“Your injuries. You should have been dead. I … could do nothing for what you … lost.”
He understood. He could live without an eye, his manhood. He mourned their loss. His grief sharpened into anger, into hatred so raw, it threatened to consume him. He shook it off by reminding himself the time for vengeance would come soon enough. He breathed out again. He tested himself, feeling his body. The bleeding had stopped. The wounds were still raw, wet, and painful. She had restored him somewhat, enough so he could walk. It would be many months before he recovered, if he ever did.
He coughed. “You have saved my life. Pakka.”
She regained her feet and backed away from him.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Korvak.”
“Pakka.”
“Yes, you told me.” He offered her a smile. He was certain it was frightening.
“Oh. Right,” she paused. “Why are you here?” she asked, gesturing to the cell.
“I had the singular misfortune of putting myself in the hands of very bad people. Of equal importance, Pakka, why you are here?”
Through the gloom, he could see her scrunch her face either to spin a lie or to decide if she should tell him the truth.
“We’re friends now, Pakka. I owe you a debt. If you tell me, perhaps we can come up with a way for me to repay it.”
“My mistress sent me,” she began.
“To save me? Who is this mistress of yours?” he asked.
“No, no. My mistress, Lady Vordon, sent me to … er … look around.”
“Lady Vordon?” he asked.
“You know her?” she replied.
“No. Maybe. Who is this Lady Vordon?” he asked. He added, “Seems like I’m sick with Vordons,” under his breath.
“Talara Vordon. Thaxos Vordon’s cousin.” She answered his blank stare with, “Master Vordon called us to Tyr.”
“So you’re her spy?”
“I’m her sla … servant,” she answered.
Korvak knew she almost said “slave.” Curious. He was astonished by her power. “Look around for what?”
She peered at him, suspicion clear on her face. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“I am a templar. It is what I do.”
She paled and retreated again. “Spirit of my ancestors, what have I done?”
“You saved a man’s life. I won’t harm you. Now let’s get back to your mistress. You were just about to tell me what you were doing in this dungeon.”
Pakka thought Korvak must be an enemy to Thaxos Vordon. And if he was opposed to Thaxos, he could very well be an ally.
“Well, I got lost,” she began, and she told him the whole tale.
Korvak could tell the woman was not a conversationalist. She had to be coaxed to start talking, but once she began, she did not stop until she told Korvak everything she knew about her mistress, Thaxos Vordon, and how she came to be in the tunnels.
Korvak rubbed his temples. He had sat back on the floor, a spot not soiled by his shit and blood.
“So,” he mused aloud, “the old man called Lady Vordon back to Tyr. She had her warriors taken from her and sent with Vordon’s ‘generous’ donation, and now she suspects some foul play by her cousin. Am I right?”
Pakka nodded but added, “And someone murdered two of our guards at Silver Spring Oasis.”
“Yes, yes, but unimportant.”
“Tell it to the dead guards,” she whispered.
He ignored the comment. “Well, your mistress is right. Vordon is up to something, and I believe I know what it is.”
Pakka stared.
“I need to meet this Lady Vordon. At once.”
“How?” asked Pakka. “We’re stuck in this cell.”
He almost shouted at her, “Fool.” He caught himself, though. She had just saved his life.
“The guards will return. They left me here to die. They’ll need to get rid of the body. When they return, we’ll kill them.”
Pakka swallowed.
“You have a problem with killing?”
“No,” she said, “yes. The guards did nothing to us.”
He looked at her, incredulous. “My body tells a different story.”
Pakka nodded and looked away.
“You have power, friend dwarf. How did you come to be a slave?”
The dwarf sighed. “Like any other. I was taken from my village as a young woman. I was used as a breeder to produce muls.”
Korvak could hear the bitterness in her voice. “As poorly as you were treated by, as you say, my kind, you still healed me?”
“You were hurt. In such pain. I couldn’t let you suffer. I didn’t know you were a templar.”
He nodded. “But your gift. Where does it come from?”
“Before I was taken, I was an initiate to the spirits of rain and storm.”
“Ah. A priestess, then.” Priests were strange folk. They served powers ancient and mysterious. Some claimed to worship the sun, the stones, even rain. No, “worship” was the wrong word. Priests were partners with those primal powers, allies of the elemental forces.
“I am even more surprised by your generosity, Pakka,” he said, knowing at a different time and in a different place, they would be enemies. Priests served the world. He served, or at least he used to serve, a sorcerer-king. They were natural foes. The sorcerer-kings had wrought much suffering on the land, and their templars were no innocents themselves.
Pakka didn’t offer anything further as she studied the floor. He wondered if she regretted her choice.
They sat in silence for several hours, waiting for the guards to return. They had no food, no water, and even the torch in the hall had sputtered out. Pakka withdrew to her own thoughts and offered no further information. When Korvak tried to engage her, she responded with grunts and not much more.
When the silence and the waiting became almost unbearable, Korvak felt his clothing stir, his hair move. A breeze? Here? The wind grew stronger. Pakka looked up, afraid.
The swirling wind became a moan.
He struggled to stand. Pakka stood, clutching a small pouch in her hand.
Korvaaaaak, said the wind.
“I am here,” he said to the air.
I have searched as I promised, I have scoured the city for the information you sought. Thaxos Vordon moves even now to take the city. We believe Vordon is in league with defilers.
The wind sighed, swirled, and continued, We have found dead zones all around the city and under it. We will aid you this once, Korvak, but make no mistake, the Veiled Alliance will never serve the templars.
Then the wind died down and the cell was still once more. So he had convinced the Veiled Alliance to help him after all.
“Defilers?” asked Pakka.
Korvak waved a hand. “Wizards. Sorcerers. They draw power from living things to fuel their magic.” He suspected revealing he himself defiled would not improve their relationship, so he held it back.
“I know what a defiler—” the sound of footfalls from the hall cut Pakka off.
The men bickered outside. “I still can’t believe you left the door unlocked, Geng.”
“Leave off. I thought he was dead.”
“Did you check?”
“Did you see what the halfling did to him? Even if he was still alive, there was no way he was walking. I had to carry him here.”
“I heard you vomited.”
He gagged. “You would’ve too had you seen the halfling eat.”
“Settle down.”
Pakka moved to take a position behind the door. Korvak scrambled to where the guards had last seen him.
The door shook as they lifted the rope.
“Arms or feet?” asked the nameless guard.
“Arms. I seen enough of the other side. Poor bastard.”
“Didn’t figure you to be so soft, Geng. Stupid, yes. But soft?”
“Shut up.”
The door swung into the room. The guards filed in. They moved
to grab Korvak by his arms and legs. Neither noticed as a small cloud billowed out from nothing, a swelling storm formed by Pakka’s magic. Both men stooped. One noticed the forming cloud behind the door. “Kalak’s stones! What—?”
The cloud coalesced into a dripping, man-shaped form, a storm’s violence bound in a humanoid shape. Pakka spoke an ancient word to command it, and it obeyed, lurching and grabbing one guard’s shoulders. It yanked him back. The second guard drew a bone sword and attacked. The elemental pulled the first guard apart as if he were nothing more than thin parchment. Organs and blood splashed onto the floor. The other guard vomited and wept. He begged for mercy.
Korvak struggled to his feet. Pakka came out from behind the door. The elemental advanced and brought a massive fist down with such force it ripped the head from the guard and sent it rolling across the floor. What was left of the man flopped, legs kicking, bowels voiding.
Korvak stared at the mess. He looked to the elemental and swung to Pakka.
Tears spilled down her cheeks. She gestured toward the elemental, and it flew apart in a brief shower of falling rain to mingle with the filth sullying the chamber floor.
Pakka hurried out from the cell. Korvak gave the room a final look then followed. He paused long enough to snatch a sputtering torch from the floor.
Pakka ran down the corridor. She took each turn as she came to them, almost as if she were choosing them at random. Korvak could not keep up. She had saved him from death, but he was a long way from healthy. After a few minutes, he called out to her, “Pakka … wait … I … I … can’t.” He stumbled and fell.
He heard her footfalls growing softer, stopping, then growing louder again.
He blinked sweat from his eye. Even holding the torch was an effort. Pakka moved into the light. He saw her eyes were red. Tears and snot fouled her brutish features.
Korvak sat on the floor. He breathed. She waited and, after a few minutes, wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“We’re lost, aren’t we?” he asked when he could talk again.
She set her lips in a tight line.
“We’re getting nowhere,” he said, more to himself than to the dwarf.
Pakka spun. “We have to get to Talara. I must warn her.”
“Yes, I know you do. We’re not going to find her by running in random directions.”
He took a breath. “Pakka. The thing you controlled. What was it?”
“A spirit of the world that once was,” she said.
“If you have such power, why didn’t you just open the door?” he said.
She clenched her hands into fists. Was his mind playing tricks, or did he see mist swirl around her when she stepped forward? He crawled backward. He did not want to see the elemental again.
She calmed herself. “Sorry. I am worried. My mistress is everything to me. I must protect her. As for the door. I saw what those guards did to you. They had to be punished. I did not want to kill them, but I was so angry, sickened, they had to pay. Not for your benefit, but for all the others they had harmed before. I was selfish then. And I fear we have wasted too much time already.”
“I understand,” said Korvak. “We need to be more cautious, though. Settle your mind and let’s find a way rather than hope we’ll stumble onto it.” His torch was sputtering, and he knew they would not have light for long.
They stood at another intersection, one like dozens of others they had found. “Let’s try the left passage this time.”
Pakka was about to say something but followed him.
They walked. They did not turn and stayed on their path. In the torch’s failing light, Korvak noticed the walls were changing. The fitted brick gave way to heavy stones with crumbling mortar between them. They were far from where they had started, but Korvak knew the passage had to lead somewhere. He pushed ahead, stubborn and ignoring the frustrated and concerned noises coming from the dwarf.
The torch died a few minutes later. They walked in darkness. They touched the walls to guide them. They tested the floor with each step. They were lost in the dark and very much alone. The city pressed down on them, the weight of centuries pushing on their shoulders.
Korvak’s confidence began to crumble, but they forged ahead.
What could have been an hour later, Pakka said, “Is that … is that light?”
He peered ahead. He could see nothing and said as much.
“No, there is light.” He felt her push past him. Her soft steps moved away from him. He hurried to catch up.
A bit farther, he realized he could see the walls, could make out cracks in the floor. Relief flooded through him.
Pakka’s dim outline stopped. He held back. “What?” he whispered.
“There’s someone there,” she said.
He strained to see, but it was still too dark.
Korvak moved a little closer. There was someone ahead. A shuttered lantern sat on floor beside a woman. She was sketching a pattern on the floor with chalk. She wore heavy black robes, and her long hair concealed her features.
Something alerted her and she turned away from the pattern, eyes blazing. “And what have we here?” she said.
Korvak fell back. “I suppose I should ask the same of you.”
She was quite striking, even in the feeble light. “Witnesses,” she muttered. She raised a hand. In it, Korvak saw she held a wand.
He cursed and threw red lightning bouncing down the corridor. Without his rod, he lacked accuracy and focus. The halfling had destroyed it first. His attack missed. Hers didn’t.
She responded by loosing a pale, gray beam from her wand, and the beam cut a line across Pakka’s body. The dwarf screamed as the top half of her body slid off the lower.
Korvak screamed in rage and drained all the life he could feel around him to fuel the roiling ball of fire he formed and hurled against the woman. The resulting explosion blinded him for a moment. When his vision cleared, the woman had gone.
He hobbled forward to search for her, but a moan drew him back. What remained of Pakka lay on the floor. He knelt by her side. Her lower half had crumbled to black ashes, and her top half was following. She should be dead already, yet somehow she clung to life.
He could think of nothing to say to her, so he looked into her eyes, watching as she died. “Talara,” she gasped, “must … must … protect …”
Korvak knelt until the witch’s spell reduced Pakka’s body to ashes. “Thank you, Pakka, thank you,” he whispered. He felt something. Not regret, not remorse, but gratitude, and he was amazed by the strangeness of the feeling.
House Shom’s army marched toward Tyr and left a string of burned-out villages in their wake. They approached the city-state from the south. They had looped around the outlying settlements and their failing plantations to strike at the richer, more populous communities sheltering in Tyr’s shadow. Temmnya explained she wanted to avoid a confrontation with the Crimson Legion, Tyr’s army. She assured Loren they would deal with Tyr’s mighty army once they had dealt with the city-state itself.
Loren was surprised Tyr hadn’t yet responded, hadn’t split its army to deal with the new threat from the east. Loren expected someone had to have noticed their approach and had escaped for safety in Tyr where they could warn the king. Was King Tithian that inept? But then what else could the king do? He had already committed his forces to the north. What troops Tithian had left he would employ to defend the city-state behind its towering walls. Assuming he even knew they were out there, circling like the damnable birds overhead.
Loren turned his gaze from the screeching flock to the village Temmnya’s army would shatter as surely as the sun would rise in the east. A low wall ringed the settlement and it bristled with spears, suggesting the defenders would not lie down and make conquest easy. It made no difference to Loren. He had buried his regrets and misgivings about their business in a shallow grave several miles away. He grieved for them from time to time, but he was a changed man, a man who accepted his lot, no matte
r how bad it was.
Kutok cracked his knuckles as he came to Loren’s side. Loren saw his own deadness reflected in the young warrior, in his flat eyes and slack posture. A sort of friendship had formed between them since Temmnya seduced Aeris. The warriors exchanged few words, little more than grunts and short answers. The sparseness of their conversation indicated the similarity in thought. What point was there to saying anything when each knew how the other felt, what the other believed. They were brothers, bound by their enemies’ blood, united in the horrors they had witnessed since setting out from Nibenay in what felt like a different lifetime.
Loren scanned the ruined plantations and burning hovels sitting on them. Temmnya’s undead warriors trampled everything underfoot as they marched into position. Some stood as still as gray statues, others ambled around, shuffling among the wreckage. Loren saw a zombie made from a young girl. She brushed her hair and pulled out locks and skin with each stroke.
Temmnya had named Loren commander. Of what? The dead? There were ranks upon ranks of sun-spoiled dead milling around. They didn’t answer his orders. They couldn’t even talk. The ragged few who still lived and still listened numbered but a handful, and they stayed close to Loren. They would have followed him into hell, for he had survived, had slaughtered the enemy in appalling numbers, until he had become, to them at least, Death itself, an apotheosis reinforced by the undead who dogged his every step.
He saw the necromancer, his mistress, climb onto an abandoned wagon’s back. She had been hurt. Her skin and hair had been burned, her black robes scorched. Aeris held her hand and supported her as she climbed the steps. She moved to position with the half-elf at her side. She looked out at the village then to Loren. He answered her gaze by clapping the heavy bone helmet on his head and drawing his new stone sword. It was an enormous thing with a chipped blade almost as long as he was tall. Its handle had room enough for four hands if not more. He gripped it in one hand and held it ready.
Temmnya stood with Aeris. He was bent almost in half, simpering. Where Aeris appeared weak, she was strong, imperious, a vision of terrible beauty. The wind stirred her long black robes so the white dragonflies seemed to fly around her.
Death Mark Page 23
