"All Irth bows before you," Baronet Fakel immediately asserted and lowered his head abjectly.
"Show me," the Dark Lord commanded. He gestured at the gargantuan sky gate, atop which perched several cacodemons. "This is one of the largest amulets in the world. Use it now to summon before me the Council of Seven and One."
Baronet Fakel glanced at his wife in a fluster of surprise, and she nodded just perceptibly. "Certainly, my lord," he agreed and fumbled beneath his robe to produce one of the power wands strapped to his torso. He gestured at the pedestal embossed with coiled abstract motifs and nothing happened.
Hu'dre Vra crossed his arms. "I see you are unfamiliar with the use of this, the largest amulet on Irth."
Lady Von nodded toward the other pedestal with its design of interlocking rings, and when he pointed the wand at that, a shaft of pearl light descended from the apex of the arch and swirled aquatically in the space between the conqueror and his subjects.
"Forgive me, my lord," Fakel said with glum contrition. "I have never before used the sky gate."
"Of course not," Hu'dre Vra said. "That is a privilege that belongs to the wizarduke alone. So where is Lord Drev?"
"He has fled, my lord," Fakel admitted. "He fears your wrath."
A sharp laugh cut across the night. "He fears my wrath! And you do not, Baronet?"
"I fear you, my lord," Baronet Fakel mumbled to his eel skin boots. "All Irth fears you."
"Do you fear me more than you despise me?"
"I do not despise you."
"You lie!" The Dark Lord's shout startled night birds from the distant tree line. "I killed your first wife, Mevea, the wizarduke's sister. I skewered her on the sword Taran. The mother of your children spilled her life's blood under my hand. And you do not despise me?"
Baronet Fakel's mouth worked soundlessly, and his eyes moved wildly in their sockets.
"It is not possible to despise what is greater than us." Lady Von spoke for her husband. "Our fear and awe overwhelm all other emotions."
Another laugh crackled from the black mask's needle-toothed baleen. "You have a sweet mouth, Lady Von. I will reward you for that shortly." The cruel countenance glared at Baronet Fakel. "Give her the power wand."
Fakel complied and stared with dismay at the Dark Lord.
"Oh, my! Look there, Baronet—" Hu'dre Vra extended a plated arm toward the night sky.
Against lucent star swirls flew the cacodemon he had dispatched earlier into the city. In its claws, two children dangled, legs kicking, arms swirling. Their alarmed cries squeaked faintly in the distance.
"There go the two boys Mevea dropped into this world for you. I think you should join them on their dark journey to hell, yes? You are, after all, their father. Farewell, Baronet."
Fakel backed away, both arms outstretched in horror. A cacodemon broke from the pack behind the Dark Lord and slouched toward the terrified baronet. Barking with fright, Fakel turned and ran two paces before claws seized his robes and swung him, mewling, into the night sky.
"Now, my dear." Hu'dre Vra addressed Lady Von. "Summon for me the Council of Seven and One that I may hear for myself their capitulation."
Lady Von glanced briefly at her husband's frantic writhings in the cacodemon's grasp as he diminished into obscure heights. Then she waved the power wand at the shaft of pearl light and commanded, "Convene the Council!"
The wet shaft of gemlight widened to a glass table at which sat two mages and six vacant blue chairs.
Hu'dre Vra put out his hand, and a cacodemon approached from the pack behind him and handed over a sturdy belt of white crushed leather. The Dark Lord fit together the hefty pouches of the belt to form the falcon seal talisman.
He held the emblem before the glass table in two outstretched arms. "This is the most potent amulet on Irth," he declared. "It is the glory belt worn by the regent of the Council of Seven and One. And I took it from the corpse of the Margrave Keon in the ruins of Arwar Odawl. And so he is absent tonight from our historic gathering."
The Dark Lord paced before the table, presenting the glory belt to each seat. "Earl Mac of Sharna-Bambara, a prominent wizard," he announced before the first of the empty chairs. "He has refused to submit to my rule. But he has also already been found, cowering in the sanctuary of Umber Moss, a holy place that offered him no escape from my wrath. At this moment, he suffers his fourth death in my Palace of Abominations. And he will die many more times before I surrender him to oblivion."
"Lady Rica." Hu'dre Vra spoke before the next vacant chair and jangled the glory belt in the gemlight. "Conjurer from the Reef Isles of Nhat—the dominion of my origin. Absent!" He shook the talisman in his fist and rocked his black countenance side to side, like a bull mesmerized with rage. "Find her and bring her to me for punishment—for none shall defy me and live, except in torment."
A flock of cacodemons peeled away from the throng behind the Dark Lord and shot into the starry night.
At the next empty seat, he swung the glory belt like a noose. "Lady Altha, sorceress of Zul. She and her husband, Lord Hazar, foolishly believe they can elude me. Track them down for the demented creatures that they are and deliver them to me for punishment that will exalt death to mercy."
A tall ash-blond woman, dark eyed, sat at the glass table. Her witch veils folded sumptuously to reveal a refined face of patrician hauteur. At the approach of the Dark Lord, she bent forward with elegant deference and spoke in a voice of indigo velvet. "My lord, I am yours entirely to command."
"Lady Thylia." Hu'dre Vra spoke in a tone of naked appreciation, "witch queen of the Malpais Highlands. Your deference to me and to my mastery of Irth has won you preference in my eyes. You shall be my consort—queen of all Irth."
"My lord!" She looked up with surprised joy. "I will live to serve you."
"Of course. And you will live long and know every pleasure, every fulfillment that the human heart may hold." He nodded with satisfaction. "I shall come to you soon in your mountain fastness of Andezé Crag. Await me."
Beside the queen of Irth, the Dark Lord paused before another vacancy and shook the falcon seal talisman vehemently. "Lyna—enchantress from the Falls of Mirdath. Your absence condemns you! Find the fat woman and bring her to me that she may taste my wrath and know true bitterness."
More cacodemons spurted into the heavens and vanished.
In the next chair, a stick stood propped against the glass table, and from it dangled a leathery skin. Limp rags of boneless arms draped the tabletop. A flaccid mask, human flesh empty of eyes, devoid of teeth, hung from the stick. In the gaping mouth hole, a blue flame danced.
"Hu'dre Vra," the flame spoke soft and sibilant. "Dark Lord of Irth—I offer you my complete and devoted obedience."
"And I accept, Ralli-Faj, warlock of the Spiderlands." Hu'dre Vra stood squarely before the human husk. "A wise man knows his master. Your wisdom has earned you the privilege of serving me as my personal weapons master. You shall go at once to the Reef Isles of Nhat and supervise there the completion of my Palace of Abominations, of which you shall be steward. The cacodemons shall obey you as they do me."
In front of the last chair, the Dark Lord spoke. "This is the empty seat of the wizarduke, Lord Drev. His absence bespeaks his cowardice. Find him and bring him to the Palace of Abominations, where his suffering will stain eternity!"
A drove of cacodemons rocketed upward, blotching the brilliant night.
Hu'dre Vra shook the glory belt over his upturned head. "Here is the mightiest amulet on Irth—and it cannot touch me or my hosts! For it is the gathered light of the Abiding Star—and I have found my strength far from the light of Charm, in the cold worlds hung in the void. I defy the light and all its Charm. For I am the Dark Lord, and I gather the darkness!"
Shouting that last word, Hu'dre Vra ripped apart the falcon seal talisman, and a spray of green fire showered him. Tendons of lightning thrummed from his hands upward to the arc of the sky gate.
And with a brittl
e roar, the gemlight and the glass table it illuminated vanished in a glare of voltaic fire. In the ensuing silence and deeper darkness, the sparkling ash of the incinerated glory belt trickled from the Dark Lord's clenched fists like diamond dust.
Lady Von lay on the ground with her face pressed into the grass, visibly quaking.
"Rise, Lady Von," Hu'dre Vra commanded with vibrant resonance. "Rise and receive the reward I promised you."
The small woman pushed nervously to her feet.
With one wag of his finger, the Dark Lord beckoned forward from the crowd of cacodemons the gnomish dwarf Romut. "Lady Von, this is your new husband. Fulfill his every whim. And in return, I give you my countenance. At Romut's side, you shall rule Dorzen and all of Ux."
Lady Von shuddered, eyes agape at the sight of the squat, warty man. Then, reluctantly, she complied with a curtsy that nearly dropped her again to the ground.
"Romut"—Hu'dre Vra spoke proudly and with sinister glee—"you shall take for your own what was once the wizarduke's. And here, with Lady Von, you will reign in my name. You will reign and be happy—happy at last for our defeat as Bold Ones, happy for our return, happy at last to destroy what once destroyed us!"
One Day in the Calendar of Eyes
Billows of stars filled the tall windows of the sanctuary’s great hall. The sages, who had finished their nocturnal meditations at the altars under the giant windows, retreated from the vaulted hall in single file, a crepitant line of swishing silver robes.
From one of the many tiered balconies overlooking the great hall, the sorcerer Caval watched the sages disappear into the dark colonnade beyond.
The sorcerer sighed. As a young man, he had wanted to worship in these grand corridors. He had wanted to be a sage. His birthright had forbidden him that ambition. Only a sigh remained of a lifetime's yearning.
Caval, tall and robust, wore his bright red hair cropped close and his orange whiskers precisely trimmed to outline the stern contours of his hard mouth. Garbed in tinsel and blue-gauze windings as if for a funeral ascension, he gripped the balustrade and surveyed the colossal hall for a last time.
Soon, Irth would turn to face the Abiding Star, and he would depart this world of form and appearances. Then the lost ambitions of his youth, the history of social attainments and personal failures that was his life, and all the struggles of his brutal past would vanish. Forever.
"Nostalgic, Caval?" A wispy voice lilted out of a dark alcove. A tiny man haloed by a shock of shiny black hair and dense beard emerged onto the balcony. "It is not yet too late to join the sages. The Abiding Star abides."
"Master Ah!" Caval turned from the balustrade and bowed so deeply before the sanctuary's adept that he showed the back of his bristle-cropped head. Though he displayed no sign of advanced age, Master Ah! was the oldest man on Irth. Caval continued in a tone of hushed reverence, "I but pause to honor those who honor the celestial secrets."
"Then, stay, Caval." The adept dressed in the manner of a common maintenance worker, in a utilitarian jumpsuit of neutral gray and black cloth slippers. He casually leaned an elbow on the balcony railing, which came to his shoulder's height, and looked up with admiration at the large man. "Stay and honor those celestial secrets with us. You have been here only a short while. We have barely gotten to know you. Stay."
"No." Caval declined with a curt shake of his head. "That would be graceless of me."
"True," the adept agreed, raising his thickly tufted eyebrows. "You have accrued enough Charm to climb the Calendar of Eyes. The others would indeed find such reluctance graceless. But then, none among them has suffered the risks that you have endured to possess Charm in such bounty." His eyebrows lowered and knitted to a fierce stare of command. "Stay, Caval, and give them cause for wonder."
"Wonder, Master Ah!—or envy?"
The adept's stare relented to a soft smile, and he answered in his small voice, "Are they not the same? What is it that evokes wonder in us but the desire to apprehend what cannot be grasped? Consider then, wonder is but a higher octave of envy."
"Master, your wisdom humbles me."
"That a man with the enormous Charm you possess can know humility fills me with wonder!" The adept laughed in frail gusts and pressed his back against the balustrade. "That is why I wish you would stay among us a while longer."
"I did not get my Charm through wisdom, Master—as well you know. It would be gracelessly brazen of me to pretend otherwise."
"True, again, Caval. You are a sorcerer—but a sorcerer who knows humility and respects wisdom. You are a rare one. I will be saddened to see you gone from our midst."
"If I were merely a sorcerer, Master, I would be tempted to stay and pursue wisdom with you and the sages. But I am a sorcerer from the Brood of Assassins—and a former weapons master at that! I gained my Charm by deeds of war and intrigue. You know all this, of course. Yet I say this now for my sake, for I dare not forget it. Charm is too easily lost. And the more Charm one possesses, the more easily it slips away. If I lose what Charm I have—Charm I have won through the suffering of others—I know I will lack the wisdom to remain humble. In fact, I know I would go mad remembering all the blood that has been spilled for me to have come this far. It is best, then, that I take the Charm I have and use it now, while I still have it, to climb the Calendar of Eyes, enter the caudal trance, and become one with the Abiding Star."
The adept pushed away from the railing and gazed earnestly at the sorcerer. "What you propose is worthy, Caval. In this world of form, Charm is hard-won and easily spent. All of us, myself included, stand in amazement before your strength. You have the Charm to climb the Calendar of Eyes, where few among us have gone. It matters not how you won your Charm. That you have the wisdom to use it to return to the Abiding Star is proof enough that you are worthy. Most anyone else would use such wealth to make a comfortable place for themselves on Irth. A true man of spirit, you desire the Beginning, the source of all creation. I will say no more to dissuade you." He bowed and backed away. "Go now. Irth turns. The portal to the Beginning will soon open."
Caval returned the adept's bow. "Farewell, Master Ah!"
"Farewell, Sorcerer Caval." His thin voice sounded without echo from the depths of the gallery. When the sorcerer looked up, the tiny, vivid man had departed.
Caval pondered what the adept had said and turned to face again the enormous windows lining the great hall. He noticed that the sky had brightened. The fishnet of stars hung in blue darkness. Perhaps I should wait another day or so and be certain I am done with this world.
That thought sounded hollow. He knew well enough he was done with Irth. For over forty-five thousand days, he had worn this body. In that time, he had fulfilled all the disciplines, internal arts, and martial skills within the Brood of Assassins, and he had mastered sorcery and attained to the perilous rank of weapons master for the most venerable family on Irth.
Gazing down at the empty hall of altars and meditation mats illuminated by moted rays from floating lanterns, he wished he could have attained his Charm in this hallowed place. Then, most certainly, he would still be a sage, for not even Master Ah! had yet acquired sufficient Charm to leave this sanctuary and climb the virtually airless and deathly cold slopes to the Calendar of Eyes.
Caval nodded with satisfaction. The adept, he knew, was right. It mattered not how he had acquired his Charm. The power was his at last. He had satisfied all his allegiances. The Charm belong to him legitimately, to do with as he pleased.
Confident of his decision, Caval left the balcony. He marched down a stone corridor that led toward massive bronze doors pocked with corrosion. Tens of thousands of days had passed since anyone had possessed the Charm to open this huge pylon.
With a simple gesture, he flung the metal doors wide, and they screamed as they opened and sent loud echoes tumbling over each other down the corridor and into all the catacombed alcoves and tiered galleries of the great hall. Throughout the sanctuary, wonder ignited the hearts of every
sage.
Beyond the pylon, musty darkness waited. Caval snapped his fingers, and the air around him glowed with turquoise light that illuminated nitre-crusted walls—and an airlock.
He gestured again and spent another tiny fraction of his Charm to shut the immense doors behind him. The clangor sounded dimly through the thick portals and shook the stones, pouring thin streams of powdered rock from the remote ceiling.
The sorcerer pressed his large body against the wheel of the airlock, and as it turned, the valve hissed sharply. Stale air sucked away. Cold bit into him briefly, before his Charm swirled warmth outward to protect him. He pulled the airlock open and stepped through.
He found himself outside the sanctuary on the northern slope of the Calendar of Eyes. In violet darkness, starlight chiseled a rocky horizon from shadow. Redstone walls—brown in the predawn gloom—climbed high above the mouse hole that had released him to this near-airless wasteland at the highest point on Irth.
No one stood on the battlements under the starry fumes and the banners of stratospheric clouds. He departed the ancient sanctuary without witnesses and climbed a gravel incline blotched with frost.
Shielded by Charm, the sorcerer mounted the rocky slope toward a snow peak that glowed amber in morning light. That was the summit of the Calendar of Eyes. At that terraced height, vision extended across time, and one could see ahead to the furthest ranges of creation—or backward to the source, to the Beginning.
Already, even at this height, time appeared layered. Glancing behind, Caval sighted the temporal mosaic of the sanctuary: an empty stone field with the ghostly overlay of scaffolded walls and the finished sanctuary itself maroon as a scab that peeled away to reveal again the rubble of an empty field and, at its center, a husk of ruins.
He concentrated on climbing. The bare scree crunched under his boots, and the tinsel and gauze windings of his apparel snapped their tiny flags in the stiff wind pouring from the heights. Red sunlight blared off the crest.
The Dark Shore (The Dominions of Irth Book 1) Page 9
