by Remi Michaud
He wept as his gaze passed over the anonymous faces of his armies, over the dull gleam of steel, and even as tears coursed down his cheeks, an exultant thrill coursed through his body, electrifying and energizing him.
“Are you broken?” the voice of the old man asked.
It was a voice that carried all the power of the wind and the rivers, of life and death and eternity, and it whispered from the same direction as the light that came from nowhere and everywhere to bathe the verdant field.
Peace descended upon him as he strode. He was not broken. Not anymore.
He smiled. “No, father. I am whole.”
“I am glad,” the voice said.
He strode until he stood directly between the two armies. He glanced left and then right. He raised his sword over his head, a sword that crackled with blue life. He drew in a great breath.
“Attack!” he bellowed.
As he wept bitter-sweet tears, the armies, his armies, roared to life and ran towards each other where they converged with drawn weapons behind him and they charged as one, with Jurel at the forefront, toward the forest that ringed this innocent place.
Chapter 61
Putrid decay, human waste and mold assaulted his nose. Cold dampness left him chilled and shivering. His bed, rotted as it was, prickled him like biting ants. He opened his eyes but he knew it was pointless. It had been days, or maybe weeks, since they had tossed him into his hole. There was no light here.
Kicking away a furry something that nibbled painfully on his exposed toes, he rose and stretched almost languidly. He worked knotted muscles until they moved more freely and he was dismayed when he felt the spongy laxity of his arms. But somehow, it was not too important to him just then.
He remembered everything. His name was Jurel. He was in the dungeon of Gaorla's temple in the great city of Threimes. His father, the Father of fathers, had told him he would not die. Not today. He had tasks to perform and trials to face. He did not know what lay ahead—no one knew that. But he knew what was here and now.
He was stunned by what he knew, by what had been revealed to him. How could it be? He was just a lowly farmer. But he remembered a time when he rode with Kurin. That time that Kurin had said he should read a book. The thick black one with the blood red title, ANCIENT PROPHECIES: GOD OF WAR. He had felt detached as he stared at the cover like some part of him slept, and when he had tried to open the book, that jolt had numbed his arm.
But it was not the book that had caused it. It was him. It was his long-buried memory of dead parents. He called that memory forth now, and when he saw the serrated blade drive into Gram's belly, he felt deep mourning and that was all. There was no more rancid terror.
He smiled, sadly to be sure, but he did.
He did not know how it could be possible. A god? Him? He did not feel particularly godly. Right then and there he felt more like a god's shit than anything. At best. But Gaorla had called him son, had provided him with answers. But those answers rested uncomfortably in his thoughts. The problem was, for each answer, a thousand more questions were created. He mulled a few of those questions, the ones that came most readily to mind, kneading them, pushing them and pulling them until he had a headache. Until the questions stubbornly announced by their sullen repetitions that he had gotten plenty of answers for one day. Thank you, come again.
Somewhere outside his door, he heard voices echoing, warped by the walls into elastic reverberations, altered until they sounded hollow and windy. They were naught but grim, distorted parodies of themselves that became meaningless noise, and footsteps, a sharp beat that reached his ears dulled, blunted by stone walls. He was certain that the voices were trying for quiet but try as they might, the alien sounds reached Jurel's ears.
The noises stopped, after having reached a crescendo, and Jurel was certain they had stopped just outside his door.
So they have come for me at last.
He should have been fearful. He should have been quavering with dread but his father had told him that he would not die.
Not that day. Tomorrow maybe. He would worry about that tomorrow.
There was a metallic sound, a raspy grating thing that set his teeth on edge. His door creaked, protesting, grumbling as it swung open reluctantly on iron hinges spotted with rust. A burst of light bored into and behind his eyes and he was positive that it was the entire sun that came for him. When he squeezed his eyes shut, the glare was still blinding and he raised his torn hands, hissing.
“Jurel?”
A voice so familiar, it brought an ache that threatened to rend him for surely it could not be real.
“Jurel, it's me.”
He still could not see through the glare though it had resolved itself into no more than a torch but he did not need to see.
“Father?” he croaked through lips so dry they cracked and he tasted blood.
He thought he must still be dreaming. Perhaps this was another of Gaorla's visions. But the burning in his throat was too real, the sizzling numbness in his fingers too close for this to be a dream.
“Yes.”
Arms wrapped around Jurel and he smelled his father's familiar smell, like freshly tilled earth and warm breezes and tangy sweat. Good, honest smells. Home smells. Jurel cried and buried his head in his father's shoulder and Daved stroked his matted hair.
“I got you boy. All will be well now. I got you,” his father soothed.
Jurel would have been content if that moment lasted forever. He would have been content if he died right then and there but then another familiar voice spoke.
“We don't have much time, Daved,” the new voice said and Jurel gasped, too shocked to bring forth a name.
“I know, Mikal. Jurel, can you walk?”
The arms fell away when Jurel nodded and he rose unsteadily with the help of his father. Slowly, his eyes became accustomed to the torchlight and as they did, he saw clearly for the first time the two men who stood there. He could not believe it. Mikal was dead; Jurel had watched him get run through. And Daved was on Galbin's—Valik's—farm. How could this be?
“No time for questions now, lad. We need to go.”
It was then that he realized he had spoken his question aloud. Daved supported him as he stumbled on watery legs through the open door of his cell and there, he received his third shock.
“Hello Jurel,” Gaven said with a weak smile. “How are you?”
He must have fainted because the next thing he knew, the three men were leading him down the dank hallway, holding him up. After a time, Jurel's legs grew strong enough, and he walked with Daved at his side while Gaven and Mikal were a few paces ahead. It was a nightmare of a journey through those halls, halls that had witnessed unimaginable suffering and terrible lingering deaths and seemed to ooze malice like pus from an infected wound, halls so deep and dark that surely the very earth did not remember their existence, and Jurel lost track of the number of twists and turns they took. He tried to count the stairs as they climbed, but when he lost the number—somewhere upwards of a hundred—he decided that, as long as they were going up, he did not really care.
If he had studied a little longer under Kurin, he would have known that he suffered from malnutrition, shock, and a long list of other ailments. As it was, he knew something was wrong with him, but the farther they went, the easier it became for him to think. His belly was still a bottomless pit, but at least his mind was sharpening.
“He's in that one,” Gaven whispered.
Jurel followed the line of the Soldier's finger to a cell that looked like every other cell they had passed.
Grunting, Mikal pulled open the door and when Kurin stepped out, bedraggled, as filthy as he was and wearing a tired smile, Jurel was once again stunned to speechlessness.
“Took you long enough,” the old man grunted in a creaky voice.
“That's all of us then,” Mikal said, pointedly ignoring Kurin's snipe. “Let's go.”
“Here,” Daved said, handing Jurel a sword,
his sword. “You'll need this.”
Chapter 62
Dripping water echoed up and down the halls, high and hollow. The walls were black with mold, streaked with the stuff and it looked as though the cold stone bled. Torches hung from the walls so far apart that the light of one did not meet the light of the next leaving pools of ruddy brightness like island oases in the murk. The stench was that of a charnel house and they all coughed, suppressing gags as they walked quickly and silently from island to island toward the door that loomed ahead in the dark.
Daved and Mikal approached the door first, Jurel right behind them. Behind him, he heard a grunt and a stumble. He turned to see Kurin on his hands and knees, trembling and breathing heavily like a broken bellows. Kurin fared worse than he. Where Jurel had found hidden strength, unknown reserves like buried goldmines to tap, Kurin had wasted away. Seeing his mentor that way made Jurel tremble. With blackest pity and sorrow. With reddest rage.
Jumping forward from the rear, Gaven reached down and pulled Kurin to his feet. A flash and a fetid breath of dungeon air brushed past Jurel and suddenly, Gaven was goggling at Mikal's sword point only an inch from his throat. Wisely, he froze.
“Unhand him,” Mikal grated. “Now.”
His expression was stony. Jurel recognized it from when they had fought side by side. It was the expression he dawned like a protective cloak when he was about to draw blood, when he was about to kill. His eyes glittered and it seemed that he overflowed with pent violence, that somehow it seeped from his eyes and reached out, wrapping around Gaven, a dread promise.
Gaven's only response was an audible swallow, a faint click that in itself spoke volumes.
“Wait,” Jurel shouted. “Mikal, no. He's a friend.”
“Keep your voice down,” Daved growled.
“I said, unhand him. Last warning,” he said and his voice was cold. So cold that a chill ran up Jurel's spine.
“Mikal,” Jurel tried again, heeding his father's warning, speaking more softly, almost soothingly, the way one might speak to a spooked stallion. “Really, he's my friend. He kept me company on the journey up here. He freed me from my shackles. He won't hurt Kurin.”
Mikal's eyes flicked from Gaven's terrified ones to Jurel's horrified, pleading ones, and back again so quickly that Jurel thought he might have imagined it.
But still that sword remained poised to strike before Gaven could so much as blink the wrong way. Jurel was not actually sure if Gaven was still his friend. He had betrayed the young soldier and that nagged at him, left him feeling a dirty kind of guilt, an oily thing that oozed insidiously into the cracks of his conscience. He had to save him. He had to do something to redeem himself.
It was Kurin himself who saved the moment. He rolled his eyes and blew out a huff of air.
“Either stab him or don't,” Kurin said. “But if you do, can someone please catch me before I hit the ground again?”
Slowly, hesitantly, steel withdrew.
“Are you all right Kurin?” Jurel asked.
“I'll live. I just need a moment to gather myself,” the old man said with a weak smile.
And so it was. After Kurin drank some water from a skin hidden beneath Daved's cloak, they moved forward until they reached the door. Quickly, they passed through an office, little more than a cell like the one Jurel had just vacated with the exception of a plain, rickety desk, a slightly more tolerable smell, and a second door. And a torch—oh what Jurel would have given to have had a torch in his midnight hole. Gaven said this was where he was posted, this was where his own sentence was carried out.
They hesitated briefly, glancing at one another with uncertainty. Once they crossed the threshold of the second door, they would technically be out of the dungeon, though Gavin informed them the next two levels were largely unpopulated, home only to the rats and the cockroaches who scavenged in the various store rooms.
“I'll go first,” Gaven offered.
“What, so you can alert the first guard you see? I don't think so,” sneered Mikal.
Gaven trained a heated glare on the swordmaster but it was like an angry antelope trying to stare down a tiger. “I'm with you. I've had enough of this place. If you don't believe me, then go ahead and stab me.” To prove his point, he stepped forward and puffed his chest out and placed his hands on his hips. “Go ahead, then.”
It was such a ridiculous situation that Jurel laughed. Years ago, a lifetime ago, Trig had done a surprisingly good imitation of Valik, exaggerating Valik's self-importance. “I am the great Valik,” he had cried with a piping falsetto voice, standing over Darren and Jurel with an expression so haughty it was ridiculous, “I have bedded a million women, and I have poked a million men with my sword. But...I don't own a sword. So what'd I poke 'em with?” Jurel had laughed until tears streamed from his eyes and his ribs hurt. And Gaven stood in exactly that pose now, trying so hard to be impressive, trying his level best to look courageous until it was a parody.
“Let him lead Mikal,” Daved said. “He knows that if he betrays us, it'll be the last thing he ever does.”
“No,” Mikal warned, pointing one blunt finger at Gaven. “The last thing he'll ever do is bleed.”
They pressed themselves against the walls as Gaven pushed open the door and sauntered out as if he owned the place. The door closed and the only sound was the fizzing of the torch on the wall.
Even though Jurel felt stronger with every passing moment, he was still dizzy and his guts clenched and unclenched like a fist. Would Gaven betray them? Would they suddenly hear the door crash open and see a dozen guards storm into the tiny room with swords drawn? As if hearing his thoughts, Mikal drew his sword, a long rasping sound that shredded the silence and grated his ears. Gaven was his friend. He had to be. They had shared a great deal on their trip north and even though Jurel knew he had betrayed the young Soldier, he knew that Gaven was a good man, a man of honor. If he had helped Daved and Mikal, if he had not died in the line of duty on Mikal's sword—or Daved's for that matter—then that meant he would help them get away. Right? He held his breath and hoped, trying not to wince at the frailty of his logic.
The door creaked open and Gaven stepped in.
“Come on,” he said. “The way is clear at least until the next stairs.”
They entered a hallway much like the last one. Rough stone surrounded them still streaked with mold, doors marching into the darkness on both sides, and torches were spread apart so that their guttering flames still did little to alleviate the gloom. It still stank too but where the previous hall smelled like suffering and death, this hall smelled rotten, like ancient wood and spoiled food. Random doors stood open but mostly, the rooms beyond were too dark to see into as if, instead of rooms filled with forgotten stores, he looked into the nothingness that the legends said existed under the world.
They hurried, nearly running down the hallway and once again, a door loomed ahead, barring their way, hiding any obstacles that lay beyond. As before, Gaven went first to scout the way and he returned quickly with good news.
“Still clear,” he murmured. “But we'll have to be careful from here on. The next floor is more used.”
They climbed the narrow steps and Jurel felt as though the walls were pressing them close, closing in on them until he thought that perhaps the very structure they were in was alive and it was angry that they were making good their escape. Stifling his panic, he tried to push away the image in his mind of the walls growing narrower and narrower until finally they met in a cusp that would tolerate no further progress. Of course the walls, though close, never got any closer but still, when they reached the door at the top of the stairs, Jurel breathed a sigh of relief.
They continued on, with Gaven in the lead, passing door after door in this new place that was better lit, better cleaned, and hope began to blossom in Jurel's chest. They had not met a soul so far. Perhaps they could make it out. Perhaps they would reach the final door and fall into sunlight. Or was it night? It did not
matter. They would be in the clean air of the world again.
Gaven abruptly raised his hand and halted. Echoes of footsteps reached them around a sharp bend in the hall and voices, low and gravelly accompanied the irregular beat of their feet. Without warning, Gaven disappeared around the corner and Mikal hissed an oath.
“Hey boys,” Gaven called. “You coming to relieve me?”
“Bugger off,” one of them growled at him and the footsteps did not slow. “You're not to be relieved for another shift and you know it.”
“Of course,” Gaven said and laughed wryly. “I should have known the sergeant wouldn't send down four of you to relieve me.”
There were four soldiers ahead and Gaven had told them. Even with the deadly danger ahead, Jurel could not help but grin as a wave of relief washed through him. Gaven would not betray them. Gaven was still his friend. For some reason, that was almost more important to Jurel than escaping.
“What are you doin out o yer hole?” another guard asked.
“Just getting a breath of fresh air. Stinks down there you know. Besides, it's not like anyone is going to escape.”
The guards were close. Maybe no more than a few paces away though it was hard to tell. The echoes bounced and rebounded so many times that sometimes it seemed they could have come from behind Jurel's group. And then Gaven's plan came clear to Jurel: the young soldier was making pointless talk so that as the men answered, they unwittingly told the escapees where they were.
“Trying to shirk your duty again I warrant. Get your useless ass back down there before I decide Sarge needs to know.”
“Okay, okay. Sorry. I just wanted to breath something other than shit for a minute. I'm going.”
As soon as Gaven rounded the corner, eyes wide and sweat beading on his forehead like crystals on a crown, he spun and gripped his sword by the hilt and even in the gloom, Jurel could see the white of his knuckles. One step, two, then...
“Now,” whispered Gaven and drawing his sword rounded the corner again followed closely by Mikal and Daved.
