undying legion 01 - unbound man

by karlov, matt

  The cell’s darkness was complete. After a while, Eilwen fell into a fitful doze, neither fully awake nor truly asleep. When her bladder grew too full to ignore, she relieved herself as far away from her place by the wall as her chains would allow. It had been evening when they captured her, but whether it was now midnight or midday or evening once more, she could not say. Her knee pounded, her back ached, and she longed for a cup of water.

  When at last the corridor outside the cell began to lighten, shifting almost imperceptibly from black to the darkest of greys, she thought it a trick of the eyes, a conjuration of a mind starved of light. Then she felt the egg throbbing against her side and heard the soft scrape of approaching footsteps. She sat up, blinking sleep-encrusted eyes at the lightening wall, and ran a hand through her tangled mass of hair.

  A man appeared in the doorway. He was older than the one who’d left her here: mid-forties, perhaps, with dark, shoulder-length hair and slender fingers. Setting his lamp on the ground, he leaned against the open doorway, considering her with narrowed eyes and a faintly distracted air.

  “Please,” Eilwen said, her voice little more than a croak. “Could I have some water?”

  The man folded his arms. “What’s your name?” His words carried the expectant tone of one accustomed to authority.

  “Eilwen. Eilwen Nasareen.” She coughed. “Some water, please.”

  “Eilwen,” the man repeated. “Tell me, Eilwen. Did you kill my man?”

  She hesitated. The man was an Oculus, and not just a token-bearer. But he’d asked the question as though he already knew.

  “Yes,” she said.

  The man’s expression didn’t change. “Why?”

  Something gave way within her. “Because you’re Oculus,” she snarled, and he blinked in surprise. “You drowned my ship and made me watch. You betrayed everything I cared about. If I could, I’d drive a knife through your heart right now.”

  A hint of a smile played about the man’s lips. “You’re not in much position to be making threats.”

  “Fuck you!” She surged from the wall, reaching for his smirking face with clawed hands. The chains at her ankles snapped tight and she pitched forward, her arms hitting the ground still a hand’s breadth from his foot. Something dropped from her shirt, cracking against the stone floor and rolling to a halt just beside her hand.

  The man dropped to a crouch, his eyes fixed on the black amber egg. “What’s this?”

  She snatched the egg away, wrapping her fist around it and holding it against her belly. “That’s mine,” she said, and glared up at him, daring him to take it from her.

  “You didn’t get that from Yuri, did you?”

  Eilwen shook her head, confused. “Who?”

  “No matter.” He straightened. “You’re not going anywhere,” he said, and she could almost see him shunting her aside to a holding area in his mind, the one marked not important. He picked up the lamp, turned, and left.

  “What?” Eilwen blinked at the empty doorway. “Wait. Wait! What’s wrong? Too busy invading cities to stop and chat? Hey, come back!”

  The footsteps halted. The man returned, stopping in the doorway and staring at her. “What did you say?”

  “I said, are you too busy —”

  A presence roared into the room, something huge and ancient, an indescribable mass of rage and vast, insatiable hunger. Eilwen reeled back, the egg in her hand vibrating as though fit to burst apart. The man staggered before her, dropping the lamp with a clang and bracing himself against the doorway, shoulders bent beneath a sudden, invisible weight. Eilwen whimpered, huddling against the wall as it pressed against her, raising her arm in a futile effort to ward it away.

  It hung in the air, invisible and ravenous; then it settled about the man in front of her, coiling around and through him as though making itself comfortable in a favourite chair. The pressure eased.

  The man straightened slowly, staring at her with an expression of astonishment. She stared back, unable to do anything more than gasp for breath. He put a finger to his lips, indicating silence, and she nodded fractionally. His eyes flicked to the lamp, then back at her, and she nodded again in understanding. You leave the lamp to show you’ll be back.

  He gave her a final stunned look, then turned and walked out of the cell. Eilwen listened to the soft, scraping steps as they receded down the corridor, taking the unspeakable presence with them.

  •

  The woman could sense Azador.

  Clade paced the length of the chamber, shoulders bowed beneath the god’s weight, his mind whirling. The notion was crazy. Impossible. The woman had clearly never been bound to the Oculus. She didn’t even seem to be a sorcerer. Yet her reaction to the god had been unmistakable. She felt it as strongly as I did. Maybe more.

  He turned, taking a deep, calming breath, slowing his pace as he retraced his steps. The golem stood motionless in its place by the wall, its wrists and ankles now bound with the shackles that hung beside it. It had made no move to resist when Clade snapped them shut, nor shown any awareness that it was being restrained. A pair of Quill lamps retrieved by Meline burned in opposite corners of the chamber, filling it with a soft, yellow light.

  How had she done it? He frowned, going over the sequence of events in his mind. Azador had come, pressing down on him like a great stone, and she… Clade paused, remembering the woman’s expression. She was surprised. No, more than that. Shocked. She’d reacted as if she’d never felt the god’s presence before. She certainly hadn’t anticipated its arrival. Perhaps she didn’t even know what Azador was.

  All the same, she was sensitive to its presence. Add to that her apparent knowledge of their plans to invade Neysa, and what seemed an obsessive grudge against the Oculus, and the woman was… what?

  Dangerous, certainly. Volatile, too. She’d wished him dead without knowing a thing about him. Which meant it wasn’t him she hated, just what he represented.

  Or what she thought he represented.

  An idea began to form. Perhaps he could give her hatred a real target. And maybe, just maybe, she can help me solve some of my other problems.

  Picking up a lamp, Clade left the chamber and headed across the vast passageway, taking the first set of stairs down. The lower level was built around a twisting corridor, with stairs to the cavern at either end. Sub-corridors branched off the main trunk, though none seemed to lead very far. Cells sprouted about the branches like leaves, some with chains and shackles sunk into walls and floors, some without. The Quill prisoners had been confined in one such branch; the woman, Eilwen, was chained in another.

  He found Sinon sitting on the bottom stair, a lamp midway between his feet and the mouth of the side passage leading to the Quill. The large man grunted as Clade passed.

  Clade gestured at the cells. “Any change?”

  “Two of them have been out since morning,” Sinon said, his tone one of profound indifference. “Haven’t touched their water. Either they’re really sound sleepers, or…”

  Clade nodded his understanding. Live or die, there’s nothing I can do about it now. “Fetch me some of the water you left them,” he said. “Then take a break. Go and have a look at the golems.”

  “About time,” Sinon said, pushing himself to his feet with an enthusiasm that belied his gruff response.

  The sorcerer ducked into the passage, returning a moment later with a cup of water. Then he disappeared up the stairs, Azador going with him. Clade took a long breath, straightening as the pressure of the god eased. It’s getting worse. When Azador had come upon him in the cell, it had felt like a yoke of iron dropping into place around his neck. And before, in the gorge, he would have fallen but for Kalie. It wasn’t just the arrivals, either: the god’s ongoing presence was becoming increasingly oppressive, requiring ever more effort to ignore. The longer we stay, the harder it gets.

  And he still had a spell to build.

  Clade rubbed his chin, grimacing as the thought played out to its con
clusion. I can’t wait for Arandras. I need to rid myself of the god while I still can. He set his teeth, resisting the urge to slam his palm against the stone wall. Damn it, Eilwen, you’d better be what I need, or this whole thing is going to come crashing down like a house of twigs.

  Eilwen sat just as she had on his first visit, back to the wall, her legs stretched out before her. Her eyes flicked up at his approach, then widened at the sight of the cup in his hand. Clade crouched in the doorway, placing the cup on the ground close enough for her to reach. “Water,” he said. “As requested.”

  She scrambled forward, snatching the cup and putting it greedily to her lips; then, with a visible effort of will, she paused, taking only a small sip from the cup. A few heartbeats later, she took another.

  “I’d like to start again,” Clade said, still crouching. “My name is Clade. I’m sorry for chaining you up, but you did kill my man.”

  She blinked at him over the top of the cup, waiting.

  “Can I get you anything else?”

  “Yes,” she said. “More water, and then some food. But that can wait.” She lowered the cup. “What in the Gatherer’s cesspit was that thing?”

  Clade seated himself on the rough stone floor with a grunt. “You say you hate the Oculus?” he said. “Then that thing is what you hate most of all.”

  “Really.” Eilwen gave him an appraising look. “What is it?”

  “It’s a god,” Clade said, and the woman raised her eyebrows. “Of a sort, at least. It calls itself Azador. Each member of the Oculus is bound to it.”

  Eilwen’s slow nod suggested that the revelation was not entirely unexpected. “And when you say bound, that’s not just a metaphor, is it? There’s some sort of, I don’t know, sorcerous link between you and it. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” Clade said, struggling to keep the surprise off his face and out of his heart. “How did you know —”

  “Answer me this first.” She fixed him with a hard stare. “This god. This Azador. Do you worship it?”

  He hesitated. The question seemed to carry a layer of meaning beyond that of the words themselves. “No,” he said at last. “Azador is my foe. It believes I am here in obedience to its will, but in fact my purpose is entirely my own.” He met her eyes. “I’m here to break its hold over me.”

  She studied him for a long moment; then, slowly, she nodded. “And if you succeed, what will you do then?”

  Clade shook his head. “Your turn. Tell me how you knew about the binding.”

  The woman shrugged. “Maybe I’m a sorcerer too.”

  “I don’t think so. How?”

  Eilwen tilted her head in mock-acquiescence. “With this,” she said, reaching into her shirt and drawing out the locus she had dropped earlier. “It tells me who’s Oculus and who’s not.”

  He raised a brow. “I’ve got dozens of those back home. They don’t do anything of the sort.”

  Her expression was almost a smirk. “This one does.”

  Clade held out a hand. “May I?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “Let’s just say I want to see for myself.”

  She scowled, turning her head as though about to refuse; then, with an abrupt motion, she reached out and dropped the locus in his hand.

  He felt the difference immediately. All the familiar features of the binding were still there — the long, narrow spine through the object’s axis; the block-like sections at one end that served as primitive receptor nodes; the irregular spikes at the other that bound the object to Azador — but they seemed twisted somehow, a reflection of a thing rather than the thing itself. Usually the pieces combined to form a basic sensory locus, a contrivance by which the god could monitor the activities of the bearer, even if that bearer had never been bound. In this one, however, something about the sorcery had somehow been… reversed.

  “It’s still tied to Azador,” Clade murmured. “But instead of the god looking out, you’re looking in.”

  “I don’t know about that,” Eilwen said. “It just feels different when there’s an Oculus near, or another one of these. A normal one. But I’m not really sensing other people, am I? I’m sensing… it. Or the link to it.”

  “Something like that.” Clade handed the subverted locus back. “How did it happen?”

  “Long story,” Eilwen said, her tone curt. “Let’s just say I got caught in some ugly sorcery.”

  Clade let the evasion pass. The woman was beginning to talk freely now, her earlier proclamation of hatred apparently forgotten. No, not forgotten. But she’s looking for something too. Something she wants from this discussion.

  She put the locus away. “Your turn,” she said. “What next?”

  Next? There was no next, not in his mind. This moment, this place, with Azador and the golems and the binding, was the terminus of all his plans. If he’d ever had hopes beyond this point, he no longer remembered them.

  “Azador won’t just let me go,” he said. “If I get away, it will send people after me. Try to kill me.”

  Eilwen sat back. “So you’ll hide,” she said. She sounded disappointed.

  “Yes,” Clade said. “I’ll hide. For a while, at least.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. Gather resources, I suppose. Find some friends.”

  “Why?”

  Because Azador won’t give up. Not ever. But that wasn’t the real reason. Because I still believe it can be done. The restoration of the Empire. Renewal of what was lost. Impossible dreams. The cause.

  “The Oculus stood for something, once,” he said. “Now it just stands for Azador.” He paused, waited for Eilwen to meet his gaze. “I mean to take it back.”

  Something flickered in her eyes. “A war.”

  He blinked. A war? “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “You want to fight Azador.”

  “I do.”

  Eilwen gave a fierce grin. “So do I.”

  And there it was. He was not her enemy. Azador was. By allying herself with him, she could strike it down at his side.

  If he was fortunate, it might even be true.

  He hesitated, allowing his indecision to rise to his face. Prove it.

  She stared at him, uncertain. Then, slowly, she drew forth the damaged locus and held it out, her hand open.

  Clade nodded. “Very well.” He waved the locus away. “Keep it. You’ll need it for your first task.”

  She nodded, a bright yearning in her eyes. “What task?”

  He smiled. “You’ve already killed one of my men. How would you like to kill two more?”

  Chapter 25

  To the upright, justice.

  To the merciful, compassion.

  To the humble, grace.

  Holy Gatherer, grant us the assurance of your reward.

  — Liturgy of the Thirteenth Hour

  Tri-God Book of Prayer

  Pantheon of Anstice

  Arandras sat by the edge of the lake and watched the sun crawl across the sky. Clade’s note lay crumpled in a ball on the rocks beside him, quivering in the faint, breathy breeze. Wavelets lapped gently just beyond his feet, the sound as changeless and unrelenting as the screaming inside his head.

  It was Chogon all over again. You have a Valdori dagger in your possession. I have your wife. Choose one. And he had chosen the dagger, not because he wanted it more — Weeper, no, never that — but because this was wrong, because accepting those terms was the same as giving in. He had made his stand, resisted the urge to yield, to corrupt himself by becoming complicit in the other man’s abominable coercion. If the price for his refusal had been his life, Arandras would have paid it gladly.

  Instead, the gods had taken Tereisa.

  And now, beyond all reason, they offered him a chance to choose differently.

  Or perhaps not. Perhaps it was a chance to repeat the decision, to prove the quality of his character beyond all doubt. Given all that you now know, all that it cost you, would you make the same choice
again?

  How much is your integrity worth?

  The wording of the note did not fool him. The implication was clear. Narvi and Mara were prisoners, somewhere within the caverns, and their lives were in his hands. He could choose to do nothing, allow them to die. Or he could offer a trade. The coin was different this time, but such differences were irrelevant. Golem army or ancient dagger, human life or a single copper duri, it was all the same. Coercion was coercion, whatever clothing it chose to wear.

  Yet another man’s power could not be wished away. Defiance carried consequences, always. He’d been blind to that in Chogon, or else he’d ignored it, unwilling to believe that the gods would allow him to suffer for doing right. Now he knew better. And in response, he had clung to his principles all the more fiercely, because he had paid for them with the blood of his wife, and neither the world nor the gods could ever exact a higher price.

  So why in the hells am I finding this so hard?

  His friends languished somewhere beneath the cliff, their captor awaiting his decision. My friends. Clade had used that word in his note; whether in hope or presumption, it was impossible to say. But it was true. Mara, who had stuck with him from the first sighting of the misplaced letter, doing the things he couldn’t, trying to give him a chance at peace. Narvi, who had never turned him away, forgiving his slights time and again until at last Arandras had found a betrayal too great to overlook. Both had given of themselves, over and over, amassing a debt which he now found impossible to ignore.

  He’d never sought such friendships, not since Tereisa’s death, and this, right here, was why. Such bonds did not bring strength, no matter what the poets said. They weaken you, undermine your certainty, arm your enemies against you. They dilute you, thinning you out until you’re as much them as you are yourself. He’d done nothing to lead either of them on, offered no reciprocity to encourage them. Somehow it hadn’t mattered. They’d staked a claim on him regardless.