He’d placed all of his hope in his son, who was so cruelly murdered one night at the end of autumn. Hatred for Maleela, his lone daughter and reason for his wife’s death, spurred him to invade neighboring Rogscroft. The old king allowed Harnin to recruit Bahr and a crew of misfits to reclaim Maleela from her captors while he took the army to conquer the one kingdom he’d envied since rising to the throne. The nightmare campaign that followed was the result.
Now, months later, he’d lost his kingdom, his army, and what remained of his dignity. The few hundred men that remained loyal to his banner huddled together in the long boats as sea water splashed over them. Despite having so many familiar faces clinging to him, Badron found no comfort. They were the remnants of more than ten thousand soldiers and another thousand of his personal retinue. The Wolfsreik abandoned him almost to the man. That left him with a Goblin army not even he wanted.
Badron folded his arms, reluctantly, across his chest and frowned as his thoughts centered on Grugnak and his Goblins. They’d originally invaded Rogscroft under the direction of Amar Kit’han and the Dae’shan for purposes he wasn’t made privilege to. The insult dug deep but Badron learned early on that his puppet masters never divulged more information than they wanted him to know. Killing and maiming their way across northern Malweir on their march from the Deadlands, the Goblins arrived in Rogscroft ready to fight.
He begrudgingly acknowledged their contributions in sacking the capital city and executing his rival, Stelskor. Everything went south after that. Somehow the young whelp Aurec got a hold of Rolnir and twisted his mind until he convinced the commanding general of the most powerful army in half of Malweir to turn traitor and take his army with him. That betrayal led to a near absolute slaughter of Goblins outside of Grunmarrow. Grugnak had been beside himself, much to Badron’s chagrin. While the king of Delranan enjoyed seeing his longtime enemy destroyed, it left him with an exposed flaw. There wasn’t a force strong enough to keep Rolnir from coming after him.
“Hold on, we’re putting in,” one of the crewmen said brusquely. Bald with a long moustache and tattoos covering his exposed forearms, he ignored Badron, treating him like nothing more than a common thief in the night.
Badron’s stomach churned as the bottom of the boat ground across the gravel and sand. His ears burned at the sound. Forcing himself to stand, the king of Delranan steadied himself and prepared to take his first steps on his home soil in months. The time had finally come to reclaim what was stolen. Grugnak and his Goblins were behind in the other boats, well out of earshot but he kept his thoughts private just in case. Sound always traveled farther at night. The last thing he needed now was the complication of Grugnak overhearing his order to scuttle the other boats. Reluctantly he admitted he was going to need the Goblins in order to kill Harnin and reclaim his kingdom.
The decision to execute his longtime friend turned bitter rival wasn’t easy to come to. Badron viewed decades of loyalty in great esteem. Every man was capable of moments of poor judgment. Harnin certainly suffered from his. The former first advisor in the council of lords seemed to abandon reason the moment Badron left for Rogscroft. Rumors said he’d turned Delranan into a nightmare beyond reckoning. Civilians were being massacred. Towns and villages burned to the ground as the survivors starved during the unusually cold winter. What his family spent generations trying to develop Harnin ruined in the course of a single season. There was no choice but to kill the man for his indiscretions.
“Captain says to wait here fer the rest of yer party,” the same crewman ordered.
Badron turned on the swarthy man with a raised fist. “Mind your tongue, cur. You’re addressing a king.”
Tension filled the small boat until the crewman broke out laughing. “Not my king. I don’t give a rat’s ass who you think you are, mate. This is my boat. My rules. Now if you please, yer Majesty, get yer ass off of my boat.”
Badron quickly counted heads and saw he was outnumbered. Those few loyalists riding with him were the weakest of his group and would barely slow the pirates before he was skewered himself. Conversely, none of the pirates appeared meek. Each of them looked ready to kill for no reason. He didn’t relish the thought of his body drifting out to sea as he bled out. Holding his tongue, he stepped onto the shore.
SIX
Darkness
Maleela drifted in and out of consciousness longer than she remembered. Her body was abused, scratched, and torn from the harsh treatment of the Harpies. Many long months on the road, first en route to Rogscroft under Aurec’s care and then in the custody of her uncle, had taken their toll on her. She was mentally exhausted. Reality was fragmented as she struggled to put recent events together. Never had she expected to be torn from Bahr’s protection and taken to….where? She had no way of knowing. Trapped in a semi-permanent dark room, Maleela could only guess they were back in the north. Cold wind gusts slashed into the room each time the door opened.
Her life was reduced to bouts of troubled sleep and poor meals of gruel and moldy bread. She might have been a princess but was never made accustomed to an easy life of luxury. She ate what those around her ate and lived in the same fashion. She’d been a prisoner before but this went far beyond the torments Harnin devised. Worse, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being under constant surveillance.
Her skin crawled each time the door hushed open. She felt, more than saw, cold eyes scrutinizing her. As much as she felt the need to rise up and confront her captors, Maleela found she couldn’t. She imagined they were drugging her food, trying to maintain complacency. How many days or nights she’d been trapped in her tiny cell she didn’t know. Not a soul bothered to make itself known to her either, further compounding her building rage.
Maleela lacked the strength to stand so she crawled across the floor in an attempt at giving her prison definition. Unlike traditional cells, like the ones her father kept under Chadra Keep, this one was relatively clean. There was no decaying offal. No rats crawling through soiled straw. It lacked the smells associated with men condemned to never seeing the sun again. Maleela took small comfort in this, for it gave her a brief insight into her captors. If they wanted her tortured and killed they wouldn’t have put so much effort in keeping her cage clean.
The door opened and closed suddenly before any light had the chance to slip in. Maleela cringed as the temperature dropped considerably. She wasn’t alone.
“Princess, my apologies for keeping you like an animal,” the wicked voice hissed with an oddly soothing tone. “I would give you better but it has been a long time since this place was last used. You are the first guest in generations. Welcome.”
She tried to speak but only managed to croak from the lack of water. Her throat felt clammy. Her lips were chapped. So many accusations burned in her mind in a mental scream but failed to materialize. Frustrated, she huddled in the far corner and pulled her knees to her chest.
“Ah, your passion invigorates me. Long has it been since I’ve last felt such fire in a mortal soul,” he cooed. “Turning you shall be…enjoyable.”
Maleela coughed and spat a wad of phlegm on the floor. “Turn me into what?”
Her words were hoarse. Ill formed, they stumbled off her lips like a child learning to speak. Her tongue was swollen, slow to react. She resisted the urge to punch to cold ground, but what else could she do? Her body betrayed her.
“That is a conversation for another time. I leave you now with a final thought. All your long years spent languishing under your father’s indifference have prevented you from becoming the woman you deserve. What punishments should be delivered upon a man who would neglect his own blood kin?”
“How dare you!” she tried to shout before her throat constricted and left her choking mildly as the door closed again. The second time she said it came out as barely a whisper. Feeling pathetic and helpless, Maleela collapsed in on herself and let darkness claim her.
She spent hours trying to think of a proper reply to her tormentor. Her m
ind bent around his words. Logic demanded he was trying to influence her thought patterns and change her preconceived notions of how life was meant to be. But to what ends? She was the current heir to the throne and would never sit upon it. Delranan would never accept a queen no matter how justly she attempted to rule. Superstitions and male-dominant dogma crippled their minds to the point where they, as a people, were intolerant of anything new. Maleela frowned, suddenly growing angry. She deserved better. Her kingdom deserved better. Perhaps it was time for a changing of the guard. Otherwise Delranan threatened to slide back into a darker, earlier age few remembered and even fewer wished to return to.
The thread of weakness that had prevented her from obtaining her full potential and becoming the proper heir to the throne finally frayed and snapped there in the impossible darkness of her cell. Events both past and present swirled like the waters of a great maelstrom, colliding into a bright and terrible future. The notion she could elevate to become a queen of dreams, of unbridled righteousness enticed her mind. She felt inspired. If only there were a way out of her prison and back into the throne room of her ancestors.
Memories of killing Ionascu suddenly burst to life. She closed her eyes to will the visions away, but all she saw was the slender blade punch into his crippled body and the confused look in his eyes as he died. Screaming, she opened her eyes and furiously rubbed her hands together in a desperate attempt at wiping the blood off. Guilt stained her soul much deeper than she imagined it ever could. Pain and nightmares mocked her from the distance. No matter how hard she tried to shove them away the memories returned time and again to clutch her, holding her in a lover’s embrace as the future world burned around her.
Rage turned to sorrow. Maleela wasn’t as strong as she wanted to believe. True, she’d killed a man in cold blood but the strength in her actions wasn’t translated into her own blood. She was weak and knew it. Racked with conflicting emotions, she collapsed back on herself and cried herself to sleep.
The feeling of being watched returned the moment she opened her eyes. There was no telling how long she’d been asleep or how long her captor had been watching. She took small comfort in knowing he seemed to lack any urge of touching her.
“You must eat, princess of Delranan,” he suggested smoothly. His words glistened in the dark like jewels waiting to be carved from mountain veins. “Strength is required if you are to ascend to your appointed place in the world.”
She blindly kicked at the bowl somewhere near her feet, missing in the futile attempt.
He laughed. “Ever defiant. That is good. You will need that fire.”
“What do you want from me?” she asked for the hundredth time since arriving here. Hope slowly bled away with each asking.
“To become more,” he answered blankly. “What else is there?”
Maleela shook her head vehemently. “That’s not an answer. You starve me. You torment me with endless questions and hollow promises. Why am I here?”
“Be careful who you accuse of what. It might not end well for you,” he snapped. “You say we torment you, when in fact you are the one expounding an endless stream of questions with the vain attempt at discovering truths your mind is not prepared for. We feed you. Perhaps not the sort of food a princess is accustomed to, but enough to ensure your health. You have not been touched, nor shall you be. Tell me, what then have we done that prompts your insecurities?”
It was her turn to laugh. His redirection of guilt broke against her newfound rage. She clenched her fists defiantly. “I was taken from my uncle, my friends by force. Your pets cut and scraped me. They beat me on the way to wherever we are now. When my father learns of this, he….”
“Will do nothing! Your father is a pathetic waste of human flesh. Men like that better serve the gods as pack animals. They are meant to suffer and wallow like pigs while their betters rule. Spare me your false sincerity concerning your father. He has no more love for you than you for us. Oh yes, we know all about your broken relationship. The countless nights spent wallowing in self-pity as you struggle to know why you’ll never be loved.”
“There you are wrong,” Maleela said between sobs. “I have all of the love I’ll ever need.”
There was silence for a moment, as if her captor was taken off guard. When he spoke next his voice was softer, lacking the visceral edge. “You refer to your beloved Prince Aurec. Or perhaps I should say king, for the death of his father--at your father’s hands--has left him the heir to a ruined kingdom.”
“My father wouldn’t have.” Her protest sounded weak even as she said it.
“But he did. Badron relished murdering his way through Rogscroft. He personally took the head from King Stelskor and had the body strung up on the wall. I know. I was there. Your father killed all of those people at my urging.”
The revelation exploded through the corners of her mind. Maleela tried to push aside denial, refusing to believe her father capable of destroying so many lives. That’s when she recalled an earlier conversation with Anienam Keiss where he’d explained the Dae’shan and their foul, manipulative ways. Logic directed her to the answers she desperately wanted.
“You’re one of them,” she said as her voice dropped to a whisper.
“Them?”
She could almost hear his head cock as he toyed with her. “One of the Dae’shan.”
The hiss escaping his lips reminded her of a nest of snakes. “You are remarkably well informed. Perhaps we should have killed you outright rather than attempt to illuminate you.”
“Your words drip poison. I know of your kind,” she retorted. “Murderers and usurpers! You have been a bane on humanity for generations.”
Amar Kit’han snarled within the comforts of his hood. He underestimated her, a mistake he was unaccustomed to making. The leader of the Dae’shan regretted not having her killed long ago when he first arrived in Delranan. She was much stronger than any of her bloodline, save perhaps Bahr. But the Sea Wolf was a grizzled, old man soured on the idea of having anything to do with his kingdom. Badron had been weak, easily manipulated into doing his bidding. Amar Kit’han languished under fresh doubts on whether he’d be able to coerce Maleela enough in time.
“Humanity should never have been allowed to crawl from the muck. The gods played with life, manipulating evolution until you became the plague you are now,” he hissed.
Maleela felt buoyed with an unexpected glimmer of hope. She saw a chance, just a sliver of hope of turning the tides on her captors. “Anienam told us you were once part of the very filth you now despise. You were once human.”
“That was long ago. We abandoned the constraints of mortality and humanity in favor of ascending to a greater world. What could a mere child know of becoming more than yourself? Mind your tongue lest I forget what I need you for.”
Frigid cold blasted through the cell and she was alone again. Maleela grinned, knowing she had just gotten the upper hand against a great evil. It was several moments longer before she tentatively stuck her hands out in search of her food. The Dae’shan was correct. She needed to eat in order to keep her strength. Time was fast approaching when she’d be in need of it.
* * * * *
“She shows remarkable insight, misdirected as it may be,” Kodan Bak said, reluctantly approving of Maleela’s worth. His bone-thin arms were clasped behind his back. The blackness of his robes lightened and darkened with his thoughts. “This one will be dangerous if she is not properly broken.”
Amar Kit’han stared down through the transparent floor watching Maleela hungrily devour her meal. As a special enticement they’d given her meat for the first time. The fact wasn’t lost on her. She devoured it like a starving jungle cat. “We shall see. Time is fleeing us much faster than I admit being prepared for. The hour draws near and she has not yet been shown her true destiny.”
“The girl is not necessary to our success,” Kodan countered logically.
They’d prepared for this hour for centuries, culling huma
nity in efforts of finding the perfect genetic combination capable of releasing the power of the Olagath Stone and opening the portal between dimensions. Maleela and Badron were the results of all of Amar’s research and study. “A useful tool if nothing else. Is the Stone prepared?”
Kodan floated backwards a few feet before coming to a halt. “As much as can be without the chosen ones to finish the work. It has been a very long time since I felt the raw power of so much mortal suffering. The Stone has an intoxicating effect.”
“As well it should. Thousands of souls have been bled into the Stone. The dark gods will be pleased with our efforts,” Amar replied. His ice-colored eyes never left Maleela. Despite his willingness to use her as a tool he felt the odd tug of emotion deep inside. Could she be more than what he proclaimed her to be? He toyed with the idea of propping her up to be the wicked empress of the north. The idea was not without appeal.
Kodan Bak watched his superior with renewed hatred. Matters hadn’t been the same since they came to Delranan. More and more his thoughts turned towards eliminating Amar and seizing power for his own selfish reasons. The dark gods would punish him endlessly if he displeased them. It was almost a risk he was willing to take. Almost. The time was not quite right for his rise to power.
“Ever you watch me with wicked intent, Kodan Bak,” Amar accused. “You and I will have a reckoning. Soon. Until then I want you to continue trying to break her. She is decidedly more pliant than when the Hags brought her but not enough to be usable.”
“As you command,” Kodan Bak confirmed and faded away, leaving Amar Kit’han alone in his torment.
SEVEN
Return
Pain. Electricity surged through their flesh. Molecules were deconstructed and rebuilt in the blink of an eye. Time and space collided in a myriad of nightmares and pleasures. Sensation turned to nothingness. They watched the world being born, live out its life, and burn away into vast darkness. That same darkness robbed all thought and light, permeating reality until nothing remained but the cold ashes of what might have been.
The Madness of Gods and Kings Page 5
