The Paladins of Naretia

by TP Keane

Chapter 32

  "You are going to lose so you might as well give up now. Dantet will be arriving soon, and when he does, you will all burn."

  Aria recognised the whiny voice instantly, and the sound of it made her blood boil as she thought of how he might have hurt Aramus. She also recognised the triangular markings on the limestone walls of the staircase as the same one he bore upon his arm. The same mark that had driven an ogre mad enough to plough a cleaver through his own head. She felt the shame of her stupidity for believing that the mark was a protection spell against Dantet's army, knowing now that it was merely insurance for his followers so they wouldn't be caught up in the war that raged outside.

  When she came upon the owner of the voice, she was met by a most welcomed scene. Mullrode was tied to an old, high-backed, wooden chair, looking as waxen and superior as ever. His binds, however, were invisible; no doubt created by Ol?rin's glimmering white staff, which he held pointed at the junior wizard. For all intents and purpose it appeared that Mullrode's legs, arms and torso were glued to the seat. His sickly grey eyes met hers as she entered the room, and a wicked smile spread slowly across his face.

  "Ah, if it isn't little Aria," he said. "Actually, I'm glad you're here."

  Aria stopped dead, momentarily stunned by his condescending but pleasant tone.

  "Many wouldn't be," she hissed at him. "Tell me, why are you glad?"

  "Because I was always taught to have good manners and, to that end, I would like to thank you."

  Aria found it difficult to believe that such a wretched man would have a mother, never mind one that would care enough to teach him good manners.

  "Thank me?"

  "Yes, you see, without you none of this would have been possible. Without your eagerness to see Aramus dead, and your youthful rashness, I would have never been able to carry out my plan. You were a very useful little puppet, thank you."

  Aria lunged at the officious wizard with no warning at all. Balling up her fist, she ploughed it into his jaw with as much force as possible. As a seething rage filled every ounce of her being she hit him time and time again, feeling the back of his head hit the wooden chair. She didn't stop until Ol?rin pulled her off.

  "While I appreciate your gusto, we must keep him conscious to answer our questions," Ol?rin said.

  Aria gritted her teeth together tightly and tried to control her breathing, to no avail. She was at least satisfied to see that she had managed to split Mullrode's lip and a nasty purple bruise was beginning to form under his right eye. A faint throbbing in her knuckles was her medal, and she did nothing to ease the pain. But Ol?rin was right.

  "Fine, where's Aramus? What have you done with him?" she demanded.

  "Did he not return to the battle outside with you?" Ol?rin asked.

  The old wizard's face was a picture of concern, and Aria was sure she saw a great wad of his grey beard turn suddenly white.

  "He did not," Aria replied. "Who is working with you inside Lothangard, and where have they taken Aramus?"

  Mullrode leered at Aria before spitting the blood from his mouth, missing her face by inches, and remaining resolutely silent.

  "How dare you," Ol?rin roared at him. The old man's eyes gleamed with a viciousness that Aria had never seen before. "How dare you spit at your queen, you arrogant, officious, pompous, puffed-up little rat. You will answer the questions. What have you done with Aramus?"

  Mullrode smiled maliciously and said nothing. Ol?rin slammed his white staff into the ground so hard that Aria was sure he was trying to waken the tower, as though it were a sleeping giant.

  "Verax Coactus," he chanted over and over again.

  The words bounced off the walls as though each limestone brick memorised what he had said and parroted it long after the old wizard had finished speaking. Mullrode's eyes grew wide as the whispering continued to sound out from mouthless shadows within the bricks and mortar of the wizard tower. Ol?rin waited until the many voices dulled to a gentle whisper. If Aria hadn't been there when it was created, she would have mistaken the sound as the rustling of trees from outside the palace walls.

  "Now you will answer my questions, won't you?" Ol?rin asked.

  The whispers grew in volume.

  "Y?yes," Mullrode answered.

  The voices died down once the answer had come. The junior wizard looked pained, as though a great many needles had suddenly been prodded into every inch of his skin as he tried to refuse to answer.

  "The spell will compel anyone within these walls to answer questions truthfully, whether they like it or not. That means it will also affect you, Aria. It will not allow you to answer a question with a question either. Only the truth will stop the pain. So, do not give him the opportunity to ask you a question you do not wish to answer. Do you understand me?" Ol?rin said.

  "Yes," someone with her voice replied.

  Aria clasped her hand to her mouth. The whispering remained steady, and Aria suspected that it was because she had not resisted the question.

  "You're a charlatan, aren't you Ol?rin?" Mullrode asked quickly. "You made up the story about the prophecy to gain favourable attention, didn't you? All because you were about to be found out and lose the respect of your peers. You made it all up so that they would think the Goddess Edwina favoured you, didn't you?"

  "I am neither a charlatan nor am I a liar," Ol?rin replied firmly before quietly adding, "It is true that I sought the favour of Edwina, yes, but of no one else."

  "What does he mean "about to be found out"?" Aria asked, before she remembered the spell that was cast around them.

  Ol?rin shot her a pointed look and winced as the answer was slow to come out.

  "I am eccentric in many ways, including in my choice of preferred companionship. My preference is also the reason why I never married, or had children of my own. A great many people are objectionable to that way of life, as Angus would have attested to if he were still alive."

  Aria felt a searing heat rush up into her cheeks. She knew the wizard didn't appreciate her curiosity, especially not in front of a dark wizard when he had no choice but to answer truthfully. From the corner of her eye she could see Mullrode open his mouth again to ask another question, trying to prevent his own questioning, but she fired one at him before he had the chance.

  "What have you done with Aramus?"

  "Nothing," he replied easily.

  "I don't believe you, are you lying to me?"

  "I am not," he laughed. "If Aramus has disappeared, perhaps he has been shot and left to die in a corner somewhere out of sight? or perhaps he has made himself disappear."

  "What do you mean by that? Why would he make himself disappear?"

  Mullrode closed his mouth and Aria could see pain crawl across his face. The whispers of "Verax Coactus" grew louder and louder. His high-arched eyebrows furrowed together over squeezed eyelids, and his teeth clenched. Aria saw a bead or two of sweat on his brow as he gripped the weathered scrolls of his armrests with both hands.

  "Why would he make himself disappear?" Ol?rin asked again.

  Mullroded groaned and writhed on the chair as the pain now consumed him. The voices were no longer whispering, they were shouting at him. He breathed tersely through his clenched teeth but, as Aria suspected for such a cloistered wizard, he didn't last long against it all.

  "Because he has his own mission from Dantet," Mullrode blurted out, taking deep breaths with the last of his words. "You don't really think that Aramus is on your side, do you? Do you honestly believe that he wants to be good, that the son of Dantet wants the mundane life of a mortal?"

  "Yes," Aria replied.

  "I don't know," Ol?rin said quietly.

  Aria's mouth dropped open as she stared at the wizard in disbelief. She only barely remembered not to ask him any questions, but seriously considered asking him just one regardless. Why? It was Ol?rin, after all, whose blind belief in the Goddess Edwina's quest, had reassured her she was doing the right thing for the king
dom of Naretia, for Pearan. 'How could he, of all people, have doubts?' Aria had seen him doubt Aramus in the city of Rhidwynn, but never once thought it was anything more than a need to reaffirm his belief in the winged man, and that his fears were only superficial.

  Now, she wasn't quite as sure. This brought back her own misgivings that she had discarded for the sake of Naretia, for the sake of her feelings toward him, and, more importantly, for the sake of her brother who might have to face a terrible future should their mission fail. Aria knew it was a distinct possibility that she chose to believe the best in Aramus because she had to, just as she had once convinced herself that her cruel reign was necessary to bring a murderer to justice.

  "What mission has he been set?" Ol?rin asked Mullrode.

  "The same as you," Mullrode replied. "His father has commanded him to make a potion, a dark potion, one that will give his father's physical being enough power to walk upon this soil. Oh, don't look so surprised, Ol?rin. You and I both know that where there is light, there will always be shadow. One cannot exist without the other, for without the darkness, how can we know the light?

  "Your elf friends can attest to this. They, with their physical resemblance to Edwina, and steadfast policing of the world, are the perfect example of the balance I speak of. They are the antithesis of the Dark Ones. Well, all except that grey-elf you travel with, but that abomination will feel the power of my God's hand soon enough, and her darker side will bend to his will. Despite his lack of power, Dantet still holds a knowledge of magic that would make me far stronger than you could ever be, and he has promised me that power when he rises."

  Save for the gentle whispering of the voices from within the walls, and the occasional boom as a lava ball hit the palace, the air was so thick with silence that Aria found it difficult to breathe. Her mind raced with what Mullrode had told them and her heart refused to slow. 'No, this is all wrong, this can't be.' Icy beads of sweat tickled her just under her hairline, and some niggling idea, that she couldn't visualise, kept prodding her racing mind. Something about Aramus's demeanour when they returned to Lothangard, now set off alarm bells. But no matter how she grasped for the origin of that thought, she could not get a hold of it.

  "That's what this is about for you, isn't it?" Ol?rin seethed, pointing his staff at Mullrode. The staff hummed to life and a spark left its woody surface, hitting Mullrode's triangular mark on his forearm, making him wince. "You crave the power to reign over all the other wizards, to murder where you see fit. You were never content to follow the path set out by the Elder wizards. Your arrogance made you believe that you were better than it, and your impatience made a fool of you.

  "Do you honestly believe that Dantet will let you live once your purpose has been served? You are his puppet, no more than Aria had been yours. And like all the toys that he has played with, and lost interest in, you will be discarded and left to burn with the rest of us. Dantet does not know loyalty, he does not know compassion, love, or mercy. Edwina has taken all these things from him. He knows only the emptiness that remains in his soul. And that emptiness will consume everything in its path."

  "But you don't understand, Ol?rin. I am better than you. I am more powerful and more intelligent than any wizard that has come before me," Mullrode said. "I don't see why my progress was hindered by the traditions of longwinded fossils, like you. Maybe his other toys will be left by the wayside, but he and I have an arrangement. I'm more useful to him alive, because I am his right hand, and he owes me everything."

  "He owes you nothing," Ol?rin shouted, placing the burl of his staff against Mullrode's chest. "Anyone capable of murdering his own children will not have the integrity to honour any debts, and you are a bigger fool than I thought if you think that he will."

  "The only fool here is you, Ol?rin. Do you really think that your story, sorry, your prophecy, would have ever happened if it weren't for me? Dantet's world was sealed off by the Etherium and a dwarf wizard's magic. There was no way that anymore Dark One's could have passed in or out of his world. But yet, you pranced around, telling everyone who would listen, that it was going to happen. That someday Dantet's son would be born and we would all burn under his fire. That's what gave me the idea, you see? If it wasn't for you and your stupid prophecy, I wouldn't have thought of it. I realised that there was a quicker way to gain power, to be released from the mothering chokehold of Edwina."

  Aria wondered if it were true, if the prophecy was, indeed, self-fulfilled, and that they all had been put in harm's way by the ramblings of a desperate old man. But Ol?rin's gaze never left the junior wizard, and the hand holding his glowing staff was steady. It was the staff that reminded her that Edwina truly had appeared to him, that she had given him the tears of life which created it; the same tears that saved Sudia's life. If he had made the prophecy up, then he would not have been granted these gifts.

  "But don't you see? How my prophecy came into being was of little consequence. The fact remains that it did, which should tell you I was not lying," Ol?rin replied with a small laugh. "Were it not for you, some other fool would have set the prophecy in motion. You are no more an integral part of this tale than the proverbial shoe lace one might trip over to start a chain of events. And Dantet will not see you as anything other than that."

  "No! You're wrong. I was the one who started all of this. I will be remembered for it, not you." Mullrode's eyes bulged and his clenched hands shook with the affront of Ol?rin's dismissal. "It was me. I made promises of uncountable riches to that greedy dwarf, Thrais. I was the one who convinced him to let me pass through his mines. I was the one who found Aramus's mother, eighteen years ago, and brought her to Dantet. I set in motion a great number of things that your prophecy did not foresee. And I was the one who gave Aramus the ingredients he needed to make his potion."

  Mullrode's outrage seemed to be appeased with the appalled silence that followed.

  "What ingredients might those be?" Aria asked eventually.

  "Oh come now, I thought you of all people might have seen a hint of what was going on. You've always seemed more distrusting than the crumbling minds of the old men who surrounded me. Even I thought it terribly convenient that Luscious only bit Aramus on the shoulder and not on the neck. Thank you, by the way, for punching him in the muzzle and helping him to loosen his tooth. And, of course, I can't leave you out either, Ol?rin. You were the one, after all, who kept the tooth and handed it straight to Aramus. It's amazing the power contained in the poison of a worgen's tooth and how it can darken the very purest of souls."

  If what Mullrode was saying was true then Aria's retaliation had been nothing but someone else's plot and she, their pawn. Everything she had done had been carefully orchestrated and manipulated by Mullrode. She felt suddenly sick and was determined that if she should throw up it would land in Mullrode's lap. But that niggling feeling in the back of her mind was not appeased with this revelation. This was not the thought she was trying to grasp.

  Aria tentatively fingered the gold necklace that connected her to Aramus and wondered if she should take it off. It would be easy to slip it over her head now, and she had no desire to remain attached to him if he truly was working with Dantet. But Mullrode was not a reliable source, and although he answered the questions truthfully, it was his truth. She also wondered if this niggling feeling was coming from Aramus. If that was the case, she wanted to keep the necklace on.

  "Of course, it was sheer good luck that your golem came and got me that day," Mullrode continued, his arrogance now freeing his tongue to gloat over his cleverness. "I wasn't quite sure how I would get the Etherium to him. Powerful stuff that, gives one incredible strength if used correctly. It would have looked suspicious if he had tried to take some from the mine, although I believed he did try. Pity that Dantet was impatient and bolstered his abilities before he was eighteen. I expect he couldn't control such raw power very well. But you made it very easy for me, my dear, and if you had killed Ol?rin in the process, all t
he better for me."

  "You were the one who ensured Aramus would be alone with the king and queen too, weren't you?" Ol?rin hissed. "You made sure all of the guards had left the throne room. I remember hearing of it. Although I had not been around for many years, I still had, still have, some wizards loyal to me. They told me about a young, impertinent wizard giving orders that only the Supreme Wizard should give. It was you, wasn't it? You helped Aramus kill them."

  "What!" Aria felt her heart jump into her mouth and her hand fly to the hilt of her sword. "Was it you? Did you betray my parents? Did Aramus take their eyes?"

  Mullrode grinned malevolently and endured a moment or two of pain for no other reason, Aria suspected, than to make her wait for the answer. In that time the point of her sword found its way to the centre of his chest.

  "Yes, to both," he chortled. "Can't have a dark potion without the all-seeing eyes of wise rulers, now can you? But that's not all. I was also the one who gave you the Amulet of Tenebris, if you remember. Ol?rin had interfered with my plan to have Aramus killed by taking your army away, so I gave you a new one. This," he said, gesturing with his eyes to the war outside, "was all because of me. Because I am more powerful than any wizard who came before, and I will rule you all."

  A hot rage filled every ounce of Aria and tears stung at the edges of her eyes. Aramus had lied to her, to Ol?rin. She tried to plunge her blade into Mullrode's chest again and again, but no matter how much she pushed, it would stop an inch away from him every time. Aria spun around to face Ol?rin, tears beginning to trickle down her face. Ol?rin looked more haggard than normal and his eyes would not meet hers. Instead, they stayed fixed on Mullrode.

  "Let me kill him!" she shouted, wiping away the tears. "He was the one responsible for all of this, he should die. Stop protecting him, old man."

  "I cannot," Ol?rin said, his voice laced with despondency. "I cannot allow you to kill even him."

  Aria flung her sword to the ground and it landed with a loud clatter. She screamed in outrage as her hands ran through her red hair and tugged at it, hoping to ease the anger and frustration as she paced the dusty room. Nothing helped and the sounds of the palace rumbling under the heavy fire of the horned beast's, only made matters worse. The urgency of that niggling thing inside of her made itself more pronounced too.

  "You see the weakness of Edwina's rule," Mullrode laughed. "Now you see that if I was the Supreme Wizard, things would be very different for you, Aria. They still can be, if you help me."

  "Help you?" Aria screamed. She rushed over to the contemptuous wizard and grabbed him by his robes, pressing her face close to his and gritting her teeth. "You were the one who let Aramus kill my parents, who bolstered my desire for revenge, and let me set these Dark One's on innocent people. What makes you think that I would ever help you?"

  "Because if you don't, Aramus will not die, and Naretia will be in more peril than if I were to succeed."

  "But your plan is succeeding, isn't it?" Aria hissed, tightening her fist around Mullrode's robes as if it were his neck she was throttling. "That's what you told Ol?rin, I heard you in the stairwell. "You will lose," you said. So if your plan is succeeding, why do you need my help, why do you want Aramus dead?"

  Mullrode did not answer.

  Under her hand, which was now pressed hard against his neck, she could feel him shake with the pain that was building through his body. Once more he clenched his teeth and refused to answer, the pain twisting his rodentine face. After a few more moments the whispering walls became just as stubborn and a monsoon of "Verax Coactus" filled the small room.

  "Answer the question, Mullrode," Ol?rin boomed over the din. "Why is it important that he should die if he is, in fact, charged with making this vital potion for your God? Surely you would want him to finish it?"

  Mullrode again refused to answer and this time he endured the pain with more conviction. Aria punched him in the jaw wanting to tip the balance of his threshold, to no avail. It wasn't until Ol?rin pointed his staff at him that Aria saw a twitch in his otherwise resolute demeanour.

  "I see your pride is not allowing you to admit your failings," the old wizard said, taking a step closer to Mullrode. "Answer the question or I will use the Ultimum Maledictionem."

  From what Aria knew of wizarding, and it was very little, the Ultimum Maledictionem was the spell wizard's used on the most hostile of enemies. It was as close to killing a person as the wizards could get. The spell cast delusions in the mind that would torment a person with their worst fears, whilst at the same time sear them with a pain more horrific than being burned alive. The victims were said to never be the same after it again, often left in a vegetative state, but never dead.

  "You wouldn't," Mullrode hissed behind his gritted teeth. "Such a benevolent leader as yourself wouldn't have the stomach to use a curse like that."

  As much as she hated to agree with a toad like Mullrode, she did. That particular curse hadn't been used in thousands of years and was severely frowned upon, for good reason. But to her surprise she saw Ol?rin step closer to Mullrode and hold his staff over his head, waving it in small, circular motions. Aria let go of the wizard's robes and gladly gave way to Ol?rin's approach.

  "Ultim?"

  "Wait!" Mullrode interrupted. "Wait, just wait."

  Mullrodes eyes were wide with panic and his breathing grew haggard as he fought through the pain of the whispering walls. As pale as he had been before, Aria had never seen a human go as white as he was then. Ol?rin's words drifted away, but he kept his staff over the young wizards head.

  "Aramus and Dantet can hear each other's thoughts whether they choose to or not, such is the connection between father and son. Through his dark children I have been kept informed of Aramus's progress. For a time he refused to accept his father's will. Even after the death of the king and queen of Naretia when, with their blood still warm on his hands, Aramus grew to first know the lure of the darkness. He refused to succumb to it, no doubt as a result of some misguided loyalty to you, Ol?rin."

  Still the whispering walls continued to murmur, waiting for the answer that Mullrode was trying to skirt around. The wizard's face contorted with the pain and Ol?rin kept his staff hovering steadily above his head. Aria felt the niggling at the back of her mind pushing its way forward, like it was trying to get a better view of the answer that would inevitably leave his mouth. Somehow she knew the two were connected.

  "There was a flaw in my plan, one that I did not foresee," Mullrode said reluctantly. "I thought that the Amulet of Tenebris would be safe with the queen. I had not considered that she would lose it to a dwarf. Luscious was very foolish to leave it in the mire for Aramus to find, and he was punished severely for his mistake. The worgen has proven a very useful spy since then, tracking your every movement and reporting back to me. But Aramus now has a way of overriding his father's control over his children and building an army for himself. If that should happen, then no one will win this war and all will perish. That is the true prophecy that you witnessed, old man. Not the coming of Dantet, but the rise of his son."

  "But he didn't find it," Ol?rin said. "It was lost in the bogland along with the Etherium arrow."

  "Was it?" Mullrode asked rhetorically. "I think you will find Aramus used your blind trust in him to retrieve it whilst you buried that other dwarf. Just as he did to find the missing part of the grey-elf's ear whilst you tried to save her, another ingredient he required for the potion and the reason she was turned. The flesh of a turning elf, you see, is volatile and can be swung toward the darkness. It will alter the flesh of any that consume it too."

  "No, he couldn't," Ol?rin whispered.

  Aria felt sicker than she had ever felt before in her life. It was in Rhidwynn that she had come to trust Aramus, even liked him to a certain degree, and defended him against Ol?rin's doubts. She felt foolish when she thought back to how she had been jealous of his attention on Sudia, now knowing that it had been only for his dark potion. She also
felt thoroughly disgusted at how her skin had tingled under his touch as they danced. 'Surely I could not have been so blind. Mullrode must be lying.' The dying whispers of the wall told her that he was not lying, and the niggling notion in her head started a wave of panic in her stomach. He had been so calculating, so convincing, that Aria knew he must have come to Lothangard for a reason. But that reason was still far from her grasp.

  "Whilst it would be better for Dantet to wait until he is eighteen, and at full power before he is killed, Aramus has forced his hand. For without Aramus's power, a copy of Dantet's own gifts before Edwina took them from him, the Dark God would be vulnerable and will not rise. It is true that up until your journey to Lothangard, Aramus could have been swayed either way, and this is why his father had held off his attacks. He only wanted it to appear that he desired Aramus's death, so you might be more convinced and unwittingly aid him. I don't know what it was exactly that turned him against both your plan and his father's, but something did happen.

  "Dantet has informed me that Aramus intends to make the potion for himself, so he will rule Naretia instead. But he is only half his father, and mortals were never meant to wield that kind of power. He is missing one last ingredient, and Dantet's army is here to make sure that Aramus does not complete it. So, now you see why it is in your best interests to help me, Aria."

  "What is the last ingredient that he needs?" Aria asked quietly, almost afraid to hear the answer as the niggling grew more impatient in her head.

  "Aramus needs a powerful substance to bind it all together," Mullrode answered.

  "Farthal Fall," Ol?rin said, his eyes wide. "I knew there was more of it before he left me. He must have stolen it while I was distracted with Bernard, to complete the potion."

  "No, no, Fathal Fall isn't strong enough," Mullrode scoffed as though Ol?rin were just a student in his eyes. "He might have tried to use that. If he did, it would be certain to fail. No, Aramus needs something far stronger, celestial, something that can unite souls - even after death. He needs to sacrifice true love, and obtain the blood that comes directly from the heart to be able to bind these ingredients. Unless one of you have fallen head-over-heels in love with him, there is no way he can complete it - at least not one that he has yet thought of."

  "Aria, do you?" Ol?rin began, his eyes wide with concern.

  "No," she replied, furrowing her brow. "He kissed me, but? but I couldn't forget what he did to my parents. Perhaps my rejection is what tipped him over the edge?"

  Aria felt a wave of guilt wash over her for a moment before the niggling thing that was playing at the back of her mind began to jump around like an overzealous student with their hand raised. Mullrode's words set off a whirlpool of panic in her stomach. Something about love, about her love for him or lack thereof, had changed his demeanour toward her. That was until he had comforted her whilst she sent Pearan to hide in the palace.

  "Oh, no," she said, her legs nearly faltering as she remembered how fascinated he had been in her brother whilst they were in Rhidwynn too. "Pearan. He was very interested in whether or not I truly loved my brother. But surely he cannot use Pearan? Surely he needs his victim to love him? Tell me, Mullrode, tell me that he cannot use Pearan."

  The junior wizard's mouth dropped open for a moment and a look of intense concentration crossed his face before he spoke again.

  "Love is love. I cannot see any reason that he couldn't."

  Aria felt her gold chain unhitch itself, slide from her neck, and fall to the dusty floor with a hollow clinking sound. "To truly know the one you are linked to will render the magic moot," Mirathall had said. Aria knew Aramus now. She knew why he was here, and so too did Ol?rin by the look of the wide-eyed understanding in his wrinkled face.

  "Aria, wait. This too might be a trap," Ol?rin said urgently.

  Aria ignored him and spun on her heels, panic pumping the blood through her ears and making her mind dumb with fright as she bolted through the door.

  "You must kill him, Aria, because Ol?rin will not. He will not sacrifice the lives of the other wizards for your brother, just as he would not sacrifice their lives to protect the Mountainmen of the east," Mullrode shouted after her.

  That was the last thing that Aria heard as she made her way out of the wizard's tower. She feared she would already be too late to save her younger brother, the only living person in Naretia that she truly loved.