what was ahead.
While they rested, Rew thought he would drink some more ale. He needed it to drown the sorrow of Jabaan. The legions of undead that had marched from the crypt were bad. Dried, time-ravaged corpses. The scores of fresh dead were worse. Men and women who’d been alive the day before were dead because of his actions. He tried to tell himself it was a necessary bargain. They did what they had to do to kill Calb. Perhaps. There could have been another plan, another way. Rew hadn’t known the crypt would rise, but he wouldn’t blame it on Cinda. It hadn’t been her fault. He was the leader. He’d suggested she do what she did, and he’d taken advantage of it the moment he’d known it was happening.
There’d been hundreds of dead that they’d seen. There must have been thousands of dead throughout the palace and the city that they had not. A terrible bargain.
He would get more ale soon, he decided. A lot more.
He told himself he was better than his brothers, more honorable, that he cared for people. That care cut deep now. He didn’t know if he was better than them or not. Did the hurt make him better than Valchon? Was that his quality, his sorrow?
His body hurt something fierce, a small echo of the storm that raged inside. The thought of getting up and walking to collect another mug was too much. A temporary situation, he imagined, but for now, he sat quietly on the rooftop deck of the tavern they’d settled into and looked out over the lake. The wind whipped the water against the rocky shore, stirring the fishing boats there and churning the dirty, shallow water at the foot of the village into a froth.
Had he thought about it, he might have compared the look of the water to freshly poured ale, except the water was filthy with the refuse of the village and the detritus of generations of fishermen unloading their catches along that rock-studded muddy beach. It smelled rank, man’s imposition on the wild world. When it lapped against the shore, the water hid the filth for a brief moment and brought respite, but the brief moment was all it brought.
Like ale, he might have thought, but all that crossed his mind was that he needed another. When he accidentally put his right hand on the table to push himself up to get it, a lance of pain stabbed into his shoulder, and he sat back down glumly. He would let the pain fade and then he would go.
Moments later, salvation arrived in the form of Zaine. The thief came bustling out of the interior of the tavern with a full pitcher in one hand and an empty mug in another. She sat down across from him, putting the drinks on the splintery table and pouring his mug full before topping up her own.
“Anne wouldn’t like you drinking,” remarked Rew before taking a sip of the fresh ale.
Zaine snorted. “That’s the thanks I get for bringing you a pitcher? I don’t think she’d much like you drinking either, in your condition. Or in any condition, I suppose. You’ve just worn her down over the years, while I’m only getting started.”
He chuckled and nodded in acknowledgement. “Fair enough.”
“Feeling better?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “It’ll be another week before I think we ought to move on. Before I can move on, I should say. That gives Cinda and me time to rest, and you and Raif time to train.”
“You could accept Anne’s healing.”
He shook his head.
They sat together for a spell, looking out over the massive inland lake that spanned much of the Western Province. Out beyond the haze coming off the water, perched on towering cliffs that overlooked the lake, was Jabaan. Rew had been told that on the right day, the cliffs of the far shore were visible, but he’d never sat still long enough to see them. He hoped they wouldn’t see them now, during their stay in the humble village of Faevril.
It was a comfort, not being able to see Jabaan, knowing that no one in the city could peer across the lake and see them.
Not that he thought anyone would be looking very hard. When they’d fled, they’d found passage on an open-topped fishing boat that was pushing away from the docks. Rew had thrown a handful of coin at the captain, and the gruff man had allowed them aboard with no questions and little curiosity. After all, just about everyone else in the city of Jabaan was fleeing as well.
It’d been the perfect cover. All of Jabaan’s fishing fleet had taken to the water for safety. Thousands of boats darted off in every direction, skimming across the smooth lake, overloaded with panicked passengers. Someone might guess their party had taken a boat rather than escaping on land, but not even the king would be able to sort out which boat they’d taken and where it’d gone.
They’d disembarked on a barren stretch of shore and hiked a day west to Faevril. It was small enough that Rew had been surprised it had a name, but he declared it the place they would lay low until they recovered. Until he recovered, really. Everyone else had accepted Anne’s empathy, and the empath herself, while tired, was already regaining her vigor. Even Cinda seemed to have recovered from unleashing the torrent of power she’d pulled from the well within the crypt. She was getting stronger, building a tolerance for the virulent magic she could cast. She’d changed in other ways as well. It wasn’t just Rew who noticed the ethereal green burning deep in her eyes, and he didn’t think she’d slept since the first night out of danger. The others could see those tangible differences, but she’d changed more than they realized.
He stretched and winced. Earlier that morning, Cinda had told him she was ready to travel, but he wasn’t. There were dangers on the road, and he thought it simple common sense he be able to hold his longsword before facing them. The young necromancer had glanced across the room at Anne during the conversation, but Rew hadn’t commented. Cinda didn’t say anything, either. Now she understood more about secrets and the pain one might endure to keep them. When you hurt enough, what was a little bit more?
Rew wondered whether it was habit or sensible protection of his few remaining secrets that spurred him to refuse the empath’s care. The rest of the party had already learned more about his past than he’d intended them to. That was why Zaine was there, he figured, trying to suss out more details, trying to peer into the darkness he held close, though she couldn’t have known how dark it got. He could feel her b
eside him, waiting impatiently for the right opportunity to broach the subject. He sipped his ale, and she sipped hers.
Finally, she got bored. She noisily slurped her ale and then asked, “So… Prince Calb was your brother?”
Rew grunted and did not respond.
“Does that mean, ah, that Valchon and Heindaw are your brothers as well? And that… the king is your father?”
Rew looked over the fishing boats bobbing at the foot of the village. Just ten of them, built to hold one or two men and a parcel of fish. The boats had short sails, furled in the gentle, late afternoon breeze. Their owners would be sleeping now, preparing to leave hours before dawn and be on the water when the sun rose. It was a simple life those fishermen led. They had little concern for what happened outside of the village, outside of the weather and the runs of fish that swam through the great, inland lake. Even when refugees from Jabaan began to arrive, the fishermen showed little interest. They were uninvolved and wanted to stay that way. It was safer. Like the fish they sought, they sensed danger instinctively and knew it was best to swim away. Didn’t matter what the danger was. It was safer to swim away. Ignore the hooks and the nets and stay below the surface.
“Rew…”
“Aye, he’s my father, and they are my brothers,” admitted the ranger. He cleared his throat and sat back. It felt strange to say that.
Slowly, he stretched his right arm, feeling the tension as the stitches in his back pulled. He stopped before he went too far, merely testing his range of motion and wondering how much longer it would take to fully heal.
“Why aren’t you a prince, then? If the king is your father…”
“The king has a lot of children. Dozens, I’d guess. Had dozens, I should say. Most are dead. Life in the creche can be as dangerous as life outside of the creche for the king’s children, though actively conspiring against one another while there is discouraged. Doesn’t stop some from trying, of course. That is the point, after all, to pit sibling against sibling, and may the strongest inherit the throne.”
