Akiri: Dragonbane

by Brian D. Anderson

  “As long as it took.” She pointed to a cabinet on the far wall. “Or until the food and water ran out. There’s about a week’s worth left in there. So I assumed he would return by then.”

  “Or he wanted to watch you starve,” Akiri countered. “In any case, the bounty must be quite high for you to take such risks.”

  She gave no reply. Rena wasn’t likely to say more than she felt she had to. That much, at least, they had in common.

  “There was another Yarrow,” he told her. “Long ago. A dark sorcerer who carried the name.”

  She raised an eyebrow. It was the smallest gesture, but it betrayed the fact that this was new information. He shared the little he had learned.

  “An uncomfortable coincidence,” she said. “If it is coincidence.”

  Akiri agreed. There were good reasons necromancy was outlawed. The search for immortality could drive men to terrible deeds. And should one ever achieve it… a master of death ruling the land of the living would be unfathomable.

  Rena slid from the bed, holding out a hand. “Knife.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t seriously expect me to go out there unarmed, can you?”

  “So you have decided against staying?”

  Rena glared. “Knife,” she repeated.

  Akiri chuckled, slipped the blade from his belt, and pressed the handle into her palm. He didn’t trust Rena, but he could not let her face an enemy unarmed. Of course, there was every chance the knife would find its way into his back. But one problem at a time, he thought.

  “Are you ready?” he asked. He eased the door open and exited the room. It occurred to him that there might be another chamber above them.

  “Wait here,” he said, drawing his sword.

  “I’m coming with you,” she insisted.

  He shook his head. “Watch the stairs and warn me if someone approaches.”

  “Typical Acharian. If you think I’ll scream for help, you’re mistaken.”

  “Just do as I say.” Akiri recalled her distaste for his people and their chauvinistic ways. In truth, he agreed with her opinion on the matter. But now was not the time for that discussion.

  Rena sniffed, but did as he said. Above was an empty room, much the same as the one in which Rena had been kept, save for the fact that a balcony led out onto a flat roof that allowed him to see out beyond the wall.

  He saw Kyra waiting patiently down below while the boy sat on a rock throwing stones at a piece of wood. Boredom. He could live with that. The dragon looked up, scenting him on the wind. He caught flashes of her own restlessness in his mind, and knew that she hadn’t seen another soul, living or dead, since he’d scaled the wall.

  Likely any danger was already inside the castle. He went back down below.

  “Anything?” asked Rena.

  He shook his head. Nothing to tell. The fewer words they exchanged the better. Voices carried louder than footsteps and he didn’t want anyone knowing Rena was out of her cell. Not to mention that every exchange seemed to fuel her hatred for him. Akiri held a finger to his lips and motioned for her to follow.

  Treading softly, he made his way around the winding staircase, careful that the tip of his sword didn’t scratch up against the stonework.

  From below, he heard movement.

  Akiri paused and reached out in the near darkness to touch Rena’s arm, making sure that she’d heard the same thing. There was precious little light to reveal her expression, but he felt the tension in her muscles, coiled and ready to spring. It was impossible to know how many foes might be lurking down there, but it didn’t matter if it was one or one hundred; he had no intention of stopping.

  The longer he and Rena could keep their presence hidden, the better chance they had of having surprise as their ally. He could smell the overpowering reek of death and decay rising up to meet them. They continued down another winding turn, pausing again to listen, before descending another.

  They followed the arrows of light downward, creeping step by step, fingers trailing along the cold stone wall for balance. Close to ground level, he saw the faint light leeching in through the half open doorway to join with the elongated shaft from the narrow slit of a window. It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

  It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the light, longer than he’d had when he had entered the building, but then he’d been more worried about turning his ankle on debris strewn on the floor. He hadn’t cared to search the shadows for anything else that might have been lying on the ground – like corpses.

  Akiri had been so keen to climb to the upper floor that he’d missed a faint glow emanating from the other side of the staircase. But now he saw a second door recessed into the wall and another chamber beyond.

  Slowly he pushed the door open, just a fraction, enough to peer inside. A single torch illuminated the space. It wasn’t a room but rather a small antechamber that led to another staircase that in turn led to a sub-level.

  The noise, he realized, was coming from somewhere below them. With no one standing inside, he eased the door open a little wider, wide enough for them to slip through and cross to the stairs. They started down, the noise growing louder as they went.

  The stench grew more intense as they descended into the bowels of the fortress. Akiri glanced back to see Rena holding a hand to her mouth, struggling not to empty her stomach. He had almost grown accustomed to the permanent smell of death clinging to everything, having been immersed in it for so long now, and in a way that desensitization made it worse. It wasn’t something to which he wanted to become immune.

  It only took a few more steps for him to see the source of the odor.

  The stairs opened out into a room lined on one side by cages and a hallway on the far end. He counted at least half a dozen cells in all, each one filled with bodies. As one figure pressed up against the bars, rattling them desperately, pallid fingers wrapped around the iron, he realized that some, at least, were still alive. More of them clamored for his attention, driven into a desperate frenzy by his presence. Others lay unmoving, staring vacantly at the bottom of their cages.

  “Help,” one of the men moaned, barely forming the full word around a bloated tongue and rotten teeth. Once he had probably been a brute of a man, more than capable of handling himself in a fight. “Please,” the man begged. “You have to let us out of here before he comes back.”

  Akiri looked at the man, and at the others like him, and thought about leaving him. They weren’t his problem. He didn’t want to make them his problem, either.

  “Please. The key. Help us.”

  The man reached out through the bars of the cage and pointed to a ring of keys hanging from a hook on the wall opposite the cages.

  “Why? Why should I help you? There’s nowhere for you to run.”

  “We’ll die if you don’t.”

  “You’ll die anyway.” This was true. Should they make it out, the only way from the fortress was a fall from the ramparts that would certainly kill them. And there was something else. They might choose to risk the fall, leaving dead men outside the wall. Dead men who could rise and threaten Seyla.

  “Better to die free than in a cage,” the man pleaded.

  “There is no way out. I’m sorry.”

  “There is, I swear it. There are catacombs that lead to the marshes. Please. I beg you. Release us, and I can show you the way.”

  Akiri considered the situation for a moment. He looked to Rena, who nodded her approval, and then retrieved the keys. He was just about to unlock the cage when he realized that the ever-present sounds from deeper in the passageway had stopped. He couldn’t be sure how long ago; he’d not been listening for them, they’d just been there, and now they weren’t.

  Quickly, he opened the first of the cage doors and handed the prisoner the keys. He had a good sense for danger, a prickle at the nape of his neck, a sixth sense for violence. It was close. Getting closer.

  He heard the shuffle of feet heading in their
direction. He looked at Rena. “Go. You can’t fight them with only a knife.”

  Rena looked as if she wanted to protest, but there was no denying that he was right. She might be fierce, but she would be overcome in a few seconds without a sword.

  He’d barely taken half a dozen strides in the direction of the hall before he saw the first of them running towards him. The room was narrow, so taking their heads would not be easy. Akiri was forced to improvise. He rammed the blade into the dead man’s gut, even as the abomination clawed at him with its hands. It carried no weapons save for the sickness beneath its fingernails.

  Akiri swung his free hand and landed a jaw-shattering punch. His foe stumbled back, still impaled. Akiri yanked his blade free and planted the sole of his boot square in the middle of the thing’s chest, pushing it back into the enemy that charged in from behind.

  The second wave were better prepared, brandishing their swords. The falling body was enough of an obstacle to buy Akiri a few precious seconds, nothing more. He used them well. With a short, controlled swing, he threw all his weight behind his blade and swept it like a scythe through the dead flesh, and despite the lack of room, severed both heads. Their bodies fell to the ground in a curiously slow motion, as though their brains had failed to register they were no longer connected to the nerves and muscles, and were determined to carry out their final action.

  Rena had snatched the keys from the prisoner and was hurrying to open the other cages.

  “Rena!” he shouted as the final cage was opened. He snatched up a sword from one of the fallen and tossed it lightly toward her.

  She caught the weapon and gave the keys back to the prisoner.

  “Take the heads. It’s the only way to stop them,” said Akiri.

  “I guessed,” she called back, smirking almost playfully.

  “Lock the cages,” Akiri yelled, but the man with the keys looked back at him with fear-crazed eyes. “Do it!” he shouted. He didn’t want to worry about new foes rising up behind him.

  The man turned the lock on five of the cages, but dropped the keys before he reached the last. “We’ve got to get out of here.” The absolute terror in his eyes was that of a man on the verge of total panic.

  “Where are the catacombs?” asked Rena.

  He snatched up the keys with trembling hands. “Two rooms back. There’s a steel grate in the floor.”

  “Then run,” Akiri said.

  The man needed no further prompting.

  All Akiri and Rena could do was stand fast and buy them time. Once the prisoners were in the catacombs, they were on their own. Akiri was sure that Yarrow was hiding somewhere in the ruined castle. He would not leave until he found him.

  Rena picked up a second short sword just as more foes staggered through. She wielded both blades with expert precision, swinging and slashing with one hand after another, her movements so fast that the metal was reduced to a shimmering blur. Akiri involuntarily stopped for a moment, admiring the skill and lethal force she displayed. Before he could return to the fray, she had dispatched them all.

  The subterranean chamber echoed to the sound of panicked footsteps and frightened voices as the prisoners fled.

  Rena was standing over a headless corpse, wiping ichor from the blade against the ragged clothing of their vanquished foes. Akiri had expected more to come, but none appeared. There was only silence. Even the sounds of the prisoners’ retreat had faded away to nothing.

  Akiri stepped over the bodies, taking care not to tread on them. They were truly dead, but still he would not touch them unless there was no choice. Even breathing the air in this place made him feel unclean; tainted. For the first time in his life he actually desired to go to a temple and be purified. A silly thing. But he couldn’t help himself.

  They followed the corridor from where the creatures had come, passing through two empty cellars before emerging into something far more opulent. The room was well lit by torches burning in iron sconces set into the wall. There were several free-standing candlesticks, each crafted from gold, and more than six feet tall. The light danced and shifted, casting shadows in strange rhythms. The walls were daubed with dozens of unfamiliar arcane symbols, their meaning a mystery to even Akiri who had studied such things extensively. The stone floor was marked out with a large circle, within which, inlaid with gold, was a series of impossibly intricate geometric shapes, each individual, yet woven together to create a single form. Again, its meaning and purpose was unknown. But it was clear that it was part of the dark magic that surrounded them.

  Akiri did not like the feel of the place. Unlike the rest of the fortress, it lacked that all-pervasive reek of death. This chamber far beneath the main keep smelled so much worse than that. It was bathed in the astringent stink of dark magic. It lingered in the air like a noxious mist, saturating everything it touched with its foulness.

  He turned back, not wanting to spend a moment longer in the room than he had to, and entered yet another darkened corridor. It was surprisingly long, with room after disused room on either side, each bearing a thick iron door. He guessed the original purpose was some sort of holding cells. After half a dozen identical empty rooms, Akiri found himself in a much larger chamber, with incredibly intricate tapestries covering most of the bare rock. They were as fine as anything one would find in the most lavish palace, some so intricate as to give the illusion of motion. True masterpieces. They must have taken months, even years to complete, and were no doubt worth a fortune. A pity that no one would ever get to set eyes on them down here in this dank prison. But not so much a pity that Akiri wouldn’t use them to build a bonfire to keep back the dead, if put to it. He wasn’t so brutish as to be unable to appreciate beauty, but he was not prone to sentimentality.

  The floor in the center of the room was stained dark. He’d seen enough blood spilled to recognize the discoloration. The room might be lacking the altar, but there was no doubt in his mind it had served as a place of sacrifice.

  At the far end, raised on a daïs, was the room’s sole piece of furniture: a large seat carved from a single slab of dark gray stone. A throne. But the thing sitting in it was no monarch. It was a body, clawed fingers closed tightly around the arms. There was no crown, nor even a head on its shoulders. Rather, the head was resting on the seat between the corpse’s legs, a crude metal circle fused into its brow. Had the situation not been so dire, it would have looked almost comical.

  That the head had already been cut from the man’s neck gave Akiri a mild sense of comfort. It certainly saved him the trouble.

  “You took your time,” a voice said.

  It took Akiri a moment to realize it came from the severed head. He could hear Rena’s breathing quicken behind him. This was not a creature like the others. That much was certain. A leader, perhaps? Some sort of king of the undead? Surely, this was not Yarrow. The man he had pursued across the lake had been flesh and blood... and alive. Or had he?

  The body moved, at first no more than a twitch of the finger, but then more bones responded to the muscle memory. The fingers released their hold on the armrest, then the bony fingers tangled with the straggly scraps of hair that still clotted to the dead man’s scalp, and lifted the head. He held it out like a lantern, as if to light the way, but made no attempt to stand.

  “Who are you?” demanded Akiri.

  “I think that it is you who should tell me who you are. After all, you are the intruder here. Not I.”

  Rena stepped forward, her eyes narrowed as she regarded the creature. “I know you.”

  “Is that so?” the thing replied.

  She pointed to a symbol that had been sewn into the lapel of the creature’s tattered jacket – a white serpent’s head with crimson eyes. “That’s the sigil of Bezel Qataan.”

  “Such a bright girl you are. And lovely as well. You are correct… in a sense.” The hand turned the head to face Akiri. “Now, as you have not introduced yourself, allow me to guess. You must be none other than the mighty Akiri.�
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  “You know me?”

  “Even the dead hear whispers. Your name is well known. As are your deeds.” It turned its attention back to Rena. “I can only assume you are the one I had locked in my tower. Though I do not know your name.”

  Rena remained silent.

  “In any case,” it continued, as if having the most ordinary of conversations, “as you rightly guessed, this vessel was indeed once the wretch Qataan. But no more, I’m afraid.”

  “If you are not Qataan, who are you?” asked Akiri.

  “Surely, you have figured that out by now.”

  “Yarrow,” said Akiri in a half whisper. He had found him. Though this was not what he expected, it didn’t matter. His prey had revealed himself. It was time to end this. He took a step forward.

  At once Yarrow burst into maniacal laughter, whose sheer volume halted Akiri’s advance. Rena covered her ears. The head started to swing, its jaw bouncing up and down, its teeth chattering against each other. “Destroying this body will do nothing. You cannot harm me. As I told you, this is merely a vessel.”

  “Then why don’t you face me? Is the great Yarrow afraid?”

  “Afraid? Of you?” The laughter resumed, even louder.

  “If you do not fear me, why do you hide?” he asked, once the laughter subsided.

  “I do not hide, little man. You are no threat to me. Your tiny mind cannot possibly fathom the depths of my power. I have lived for years beyond counting. I have consumed the lives of legions of men such as you.” It paused for a long moment. “However, this woman of yours… She is yours, yes? She intrigues me.”

  “I belong to no man,” snapped Rena.

  “I see. Truly a woman worth fighting for. Tell me, Akiri. Is she not a more fitting companion than the one you have?”

  Akiri didn’t understand what he meant. But he needed to keep him talking. In his words, he might let slip something crucial. “Speak sense.”

  “I look at you and can see that you are lost, Akiri. You carry a fire in your spirit which cannot be satisfied. You wander, seeking a life of purpose. But even when that purpose stands beside you, you ignore it in favor of friendships that can never fulfill your needs. I can help you. I can lift the veil that is blinding you. And what I ask in return is so small a thing. Inconsequential to you, and yet so very important to me.”