What Remains of Heroes

by David Benem

  Could she save me? It was the memory of those words that kept alive the frail fire of hope within him. Perhaps only the hope of a hopeless fool, but hope nonetheless.

  If she could come for him before the Necrists, he could grasp a chance at safety, at survival. He could recover his Coda, rejoin his order, and redeem himself. His life could regain the purpose it had been so long without.

  He knelt before the window and pressed his head against the wall’s wet stones. His eyes burned with tears.

  Sweet Illienne the Light Eternal, let the sun rise!

  “Lannick.”

  The word was softly spoken, just barely more than a whisper. Lannick drifted from the throes of a rare slumber. His ears perked for a moment, but there came no other sound. He pulled his blanket to his shoulders and shifted in his cot.

  “Lannick.”

  A woman’s voice. He turned in his cot and cracked open his eyes. The cell was dark and empty. He looked to the window and saw the sky had shifted from black to a deep purple. Dawn would come soon. He looked to the barred portal in his door, but all was lost in shadow.

  Do I dream?

  And then he saw it. In the shadows near the foot of his cot there was a deeper, darker blackness. It seemed less a thing than the absence of a thing—a void, a nothingness, a rip in the world.

  Terror seized him and Lannick retreated until he was pressed firmly against the wall. I have nowhere to run. “Help me!” he croaked. His voice was hoarse and the pain in his jaw made the words difficult to shape.

  There was a pale glow from the center of the void and the sound of shuffling movement. Something was emerging from blackness. The void shifted spasmodically and expanded, growing to consume the whole of the cell between the cot and the door.

  “Lannick.”

  A tall figure emerged from the blackness, thin and elegant and cloaked from head to toe in what seemed a black veil. Behind it came three squat shapes, each half the size of a man, shambling and misshapen.

  “Help me!” Lannick shouted more loudly, but it was still little more than a moan, unlikely to draw the attention of the guards. He huddled in the cell’s corner and pressed harder against the wall, madly hoping the stone would swallow him whole.

  The tall figure glided gracefully to within an arm’s reach of Lannick, and with slender hands parted the veil to reveal a face so ghostly pale it seemed almost luminescent. It was a face delicately featured, a woman’s face that would have been beautiful but for the thick, barbed stitch extending from hairline to chin, splitting it precisely in half.

  I know this face! It was stretched and pitted as compared to when he’d last seen it years before, and its hue was now the white pallor of death, but…

  Dead gods!

  “Lannick,” the woman said. “I hope this face pleases you.” She smiled, causing the stitch to buckle and twist grotesquely. “General Fane was kind enough to reveal to us the location of your wife’s grave.”

  Dead gods! What horrors must I suffer?

  She gestured to the three abominations behind her. “And the graves of your children.”

  Lannick sobbed and shrieked in revulsion as the ghastly malformations grinned at him, their faces sick perversions of his children’s. They came at him and pulled with gnarled hands, grabbing him by his ankles and dragging him through the dark rift and into the cold netherworld beyond. They giggled all the while.

  Let me die!

  Ahead of them walked the tall Necrist, leading them into the blackness. “We have found the flesh remembers,” she said. “You must have provided some amusement to your children.”

  Lannick choked on his tears and gnashed his teeth. Sweet Illienne, damned be the day I forsook you! Forgive me!

  The abominations chuckled and babbled like babies.

  The Necrist turned her head, displaying an unnatural smile. “It must be heartwarming for you to lay eyes upon them again. Touching how the flesh remembers such emotions…” Just then she stopped and barked strange words in a guttural tongue.

  The abominations skittered to Lannick’s sides and lifted him, pressing him upward and restraining his arms. Lannick wrenched about in the chilling blackness surrounding him, but he could not break free. As he struggled, the Necrist came to stand over him, her face mere inches from his own.

  “No,” Lannick wept, vainly trying to look away from the warped but still familiar face.

  The Necrist’s smile broadened, becoming an expression almost feral, a wide swath of yellow teeth and purplish gums. The face was so familiar, yet so awfully monstrous. “Your wife’s skin carried memories as well.” She bent close, the skin venting a putrid odor of decay, and then she pressed against him.

  Lannick squeezed shut his eyes and wept and wailed, so terrible was the feel of that cold face against his own. Sweet Illienne, no!

  He shuddered with sobs as the Necrist smothered his mouth with a lingering kiss.

  Lannick rubbed tears from his eyes and choked down a sob, determined to hold dear his sanity. Such madness! Then he sobbed again and wiped at his mouth with a tear-wetted hand, desperately trying to wash away a stain he felt certain was there.

  They dragged him onward through the netherworld, and Lannick had no idea how far or how long the journey had been. All about him was an endless blackness of shifting shadows, and the only sensation of movement was the cold chill flowing beneath him. The horrors he’d endured made the journey seem ponderous in length, but as his wits gathered he realized he’d been gone from his cell only briefly.

  I will not be so easily broken, he vowed, rising to his elbows. He studied the shadows upon shadows lining the unearthly tunnel. A shadowpath, he remembered. It was said the Necrists could move unseen among contiguous shadows, accessing the furrows in the world’s substance forged ages ago by the dark god Yrghul. Yrghul, the Lord of Nightmares, had used the shadowpaths as a means to corrupt the dreams of humankind. His disciples, the Necrists, used them to travel in ways invisible.

  Dead gods, where are they taking me?

  Lannick struggled to peer ahead through eyes rheumy with drying tears. He tried to avert the backward gazes of the misshapen dwarfs, and struggled to shut his ears to their macabre, mimicked sounds. Shodafayn—shadow men—the navigators of the shadowpaths. They leered at him over their knobby shoulders, chortling and drooling with sick, stolen faces.

  Suddenly the Necrist halted, wheeled about and shouted harshly at the Shodafayn. One of them ambled crookedly to her side and held its hands outward, pleading. The Necrist spoke in angry tones, pointing at the creature and gesturing at the path ahead. There, before them, the shadows were dissipating, retreating from a pinpoint of light.

  Something’s amiss.

  The Necrist growled and waved a hand. The Shodafayn responded by rushing toward the light source, now the size of the keyhole. It squatted close to the light, hands upon its hips and muttering as it inspected the anomaly.

  At last the misshapen thing turned and spoke, its tone apologetic. The Necrist huffed and nodded curtly in reply. The Shodafayn’s brethren shuffled to its side.

  The three abominations gathered together and whispered. Gradually their murmurs assumed the measured cadence of a chant, and the words the intonations of sorcery. They turned toward the break in the darkness and set about prodding and tugging at its edges with their knotty hands, moving with surprising dexterity. The light expanded as they pulled, and grew to cast a frail illumination into the blackness of the shadowpath. It shimmered and shifted, and what lay beyond was distorted as though seen through a thick pane of stained glass.

  Within moments the rift was as wide as several men. The Necrist barked a brusque command, causing the Shodafayn to scurry from the light and return to Lannick. They grabbed him again at the ankles and dragged him swiftly, closer and closer to the flickering breach.

  And then through it.

  Lannick blinked. He was outside, somewhere. Above him was the early dawn sky, still sprinkled with stars but brightened w
ith a lavender hue. Beneath him he felt cool cobblestones. He shifted his head and saw a small collection of multicolored tents and wagons laden with crates and sacks. There came the sound of chickens clucking.

  I know this place. Ironmoor’s Old Market.

  He tried to force himself upward to sit but was pressed back to the stones by a silken boot. Above him stood the Necrist, the black veil of her clothing hiding all but her pale hands. Thank the dead gods I need not look at her face.

  “Our journey has not yet ended,” she said, turning her head about as though looking for something. After a moment she returned her attention to Lannick. “Oh, the things we have planned for you,” she said through the cover of her veil. “It is a rare gift to find a Variden without the protection of his Coda. We will rip apart your flesh and your mind, my love.”

  There sounded a sharp chirp of a bird from a nearby rooftop. Another answered. The dawn sun brightened the sky.

  The Necrist hissed something, a curse perhaps.

  She’s nervous.

  Lannick turned his head as subtly as he was able, mindful of the Necrist’s presence. A dozen or so feet away, one of the misshapen Shodafayn crawled on hands and knees along the edge of a tent, sniffing at the mud-clotted cobbles with a nose that once belonged to Lannick’s eldest son.

  Dead gods, kill me.

  He shuddered and put a hand to his brow. He knew what his circumstances required, but he was weak, stiff, and drained of nearly all life. He felt as though no blood flowed within him and no life filled his limbs, as much a corpse as a man. He wished so much he could summon something, some inner reserve of strength to fight or flee, but there was no hope for such dramatics in his present state.

  He pulled his head just off the stones, but could manage no more. His eyes strayed again to the hound-like Shodafayn, smelling at cracked rocks and frayed cloths, searching for something.

  Lannick remembered it then. The shadowpaths were passages through the netherworld, but were mirrored in the world above by contiguous shadows—shadows cast by the roof of a house, melding into another cast by a cobble, to another cast by a discarded broom, and so forth. As shadows shifted in the world above, depending upon the position of the moon, stars, and objects, so did the shadowpaths. The disciples of Yrghul could travel unseen for as long as shadows joined others, but a break in the line of shadows left them to travel in the world of men.

  It was clear the Necrist had not expected this interruption in their passage, and had accused the Shodafayn navigators of making a mistake.

  Perhaps their path amidst the shadows has been purposefully altered.

  Suddenly something squealed like a pig being slaughtered. Lannick turned and saw one of the other Shodafayn fumbling at an arrow stuck in its throat, trying vainly to stop the spout of black blood from the wound.

  “Don’t move!” the Necrist hissed at Lannick. She mumbled a string of broken-sounding words and made intricate gestures with her hands.

  Sorcery. Lannick struggled upward but realized his arms would not move. He looked down to see the shadows bleeding from between the cobblestones to form bindings upon his wrists. They bit at his flesh like ice.

  There was a commotion off to his side, and Lannick saw another of the Shodafayn pinned against a wagon wheel by two arrows lodged in its chest.

  The Necrist remained near him, scanning the market’s wide square and the rooftops at its far boundaries. She shouted at the last of the Shodafayn, which continued sniffing along the flap of a tent. The Shodafayn croaked in answer, and began scratching at the ground as though digging a hole.

  “Good,” said the Necrist, “you’ve found it.” She turned back to Lannick. “Come!”

  Lannick felt the bonds at his wrists dissolve, and pressed upward with the waning, desperate remains of his strength. Too late. The Necrist seized him by his matted mop of hair and pulled hard. He groaned in pain, and found he could do nothing but scramble backward in the Necrist’s tow.

  An arrow whistled by and clattered against the stone cobbles inches from Lannick’s bare foot. Then another.

  The Necrist barked another urgent command, her tone frantic. Lannick tried to turn to see ahead of her but the movement made his scalp feel as though it were ripping apart. He felt a trickle of blood upon his forehead.

  Another cry sounded and the Necrist halted abruptly. Lannick felt her hand pull free of his skull, and he lunged away as quickly as his beaten body would allow. He came to rest at the broken wheel of a wagon and turned timidly about.

  From behind the nearby traders’ tents emerged several figures, all wearing green cloaks and brandishing weapons tinged by flickering flames.

  Variden.

  The Necrist faced them, her pale hands outstretched and gathering the shadows surrounding her. Just beyond, the Shodafayn tore open a rift of swirling shadow with its stunted arms, and in an instant the rift jerked and expanded to several feet across.

  “Hold fast, you fiend!” one of the Variden shouted. The Variden were close now, close enough for Lannick to recognize some of their once-familiar faces.

  The Necrist cursed in the foul tongue of its kind, and whipped about to regard Lannick. She seized an edge of the veil covering her face and pulled it aside, revealing again the face of his dead wife, knitted together with a black stitch.

  “Another time, my love,” she said with a sickly sweetness, her face contorting to a wicked grin. She then turned and dove headlong into the shadowy rift, disappearing into the blackness with the Shodafayn following closely behind.

  The air about the breach shimmered and shook, and then the hole collapsed upon itself, leaving only the gently swaying tent flap brushing the cobblestones.

  “Lannick!” cried a voice. It was Alisa, her large brown eyes catching the first beams of the morning sun. Behind her stalked two more Variden, grimly regarding the two corpses of the Shodafayn and the perversions upon their faces.

  The faces of Lannick’s infant twins.

  Lannick collapsed against the cobblestones and wept.

  13

  THE LAST KING

  PREFECT GAMGHAST STRODE through the Bastion’s cavernous hallways, his boots and heavy staff drumming a rhythmic click-click-clack upon the marble tiles and echoing throughout the vaulted sprawl. He peered out from the sagging hood of his brown robe, eyeing the musty tapestries, the exaggerated sculptures, and the vast gulfs of unnecessary space. It is a shameful, corrupting thing when the powerful rule amidst such excess.

  The Bastion had stood for centuries. It had been expanded to serve the Rune’s pride, it had been burned to the ground by enemies, it had been built anew, it had been gutted when one High King desired to eradicate the memories of a predecessor. The countless alterations had left the place with innumerable secret passages, uneven halls, and dead ends. It was a place difficult for Gamghast to traverse with any air of purpose or certainty, and he feared his confusion showed.

  The Bastion’s hooded, scurrying functionaries regarded him with cocked brows and narrowed eyes, displaying varying degrees of suspicion and derision. Gamghast quickly lost count of the number of times the word “spooker” was whispered in his wake. Nevertheless, as he’d hoped, none of them confronted him or questioned his presence in the hallowed halls of the High King’s castle, and his exchange with the veiled guards outside had been brief.

  He hadn’t seen High King Deragol in quite some time, but was familiar with the rumors of his condition. The High King was no longer a young man, and had not yet produced an heir. It was said his wife had suffered many miscarriages, and his mind was tortured by grief. Gossipmongers mockingly referred to him as “The Last King,” anticipating he’d prove to be the last of his line.

  Gamghast paused in the center of the yawning chamber at the juncture of several hallways and gazed upward at nothing in particular. He’d gathered information on Chamberlain Alamis and he’d followed the man for several days outside the castle, but he’d learned nothing. Gamghast realized he had no gift fo
r snooping, so today he’d try a different tack. He’d rely upon old customs to secure an audience with the Last King himself.

  A murdered Sentinel. An heirless King. Such are the trials of our times.

  He heaved a sigh and continued his trudge through the great halls of stone.

  Gamghast rounded a corner and immediately caught sight of the tall figure standing between two gaudy vases at the end of the hallway, dressed in opulent, blue silk. His head was uncovered, in blatant defiance of tradition. His pale eyes held Gamghast’s firmly as he approached, his look one of genuine contempt only slightly offset by a thin smile.

  Chamberlain Alamis, Rune’s most venomous serpent.

  “Prefect Gamghast,” said the man in a voice that carried in spite of its seemingly quiet quality. “What an unexpected surprise. I understand you’ve come for an audience with the High King? Let me assure you, His Majesty is in no condition for visitors, particularly the unannounced kind. If your visit concerns the well-being of Rune,” he said with a wave to a nearby door, “then I’d suggest you and I speak in the sitting room.”

  Gamghast smoothed the wisps of his white beard. Tread carefully. “Chamberlain Alamis,” he said, bowing slightly. “As you know, our dear Lector was taken from us just weeks ago. He met regularly with His Majesty, in fulfillment of the Sanctum’s mission. Our charge is to ensure the welfare of the kingdom of Rune, and the person who sits upon its throne. It is my task to continue the Lector’s service to our King.”

  “Truly?” the chamberlain asked, his smile tightening. “Let me see,” he said, tapping his pointed chin with a forefinger. “Ah, yes. I do recall your Lector meeting with His Majesty a few months ago, and, if memory serves, this was an annual event. A meeting at the Godswell, correct? To perform whatever charlatanry your kind practices. Are you here to engage in such nonsense? If so, then another time would be preferred.”