by Jordan Baker
"The city is empty of people," Borrican said. "We should have the army retreat to the ships, and be ready to sail. There is no point in endangering them." He turned to Ariana. "It might be better if you were to lead them to safety."
Ariana shook her head.
"No, I will face this god that has darkened my kingdom," she said. "I will see this done."
"Your fire will not destroy the shadow," Borrican said. "It is too dangerous."
"My fire may not destroy it, but it is enough to keep the shadows from harming me," Ariana told him, and she let loose a small blast of fire toward a patch of darkness that was moving past the gate. The shadows recoiled from her flames even though it did not seem to burn away. "Besides, I have a dragon to protect me, many dragons in fact."
"I'll keep the shadow away from her," Zachary said. "Our reasons might be different, Ariana, but I think we'd both like to see what has become of him for ourselves."
"You are far more astute than you pretend to be," Ariana said, almost offering a compliment to the mage, toward whom she still remained more than a little wary.
"Now don't you go ruining my bad reputation," Zachary said with a pained smile. "I've accomplished a lot of terribly foolish things to be reviled by so many."
"That is also true," Ariana said, with a hint of ice in her voice.
"That's much better," he said, then he gestured toward the gate and the darkness beyond. "Shall we?"
"We shall," Ariana replied, and her fire grew around her to almost match those of the mage, and she turned to Borrican. "Are you coming, dear?"
"Of course," he said, with flames flickering in his eyes.
"What about you?" Ariana asked Ehlena.
"I will find my own way there," she said with a nod, then she disappeared into the air.
Stavros and Calthas erected a magical barrier around the gate as Zachary, Ariana and Borrican passed through it, pushing the shadows back briefly with the heat of their flames. As soon as they had moved beyond, the darkness returned and began to leech away at the spell, and the light of the trio that should have blazed brightly began to fade, absorbed by the shadows that surrounded them. With the barrier set, the army began to retreat from the city, grudgingly giving up the ground they had taken only a short while before, but all who had laid eyes on the ominous darkness that lay beyond the gates to the inner city knew that the further away they were from that power, the better off they would be.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"It seems you have been granted your wish," Brian said to Pike as he crushed another one of the strange reptilian creatures with his axes. "There's another one of the foul creatures."
Pike scowled and stalked toward a figure that ambled from the shadows into the light of a guttering torch in the hallway of the palace. The pale skin, the reptilian scales, her voluptuous figure and brooding sensuality of her face was like a mirror image of Calexis, except for the mindless look in her eyes. As Pike raised his sword to attack, her mouth opened wide, revealing rows of curved, sharp teeth and an animalistic screech emanated from her throat. Steel bit into her neck and the stench of rotting flesh filled the air as another corpse fell to the cold, stone floor.
"Well done, Pike. That's another one," Brian said as he pulled his axe from the head of a large lizard that looked like a Darga but had been more like a beast.
"How many more of them must we kill?" Pike asked.
"All of them," Brian said, then he looked up. "Every last one."
Another lizard creature leapt from the shadows on the ceiling, flying toward them, with short wings guiding its flight and a mouth full of fangs bared to attack. Brian knocked it from the air with a swipe of one of his axes, nearly cleaving the creature in two. Black, acidic blood sizzled on the stone floor and Brian wiped a spatter of it from his cheek, thankful for the protective magic of the armor he wore.
"Careful of that blood," he said to Pike. "It's acid and it burns worse than the Darga blood."
"I wondered why my hand hurt so much," the young Xallan said, his hand and wrist of his sword arm red and swollen from having been burned earlier, when he had killed a larger lizard that had attacked him. "There is no end to these creatures."
"I'd like to know where they came from," Brian commented.
"If the creature that was just dispatched by Pike is any indication, it is fairly obvious that these are spawn of the Xallan Queen," Kroma said, his voice echoing in his thoughts.
"I take that back," Brian said aloud. "I would rather not know such things."
Down a side passage, Fergus and several of the blood handed soldiers kicked down a door and found several frightened servants, who had locked themselves in a storage room. They appeared confused and the terrified look in their eyes conveyed some of what they had experienced under Calexis' dark rule over the palace. They also did not want to leave what they thought was the safety of the room, and they cowered in fright as Fergus and the soldiers crowded around the doorway, trying to coax them out.
"Yer all right now," Fergus told them. "We've come to get you safe, out of this place."
"We will escort them out through the passage beneath the city wall," one of the soldiers said.
"But, there's creatures," said one of the servants, a young boy with the dust of flour and stains of fruit preserves spattered on the apron he wore.
"By the looks of ye, yer a baker, aren't ya lad?" Fergus asked him.
"I work in the kitchens," he stammered nervously.
"Well, I've need of a baker down at White Falls," he said. "How's you like to get away from the city, an' come teach us country folk how them fancy folk make their pastries."
"Is it safe?"
"It's safer outside the city walls than here in the palace, that's for sure," Fergus said, then he smiled warmly. "Now go with 'em. Yer in good hands, lad, along with the rest of ye. Follow the soldiers, they'll get you out."
They had cleared numerous hallways and rooms as they made their way up through the floors of the palace, both making sure that they would not be cornered or trapped, and hoping to find anyone who could be rescued. So far, they had discovered only a few dozen servants, but there seemed to be no end to the strange creatures that attacked them. As the soldiers helped the palace servants back down the passageway, Fergus made his way to where he had seen Brian and the young Xallan named Pike, and he was astonished at what he saw.
Torches had been thrown about a large cavern that appeared to have been carved out of the palace itself. In numerous places, soldiers fought with more of the lizard creatures, some of them as small as dogs and others almost the size of the Darga creatures, though none seemed to be as powerful. Fergus spotted Brian and Pike, and as he headed toward them, he caught sight of Berant, who stood stock still in front of them, staring straight ahead. Fergus saw a young man, who looked barely as old as Brian or Pike, walking toward the general, stark naked, his skin dripping with a sort of thick, viscous liquid.
"What is that?" Pike whispered, then he pointed to a large, egg shaped sack just beyond the young man, which broke open, spilling fluid onto the floor as an arm reached out of it. "There's another one."
"They are abominations, foul creatures, the spawn of the Xallan queen," Berant said, his voice grim, and he strode forward toward the young man who looked exactly the way he had when he was a young man, and cut him down with his blade. The creature howled as it fell to the stone floor, its teeth sharp and jagged, similar to the replicas of the dark queen, and black blood flowed from the deep wound across its shoulder. It looked up at Berant, whimpering, with a questioning look upon its face, and the general lifted his blade and plunged it into him.
"Should we just kill them like this?" Brian asked.
"If you want to let Calexis' spawn live, then be my guest," Berant said as he yanked his sword free and turned to face the others. "This creature is mine to dispatch, and that goes for any others like it as well."
Brian looked more closely at the young man, and now that he was dead, his
expression still grim with pain, he saw the resemblance between him and the general.
"There is a different one. I will kill one," Pike said, stalking past Berant toward the creature that was clawing its way free from the strange birthing sack from which it had been borne.
"What foul magic is this?" Fergus asked, breathless with shock.
"Calexis has bred herself an army," Kroma rumbled. "It is good that we have discovered these creatures before they have had a chance to mature. There is no telling what they might become under the influence of the queen and the god, but there is no doubt that they are all servants of the shadow. The darkness lives within each and every one of them."
"Then we must destroy each and every one of them," Brian said.
"There are others," Berant said, pointing with his sword at the dozens of empty sacks in the great cavern. "We may have to search for them if they find a way out of the palace."
Brian heard a whisper in his ear, and he blinked.
"It will have to wait," he said. "You must fall back."
"We have only just begun," Berant growled. "We must still find the queen."
"Calexis is dead," Brian told him, then Kroma's voice spoke. "The battle against the shadow is imminent, and you cannot be in this part of the palace when it begins. Call back your soldiers."
"Then we will not face our foe?" Berant said.
"What do you think we have been doing?" Brian said. "These are her creatures, but there will be a battle of fire, and it isn't safe here, for anyone."
"I will not be deterred," Berant said. "And I do not care if I live or die. I will destroy every foul thing she created."
"Then you've no chance, general, sir," Fergus said. "If Brian here is right, then we best be gettin' back to the safety of the tunnels. You can hunt whatever creatures be left after."
"I will call the soldiers back, but I will do what needs to be done, whether it kills me or not," Berant replied grudgingly, and with a dissatisfied grunt, he stalked away and shouted for the soldiers to fall back, while he continued onward.
"Fergus, you should return to the tunnels as well," Brian said. "The keepers can only protect you if you are sealed within their walls."
"What about you?" Fergus asked.
"I will be fine," he said. "Kroma will protect me."
"And what about the lad, Pike?"
Brian looked around and realized that Pike had disappeared.
"I'll find him," he said. "Get outside, to the water, and make sure you close the passage behind you."
"Aye, lad," Fergus said as the foundation of the palace itself suddenly shook with a thunderous sound that seemed to come from somewhere in the direction of the city. "Be careful.
"I will," Brian said, then he took off in the direction Pike had gone.
*****
Jax hurried through the sewers under the city, moving in the near darkness by memory, dashing silently past strange creatures that scuttled like overgrown rats that barely noticed him. The art of avoiding discovery was not just in ensuring that enemies did not see him but that the flora and fauna of the world would have no knowledge of his passing. The sewers were teeming with dark creature with faintly glowing eyes that, no matter how silently Jax moved, they turned at his passing, and the hair on his neck prickled at their scrutiny until he was safely beyond them. From what Kasha had told him, there would be very little time before things would get very dangerous in the city, and there was something he was determined to do before that happened.
Jax reached the spot where he knew that a hidden passage should be, and he touched the wall of the sewer and found the edge of a stone block, which he pushed. He heard the dull click of a mechanism behind the wall and the sliding of heavy weights and the rattling of chains, and the stone wall suddenly moved freely when he pushed on it. He slipped through and shoved it closed behind him as the scuttling noise of numerous creatures suddenly began to close in on him, likely drawn by the noise he had made. Jax raced down another dark passage, leaving the sound of hundreds of scratching claws fading behind him, and hoping he would not encounter any more of them. A dim light fell from a small portal above him and Jax leapt up and grabbed onto the edge of it, then he pulled himself upward, and wriggled through the tight space, out onto the floor of a dark hallway inside the palace. It had been much easier to get through the portal when he was a boy, sneaking around the palace while his father went about his duties, but Jax was glad that it had not been sealed up like the other entrance, which he suspected would have been closed by the young man named Aaron, who he had encountered on his last visit, and who now seemed to be at the center of the madness occurring outside.
Jax raced up a short flight of stairs and found himself on the main floor of the old palace, and it was a short run back to the room where he had found the magical window that led to the strange place where his father had been trapped for so many years. Luckily the window still appeared to be there, but this time he had no intention of going through it. The last person he would want to be trapped with was his father, a traitor, who had failed in his oath and fallen prey to the shadow. The fact that Dash Larian had also become a half mad drunkard, was also not particularly appealing. Instead, he pulled out a small, wooden cylinder with a stopper on the end of it, and a ball of string, then from the tube he took out a scrap of paper and scribbled a note on it with a piece of hard charcoal. That done, he rolled it up and placed it in the tube then he replaced the stopper and tied the string to it. After unrolling the ball of string into a coil on the floor, he swung the wooden tube around, letting it gather speed, then he let it fly through the liquid face of the window.
Seemingly from nowhere, a wooden tube attached to a string appeared and landed next to the fire that blazed on invisible ground in the realm of the starry night sky. Dash looked down at what he knew was a message tube, then he leaned forward and picked it up. Inside the tube, he found a brief note telling him that time was short and to follow the string, and he smiled. It was good of Jax to try to rescue him from this place or from whatever it was that was happening in the world, but Dash had already made up his mind to stay put and face what he already knew was coming. It was something he had discovered in this place, something that had nearly driven him mad, that he could see glimpses of things that had not yet happened. When Jax had appeared and visited him here, it had all suddenly made sense, and it had reassured him that he was not simply imagining things.
Dash tugged on the rope once, to let his son know that he had received the message, and he took a few moments to consider the offer even though he was fairly sure of his choice. With a sigh and a shake of his head, he reached into his pocket and pulled out two rings he had not worn since that night so long ago, when he had betrayed more than one of the oaths he had taken. One of the rings had the mark of a leaf, the symbol of those who kept watch, an order to which he had belonged, in which he had trained Jax since the day he could walk. The other ring had the mark of an eye with a dagger at its center, a relic of another order, of which he was the only remaining member. It was only fitting that he should pass them to Jax, and he stuffed them into the message tube, replaced the stopper at its end, then he gave the rope two short tugs and placed the tube at his feet and watched as the string was slowly pulled back whence it came.
*****
As the soldiers brought what seemed to be an endless number of refugees from the city, Carlis and Elaine helped the Maramyrian people board the ships. They were dismayed at how lost the people seemed, confused and afraid, but a number of them appeared to recognize the former magistrate and the head of the House of Valamyr, both of whom had spent many years involved in the daily business of the crown city. The soldiers reported that the ships were to move away from the city as quickly as possible once the people were aboard, and Carlis and Elaine were both concerned that something terrible was about to happen.
"I hope Ehlena will be careful," Elaine said. "I know she has the blessing of the goddess, but I do worry about her. It is
strange that she has not come to see us since she has returned."
"I saw her speaking with that pirate goddess briefly, but she did not stay long, and disappeared upon the wind," Carlis commented, giving excuses for Elaine's niece, who he had earlier glimpsed falling over and being carried by Toren when he had looked through his spyglass some time ago, for he did not want to cause her any more concern. "With all that is happening, no doubt she is very busy, but it is truly as blessing that she has received the power of the Lady, as you said."
"I suppose she can take care of herself," Elaine said. "It is awful what has happened to these people. It is as though so many of them have aged decades over the past year. I fear to discover what has happened inside our once fair city."
Carlis looked at the enormous clouds of smoke that rose from behind the city walls and he did not have to ask any of the soldiers about the destruction that must have occurred during the invasion. There was little doubt that Maramyr would have to be restored, and from what he could tell, the destruction was likely to get worse if they were moving everyone all the way across the lake to ensure their safety.
"Let us focus on what we can do now," Carlis said. "Cities can be rebuilt, but lives cannot be regained once they are lost."
"Of course," Elaine said. "I am just worried, that's all."
"You're sounding like a mother," Carlis teased, and Elaine responded with the strangest look, a smile that looked like she was on the verge of bursting into tears. Carlis squinted at her, a little confused. "What is it, Elaine?"
"Maybe nothing," she said, with a shake of her head.
"It is either something or it isn't," Carlis said. "What ails you?"
"Well, it is not an ailment," she told him. "Quite the opposite, in fact."
Carlis' eyes widened when he realized what she was talking about.
"How long have you known?" he asked.
"It has been a while," she said, smiling awkwardly at him, and she was surprised when Carlis stepped toward her and embraced her.
