Seductive Silence

by Jordan Baugher

  Chapter 6

 

  The overcast haze of the morning paints the horizon with what looks like jade dust. Riding furiously along the path through the Willowood, Zanther and Novanostrum find their way blocked by a crowd of frumpy women.

  “Everywhere I go, it’s always the same,” Zanther shouts.

  “We should stop and see what they want,” Novanostrum shouts back.

  “We should--but we won’t,” Zanther says.

  With his horse drawing near, and the women showing no sign of parting, Novanostrum swings his staff, sending a sharp gale of concentrated air in the direction of the women. The blast scatters them, blowing them off the path. Before they have a chance to react, the two horses charge by.

  “Sorry ladies, no time for love!” Zanther shouts as they pass.

  On the third floor of the Magickal Antiquities Building in the Knot, Rahvik and his men are tearing apart a small room. In the hallway, scholast wizards scan the pages of the books which are arranged in stacks. The eyes of the yafbeest head mounted on the wall of the small library watch as the soldier-slash-wizards topple bookcases and slash open the pillows on the chairs.

  Rahvik stares back at the dead eyes of the dead animal’s dead head, thinking.

  “I wonder..” he says absent-mindedly as he grasps one of the yafbeest’s horns, expecting a secret door to open. Much to his surprise, the horn doesn’t budge, and no secret doors appear.

  “Neither in this room, nor outside of it,” he says to himself, looking around.

  “Commander,” one of the scholast wizards says, breaking Rahvik’s reverie, “there is nothing in any of these books pertaining to Thanos or the idol.”

  Rahvik nods, realizing that the riddled assistance of the Libros Majorum won’t benefit him without a little mental effort on his part.

 

  “You did what?” Madra asks Varello.

  “I left the girl with a dragon in a cave on the far edge of the Willowood.”

  “Yes, I heard you the first time you said it. Rather than having you repeat what you already said, my reaction was meant to elicit some kind of an explanation from you.”

  “An explanation? Well,” Varello says, “the girl, Desa, will keep the dragon safe from soldiers, and the dragon will keep the girl safe from everything else. At the time, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan.”

  “And if she uses this dragon to hitch a ride to someplace populated, like, say, I don’t know, Claustria, what then?”

  “Relax,” Varello says, “Kragnar is not going to bring her here.”

  “Kragnar? You do know he tried to eat me, right?”

  “Did he? Well, that just proves how refined his tastes really are.”

  “Be that as it may, we need to find a more permanent solution to the problem of Desa Mu,” Madra says.

  “What do you mean by ‘permanent,’ Your Majesty? I thought you were against a ‘permanent’ solution to the Desa situation.” Varello asks.

  “Marchand passed this morning. She is responsible for the deaths of dozens of my people.” Madra says, starting to get annoyed.

  “So are you,” Varello retorts, “but I don’t see anyone trying to solve you for X because of it.”

  “Are you kidding? People try to kill me all the time. For example,” she points at a guard standing at attention a few man lengths away, “Leo here was part of a plot to kill me just last week, weren’t you?”

  “It’s true,” he says with a somber face.

  Madra clears her throat. “Varello, are you saying I can’t count on you to do this?”

  “With all due respect, Your Majesty, I am not one of your subjects. I am your friend. Because of that, I will help you when you ask me to, and I would defend you with my life, but I will not take orders from you--especially ones I do not agree with.”

  She sighs. “I see. Well, as a friend, I’m giving you a friendly notice that I’m sending a squad of long-range crossbolters to protect my subjects from being killed en masse at the whim of a nubile nudist. I’d advise you to give their bolts a wide berth.”

  “Noted,” Varello says, the stomps of his angry footfalls echoing down the stone corridor.

  The Quester of Righteousness holds the torch steady as he makes footprints in dust which looks as if it hasn’t been disturbed in over a thousand sunspins. The walls of the ancient crypt are damp and reek of mildew and ghosts, but the Quester of Righteousness continues forward, undaunted.

  He steps on a loose stone and hears a click. Noticing something shiny next to his foot, he bends down to pick it up, inadvertently avoiding the arrows which suddenly fly out from tiny holes in the walls.

  “A dodecka? These weren’t around when they built this place,” he says to himself, turning the coin over in his hand a few times before shoving it into his pocket and continuing onward.

  As he passes through a stone doorway, a heavy stone door falls in place immediately behind him. An eyeblink later, another stone door falls into place at the other end of the hallway. There is a rumbling, grating sound as the stone walls begin to contract, and the corridor, which was only a few man-lengths wide to begin with, starts to become narrower and narrower.

  The Quester of Righteousness advances to the middle of the corridor and draws the Longknife of Iniquity. He taps it on the ground a few times, listening to the metallic clang of the vibrating metal. After hearing a note of an agreeable pitch, he plunges the longknife into the ground with all his strength, managing to punch into the level below. The opening is only a hand-width wide, and the walls of the corridor continue to contract to the point they are almost touching his shoulder blades.

  He turns himself sideways in order to gain some precious space to maneuver and raises his leg, stomping his iron boot down as hard as he can, knocking loose the floor beneath him and falling through the hole just as the walls smash together above his head.

  The Quester of Righteousness lands on something squishy and slick, like a giant leather pillow. He reaches around for his torch, which was extinguished in the fall. He uses his flintrock to re-light it and finds himself straddling the head of a tremendous snake. He waves his hand in front of its eyes and determines that it is unconscious.

  “Must have knocked it out when I landed on it,” he says to himself.

  Without hesitation, he raises the Longknife of Iniquity and plunges it into the base of the snake’s skull. The beast’s eyes wrench open in terror and pain, and it flicks its forked tongue out, in vain.

  The Quester of Righteousness examines the rest of the room with the light from his torch, but finds nothing save for a doorway leading to a set of stairs. He descends these, finding a chamber lit by a small river of lava passing under a stone bridge leading to a giant pedestal shaped like a sundial set about half a man-length above the ground.

  Sitting in the middle of the sundial is a small sack with a note pinned to it. The Quester of righteousness removes the note, which reads as follows:

  This bag of sand weighs exactly as much as the object you came here to retrieve. If you remove it from this spot, it triggers a flood of water from above which will turn this room into a deadly skin-melting sauna once it touches the lava below.

  Whomever you are, I applaud you for making it this far, though it pains me to be the one to inform you that you arrived too late. However, the fact that you’re down here exploring these forgotten places leads me to think that we are like-minded individuals, and if you ever cross my path in some tavern in some remote corner of the world, I’d be happy to buy you a drink.

  Cheers,

  Aristhmus Maus

  The Quester of Righteousness sighs, carefully reattaching the note to the bag before making his way back across the bridge.

 

  Rahvik stands in the center of the room, contemplating the yafbeest head. He is momentarily startled when the door is blown off its hinges and slides across the stone floor. Standing in the doorway, framed by surrounded by shaken scholast wiza
rds and soldiers, is the shadowed man from the day before.

  “Time’s up,” the figure says.

  “Unfortunately, I--” Rahvik says, pausing as he notices something odd about the top edge of the toppled door. He walks to the door and kneels down to get a closer look. A small recess is carved into the top edge of the door, and a book is wedged inside. He pulls it free and blows the dust off the cover, revealing the title, Divine Relicks: A How-to.

  The hooded shadow plucks the book from Rahvik’s hands, flipping through the pages. After a moment, he places his finger on a particular passage, scanning it for a moment before snapping the book shut and sliding it into his right sleeve.

  “You do good work.”

  “So you’ll help us, then,” Rahvik says.

  “There’s no need. While you’ve been in here catching up on your reading, the mechanickal soldiers have vanished. Your scouts will return in a short while to inform you that there is no trace of them, anywhere. With no direct attack on Arcania, battered as it is, now may not be a good time to pick a fight with Mortesia.”

  Rahvik scratches his chin. “Where do you suppose they went?”

  The hooded shadow shrugs. “It’s unclear to me. However, there are more important matters that must be attended to, presently,” he says, tapping the book with his finger before turning and walking out of the room, passing an out-of-breath Kneebahn.

  Kneebahn rushes to Rahvik. “Commander, the metal soldiers, they--”

  Rahvik nods and waves his hand. “I know. Put together a small expeditionary force. We have to find out where they went and what they’re doing. I don’t like hostile surprises.”

 

  Guards part their polearms to allow Zanther and Novanostrum entry into Claustria Castle. The light pouring into the stone halls from the high windows casts everything in a greenish tint as they pass by another pair of guards upon entering the throne room.

  Madra hovers over a large table in an alcove, poring over maps. Three brutal-looking generals stand a few paces away, discussing strategy. Upon noticing her visitors, Madra rushes over to greet them.

  “Took you guys long enough to get back here,” she says.

  “We ran into a little trouble,” Novanostrum says.

  “Madra,” Zanther starts, “there are these mechanickal soldiers called ‘automates’ preparing to lay waste to the whole of Upper Kleighton, I ran across Hernaldo and he asked me to deliver this message to you.”

  “Hernaldo? Did he return with you to Claustria?”

  Zanther lowers his eyes, staring at the polished marble tile. Madra sighs.

  She takes the sealed envelope. “I know about the automates. There was a long article in the Gadabout describing how Krassen was destroyed. The smart money says Arcania’s next. Still, it will take them time to make it all the way here, which is why we are planning our strategy,” she says, motioning toward the generals.

  Novanostrum shakes his head. “Hernaldo said something about a ‘secret plan’. You might want to read his letter before finalizing any strategies.”

  Madra nods as she tears open the envelope. She spends a full tick reading it, blinking in disbelief.

  “We...may not have as much time as I thought.”