by AC Cobble
Rew couldn’t guess. Heindaw, though the youngest, was the deepest thinker of the princes. Even as a child, he’d guessed Rew would abdicate, and Heindaw had already been preparing. The prince hadn’t just accepted the idea of a struggle against his older brothers, he’d wanted it. He’d grown up knowing they were bigger, stronger, and more powerful with magic, but he believed that he was more cunning. More so than any of the others, Heindaw would be ready for this moment.
But whatever way the prince came, Heindaw would come after them. Even if he did know of the power within the crypt, he wouldn’t allow Rew and Cinda to stroll about his city unchallenged. He would have been envisioning this confrontation since they had faced Calb, if not long before. If anyone had suspected Rew would reemerge and challenge his brothers, it would’ve been Heindaw.
But thanks to Cinda’s boldness, they weren’t walking into his traps. The prince would have to adjust. That gave them an hour to set their own trap. They just had to come up with one, first.
Chapter Twenty
They arrived at the vast, imposing structure of the temple for the Cursed Father. It was a bleak place and not only because it was purported to be a temple for the god of death. The building had been designed to keep people away, and people did stay away unless they absolutely had to be there. The grim facade of the temple shouted the message clearer than words. Carved from the same dark granite as the rest of Iyre, it was festooned with tableaus of death.
Frescos depicted murders, executions, suffering from illness, accidents, and dozens more horrific scenes of the citizens of Iyre meeting their ends. Just looking at the place sent a chill down Rew’s spine, which only got worse when he considered the size of the temple. It had the breadth of one of the princes’ palaces, but he knew the living occupants only numbered several score in the priesthood. The rest of the building was dedicated to the dead.
Two massive steel doors, striated with patterns of ancient rust, barred the entrance. The doors had stood there for centuries and had overseen the gateway between one world and the next. The rust, spilling down in broad streaks, gave anyone approaching an uncomfortable reminder of blood pouring from a wound. It might not have been intentional when they first hung the doors, but Rew imagined the priests of the Cursed Father enjoyed the effect now.
He put a shoulder against one of the huge doors and shoved. The door swung open easily on silent hinges. Rew stumbled inside. He coughed and muttered to the others, “I, ah, I thought that was going to be a lot harder than it was. Those are big doors.”
Cinda stepped around him. “The front is meant to turn away the casual passerby, but the gates to death are always open to those who seek it.”
Rew wasn’t sure what she meant by that. He didn’t think she was being literal. He was pretty sure. He shivered and followed Cinda inside.
The foyer of the temple was a long, broad corridor that extended to the height of the building, though the ceiling high above was lost in gloom and shadow. Huge, polished granite columns rose into that murk and marched down the length of the room to where a simple, giant golden block sat bathed in the low light of a pair of torches. The torches and the light from the open door were the only illumination in the cavernous room. Only in this place could such a wealth of gold be left unattended.
Rew gripped his longsword. Gold. That was just a show. Down below, within the crypt, the true altar of the Cursed Father was made of copper, and it was used to collect and trap the souls of the departed.
The expansive foyer was the receiving hall where family and friends would make a pilgrimage, carrying the body of their lost loved one. It was the only room in the temple any outsiders would see. In a ritual unique to Iyre, the families of the departed would place the body upon the golden block, an altar to the Cursed Father they assumed, where the priests would take over and anoint the body with oil, wrap it with fine linens or silks if the family could afford them, and then inter the body in the crypts. It was a solemn place, quiet, as whatever words that would be said over the dead were said before arriving at the temple. The temple was not a place for remembering what was lost, but for forgetting.
The Cursed Father took all comers into his embrace, but the priests did not describe a kind god. They described a ravenous hunger which could never be sated. In that respect, the public face of the Cursed Father and Vaisius Morden were one and the same.
The room appeared empty, which was typical. When one had business in the temple, you did it quickly, and then you left. The Cursed Father was meant to be a god you rued the day you ever saw, and you could either make your peace with that or not. The god did not care either way.
Rew snorted.
The god.
His father. Vaisius Morden. The king. For centuries, the king’s priests had been telling a lie. Taking the dead of Iyre, and all of Vaeldon, promising the stillness of the grave, but that was not what happened. They took the power from the passing souls and stored the bodies for when they would be needed again.
“This place oozes power,” said Cinda, shivering, “but it’s like I’m aware of it being there through thick glass. I can see it, get a sense of it, but I can’t touch it. It’s… There is more strength here than in Jabaan. It’s older, I guess, but unlike in Jabaan, I can’t tap into this power. I’m being held from it, somehow. I don’t know. I wish I understood more about this.”
“I suppose it wasn’t going to be easy,” remarked Rew. “If any necromancer could walk in and drink the reservoir the king has collected, then I guess they would have. Your blood, do you think that is the key? There are no crypts like this in the Eastern Territory. It has to be because the king knows your line is there, watching over the barrowlands.”
“Maybe,” responded Cinda, her eyes closed, her lips moving even when she was not speaking. “Maybe my blood is the key, but I don’t know where to look for the lock.”
“If we can find—“ began Rew.
The clank and scrape of men in armor echoed through the huge room, and Rew cut off as a dozen figures stepped out into the center of the space in between the party and the altar. They were barely lit from behind by the torches. The spear of fading daylight from the open door fell short of their feet. All Rew could see was the gleam of their armor and the weapons they held in their hands.
He called loudly, too loudly as his voice bounced around the room. “We’re not here to fight.”
The armed men advanced slowly, taking their time and raising their weapons. Evidently, they were there to fight. Rew frowned. They were slow, stately. Unhurried by time.
“The Sons of the Father?”
The footsteps slowed, but they did not stop.
“Do you know… ah, a woman with no name?”
The footsteps slowed again, but the Sons of the Father kept coming.
“She wore armor like yours. Bronze chain and breastplates, tailored specially for her. It was enchanted. She claimed she was—“
“You speak of Jacquiss,” boomed a throaty voice that Rew thought came from a man in the center of the approaching group. “She is dead.”
Rew shaking his head, trying to remain calm, kept his hands by his side. If these people had been lied to by someone, then they were not his fight. At least, they wouldn’t be his fight if he could convince them of that.
“She—you said Jacquiss?—is not dead. She was traveling with us until, ah, just south of Olsoth.”
The Sons of the Father stopped as a group, their leader alone taking another step forward. “Jacquiss is dead.”
“She never told us her name, but if we speak of the same woman, she is not dead. At least she wasn’t.”
“Prove it.”
“She left here four years ago,” said Rew. “She thought her father was dead, killed by the king for sharing the secrets of the cult—ah, I mean your priesthood, the Sons of the Father. She believed her father was in the thrall of the king, on the other side of life. She was searching for a way to free him.”
“Those things are
not true.” The speaker shifted and raised a bright, bronze scimitar. “We were told to expect your lies. I thought you’d have better ones.”
Rew stared at the man’s scimitar. It was just like the one the nameless woman carried. Her father? He was supposed to be dead, but that death was supposed to have occurred when the temple burned. Clearly, the temple was still there, which meant maybe he was still there as well.
“Jacquiss said there was no Cursed Father. She said her own father had told her that.”
The man was silent, still, but around him, his companions shifted.
Then, one of them laughed, and bellowed, “He almost had me. These fools didn’t even know her name. There is no Cursed Father? Pfah. Where does he think he’s standing? Let’s finish this.”
“Yes, let’s,” agreed the leader.
He spun, and his scimitar flashed in the gloom, taking off the head of a surprised man standing next to him.
Rew, not understanding what was happening but knowing the advantage of surprise when he saw it, charged.
The leader of the Sons of the Father caught a swinging axe on the edge of his blade, turned it aside, and slashed his scimitar across the face of the axe-wielder. He darted at another man, clouting him on the side of the head with his bronze gauntlet.
Rew stabbed between a man’s breastplate and helmet. He felt the crunch of chainmail splitting beneath the force of his attack, and his blade plunged into the man’s neck. These men wore armor in the style of the nameless woman’s, but it wasn’t enchanted. It was bronze. It was like thick paper against Rew’s enchanted steel.
The Sons of the Father had been prepared to fight, but they’d been entirely unprepared for their leader to turn on them and start slaughtering them. They hesitated when they faced him, and the man took advantage.
Raif joined the fight with a roar, battering a man’s raised sword with a series of vicious overhead strikes, but the fight was already over. By the time Raif beat the man down and his greatsword found flesh, only one more of the Sons of the Father was standing, backing away from both Rew and the leader slowly.
“I don’t understand, Jacob. What is this?” he babbled. “We were warned by the prince. These people are our enemy, the enemy of the king. What… What have you done?”
“You’ve been misled,” said the leader, Jacob. “Misled by our histories, our priests, the princes, and the king himself. You’ve also been misled by me.”
Jacob feinted with his scimitar, drawing the other man into a defensive posture. Rew struck from the side, sliding his blade easily into the man’s ribs. He drew his longsword from the man and looked at Jacob uncertainly.
“Jacquiss lives, truly?”
Rew shrugged. “She was alive a week ago.”
“I knew she was alive. I tracked her from afar for the last four years, but months ago, she seemed to vanish,” murmured the armored man. “None of my contacts had any word of her. I worried… Tell me what you know.”
“Unfortunately,” said Rew, “we don’t have time for that. In less than an hour, I expect Prince Heindaw to arrive here with every spellcaster he can find and half of his army. He’s coming to kill us, and before he does, we need to figure out how to tap the power stored within your crypts.”
The man laughed and stepped closer, the light of the doorway finally falling on his face. He was dark-skinned, like the nameless woman, and old. Old enough to be her father, certainly, though he’d moved like a much younger man during the fight.
“Tell me this, and then we’ll talk of what you need. Jacquiss, when she left you, where did she go?”
“I’m not certain,” admitted Rew. “We were two days south of Olsoth, and she disappeared in the night. She didn’t tell us why she left or where she was going. We only found out when dawn broke and her bedroll was empty. You’re her father? She was searching for a way to free your soul from the king’s clutches. She thought you were dead, taken by him. That’s what she told us. She’d devoted her life to… a lie, it seems.”
The old man smirked. “Lies abound. But if she told you what you said—that there is no Cursed Father—then I believe you knew her, and you must have earned her trust. I will trust you as well, but we cannot trust her. She has broken her bond with me, you understand? I love her, but…” The man’s eyes flicked toward Cinda. “She thought you could face the king?”
Rew shrugged. “To be honest, I don’t know what she thought.”
“You do plan to face him, though, don’t you?”
“If we survive Heindaw,” said Rew drolly. He reminded the man, “He’s going to come here.”
Nodding, the old man turned. “Come with me. I have a book to give you.”
“Is it a long one?” muttered Rew.
The man glanced over his shoulder and gave Rew an empty smile. “It was you, the group of you, in Jabaan, wasn’t it? When word reached us to look out for you, I wondered. You—the lass here—released the dead from Jabaan’s crypt? When I heard, I began writing down what I know. Before that, the risk was too great to commit my knowledge to paper because there was no one who could use it. Maybe you can. Maybe you cannot, but I will be dead soon enough, so it no longer matters. I… I didn’t finish, but I will give you what I have. When Heindaw warned us you may come, I understood my time was over. I had to begin other preparations.”
Rew cleared his throat, following the man down into the depths of the temple. “Yes, it was us in Jabaan. We tapped into the power stored within the crypts. Ah, something is different here. They’re more difficult to touch, Cind—our necromancer, said so. Can you help?”
“I will not. I’ve sealed the crypts from you and even the king himself. That is not the assistance I offer. Do you know how many were killed in Jabaan?”
“I can guess.”
“Twenty-three thousand,” said the old man. “Rounding, of course. In some cases, it was difficult to tell who was killed during the event and who had been killed shortly before. I hate the king, Stranger, and I will do what I can to end his reign, but I love my city. I cannot allow Jabaan to happen here.”
Cinda retorted, “I’ve learned from—“
“You will learn,” interrupted the man, “if you survive Heindaw. You will learn from the book I will give you.”
“If we survive,” called Zaine. “Any suggestions about how to do that? I’m sure this book is great and all…”
“I have no suggestions,” said the old man. “I cannot help you face the prince.”
“Wonderful,” said the thief. She caught up to Rew. “So far, this plan is looking to be one of your best.”
“My daughter,” said Jacob. “You said she disappeared outside of Olsoth? What happened? You must have speculated about why she left, and you must have some ideas.”
Rew scowled at the man’s back. He didn’t want to share too much information and give away the little leverage they had. He still wasn’t sure where this man stood, or where the nameless woman—Jacquiss, it seemed she had a name—had her loyalties, either. King’s Sake, even now, all he had were guesses.
“She was hale when she left,” Rew said, hoping some vague assurances would be enough to quench the man’s curiosity. “I have no reason to believe she’s in danger. Well, no more danger than any of us are in these days.”
“Was she wearing her armor?”
Rew blinked. “Yes.”
“I was afraid of that,” said Jacob. “It was a gift from Prince Heindaw. The other Sons of the Father believed he wanted to take her as a mistress, and I think she believed that as well. She’s attracted to strength and was pleased to accommodate the prince. I was suspicious, though. He knew things he should not know. He asked me about them. I found out he’d been asking her while she wore the armor. She never remembered the conversations. He… learned things that are dangerous to know. I was worried.”
“Understandable,” grumbled Rew, hoping the man would hurry his story. A quarter hour had already ticked by. Or had it been a half?
; “She left, and the prince told me he’d convinced her I was dead. He can do that, I had discovered, through her enchanted armor. It allows him to implant suggestions into my daughter’s thoughts. I was upset, but I knew there was nothing I could do. I cannot fight the prince, and going after Jacquiss may have gotten us both killed. We only lived while we were valuable to him. She carried out his work in the world, and I convinced him there was information I was hiding and dribbled it to him and that fool Salwart over the last four years.”
“Salwart?”
Jacob grunted and gave Rew a fierce grin over his shoulder. “I sent that man on a merry chase, but the prince is smarter. I had to tell him much.”
“Such as?”
“It’s in the book. We don’t have time for me to explain.”
Rew scowled at the man’s back. “I know we don’t have time.”
“If Heindaw could control her, why didn’t he have her kill us all while we were sleeping?” wondered Raif. “She had plenty of opportunities.”
Rew cringed. The only answer was because Heindaw wanted them alive. Near Olsoth, he knew they weren’t walking to Carff and Valchon. Did the prince want them in Iyre? But then, that didn’t make sense, either. If Heindaw wanted them in Iyre, Jacquiss would have stayed with them to make sure they got there.
The hunters.
Jacquiss disappeared after they’d spotted the purple-robed spellcasters. She must have gone to report to Heindaw. Jacob had said Heindaw could implant suggestions. Perhaps she’d left before the prince intended her to. Or perhaps not. Simulacra of Valchon would be important information for Heindaw to have.
Rew’s mind swirled as the old man inserted a key into a lock and twisted it open. Jacob took them into a small study, where on a desk, a leather-bound book sat open, a page half-filled. On the walls of the room were bookshelves and weapons racks. The nest of a warrior-priest.
The old man offered a tired smile. “What my daughter told you is true. There is no Cursed Father. It’s the king, Vaisius Morden, but you know that, don’t you? I’ve spent decades trying to find a way to stop him. I shared much of what I learned with my daughter, hoping she could continue my work, and then I spoke with Prince Heindaw when he discovered our intentions. In my heart, I hoped he would use our knowledge to unseat the king and make this kingdom better, but in my head, I worried he would use us and then rule as a worse tyrant than his father.”
