The sun is hot, he read. However, it gives unto us a sustaining energy to live. The moon is cold, though it lights our path in the thickening darkness; stars gleaming overhead tell us of the stories of our past experiences. It has been so long, it is so far away, and when we reach again for the sun, moon, and stars, our grasp encloses around a black air.
What is this face? Whose hands are these that recount all that is left of us? These eyes are so unfamiliar, and this hair is not our own. We find, and it is our shame and guilt to discover, that we must take upon ourselves a new name. We must, therefore, follow after the footsteps of a new divinity…
The script began to explain the Order of Command, telling how the Urden’Dagg gives its orders to a Branches aristocracy, and the aristocracy to the chief commander, and the chief commander passes it on to the two commanders who tell each of their three captains, and the captains tell their patrols. Dril’ead skipped over the passage as it was already very familiar to him, and turning the page he read the next paragraph.
As he read, Dril began to sense a significant purpose in the way the foundation of the Order of Command was set up. The author of this strange manuscript seemed to be hinting at some hidden message in the writings; and as Dril’ead Vulzdagg studied the sentences more thoroughly, he found that the order of it all was based on something larger… something greater, yet to come.
The Order of Command that he and his family had followed so strictly in times past, if his assumptions were correct, were merely instructions set up to build the Branches of the Urden’Dagg Tree into a vast majority of constructed fighters preparing for war against another nation.
Could it be, Dril’ead wondered as he looked up into his reflection again, that all these years, ever since our coming into these lands, the Urden’Dagg has been preparing us to battle against those from whence we came?
It could only be so.
15
Swildagg’s Descent
Nel’ead Swildagg, wearing his mesh armor and cloak, the combat boots of his ancestors making hardly a noise as they softly padded the smooth stone underfoot, approached Tyla Swildagg where she stood at the edge of the Swildagg frontier. She overlooked the distance toward Vulzdagg from the edge of the cliff, wearing her ornate robes of green and blue beneath her purple cloak. In her hand she held her wand, the lean shaft sparkling in the infrared spectrum with a divine power, the area around her slightly illuminated by it.
Nel’ead carried a straight blade concealed in its covering at his side, strapped to a leather belt round his waist, and he rested his palm against it as he approached the side of his youngest sister. “Where are the troops, Tyla?” he asked in a grim tone.
“They have moved out from our lands already,” she replied, and Nel’ead could sense the anxiety in her voice. But it was not excitement. She was afraid of something.
“And the demon of just fulfillment?” he asked hesitantly, trying to guess her unease.
“Gorroth is gone from my sight,” she answered. “It appears that the Vulzdagg aristocracy is more than willing to put up a fight than we thought, no matter the beast and its power.”
Nel’ead let out a long sigh behind clenched teeth, his eyes falling on the citadel of Vulzdagg at the end of the spectrum before them. “No matter,” he said after a moment of uneasy silence. “If the demon had fulfilled its part in all of this, then there is no need to fear for what may come. If the aristocracy of Vulzdagg is gone, then there is little at all to fear.”
“They have fallen,” Tyla said, nodding sharply. “All that is left is a broken band of hopeless Vulzdagg’s.”
“Than be at ease, dear sister,” said Nel’ead, nudging her on the arm, “Nothing stands between us and our way to triumph! We will prove victorious.”
“Why, then, are you so unsure?” said Tyla, and she turned to look her brother in the eye. He tried to avoid acting distressed in any way, but his sudden intake of breath gave it all away for him.
“I’ve noticed your unease of late, dear brother,” she continued, reading his expression. “Don’t think I cannot tell when your certainties betray you. This is, after all, what you’ve set out to accomplish ever since we came out at your calling to see you sitting in father’s throne. Has your need for revenge died?”
He turned and met her gaze evenly, and raising both hands he laid them on her shoulders as he spoke to her in a low whisper. “If anything has betrayed me, Tyla, it is the trust of our sister. Alastra’s decisions in this matter we face have been placing us nearer and nearer the edge of ruin, and I do believe she knowingly exposes us so.”
“But Alastra has ever upheld the hierarchy of Swildagg,” Tyla put in, disagreeing with his sudden statement against their sister.
“It may appear so,” Nel’ead continued, fervently gripping her shoulders as if it would help her understand. “That is what she wants us to believe, but in her heart Alastra is a treacherous witch awaiting the downfall of her own aristocracy so she can move into place where we once stood. She will see me killed, one way or another, before I sit again in father’s throne. She is twisting my own commands against me, Tyla!”
Tyla looked at him with widening eyes, disbelief and uncertainty reflecting in the large orbs staring back at him.
“You must believe me,” he said pleadingly. “As we descend upon Vulzdagg with our insufferable forces, we are allowing our own descent from out position here. The tower of Swildagg will fall if you allow Alastra the power she demands.”
“And if we do not?” Tyla asked suddenly, her eyes now reflecting dread and fear.
Nel’ead furrowed his brow as he wondered on the awfulness of the question, the threat from Alastra that it proffered them to deny her wishes. If we do not, we will most certainly find ourselves at the bottom of this chasm. The answer was silent, but gripping Tyla more vehemently he said, “That is what we will have to find out.”
Hanging her head Tyla let out an exasperated sigh, and then looked out across the frontier toward Vulzdagg. “It is not among my wishes to see our people fall,” she said quietly as Nel’ead took his hands from her shoulders, “Though I do not believe it is in my power to save them.”
“It is in neither of our power,” Nel’ead said. He turned and faced Vulzdagg. “But power and glory were never among the traits of a foolish wretch, and I do not expect it will ever be.”
Tyla looked at him curiously. “Will that stop you?”
After inhaling a deep breath of that air Nel’ead answered. “No.”
16
The Unlucky Few
Outfitted in a new set of armor and clothing, Dril’ead Vulzdagg emerged from the citadel of his family, carrying Gefiny in his arms as he descended the steps down into the street. He took her to the tombs of the fallen, a place where the two of them had spoken a few days before. It now felt like a lifetime had passed, and indeed a few hundred lives had gone away during that short period. It was all so unbelievable, and yet he carried her into the depths of the tombs to where lord Vishtax and Lady Dela’burda lay in undisturbed sleep, and there laid her down on a shelf in the tunnel wall.
Stepping back he faced the lifeless face of Gefiny Vulzdagg with an air of solemnity, putting his back to the empty shelf across from her where he would eventually would have been laid, and then raised his face towered the smoothly cut ceiling of the passage. Another figure entered the tomb through the entry, carrying a body in her arms as she descended toward him, and Naomi turned and laid Razarr, captain of the basilisks, on an empty shelf just above the sleeping aristocracy as was their custom.
Dril’ead walked up to Naomi and looked into Razarr’s calm face from beside her. Neither of them spoke, or thought to speak at all, as they looked down on the face of the captain of the basilisks, short though his service in that position may have been, a grim air falling upon the two of them.
“Like a mighty warrior,” Dril’ead said softly, and Naomi closed her eyes as she recognized the quoted phrase. “His shield was dense, his sw
ord was bright, and his feet armored in the glory of his ancient ancestors beat the earth where the monsters carelessly trod. Like a mighty warrior was his cry echoing from mountain peak to steppes below, a thunder rattling the underworld where dark things dwell, and in all his glory and might he came upon the footsteps of Oblivion where fate would then meet him.
“No fear! He cried with sword and shield held high, and the sunlight beam smote their faces like a cascade of fire, and the very fortifications trembled beneath his thunderous voice. No fear and no flight, we here have come in place of darkness with light! Those who stand against us shall fall, and those who fall shall never rise to meet the glory and might that has consumed them! And the foundations were shattered upon the mountainside, crashing into ruin in the deep caverns far below, in the world where dark things dwell, and in its fall the hero was lost…”
Naomi opened her eyes and looked down at Razarr once again, and from her side she lifted his sword to place beside him; but Dril’ead stopped her with an outstretched hand. “ Such things are better not placed in tombs where they will rust, but rather should be held high in the battles that are to come,” he said to her.
She nodded and returned the weapon to her side, and then turning from Razarr she left the tombs of the fallen of Vulzdagg. Dril’ead remained, though, and looked into the motionless face of his old comrade as he wondered over the possibilities swelling inside him.
“Could I have saved them?” he asked the body knowing he would receive no plausible answer. “Gefiny, could I have saved her? Had I come a moment earlier I might have been able to fight off the wretched beast, thrown it back into the Lesser Realms where it belongs, and hear no more of it in this life. Could I have done it, dear friend?”
“Dril’ead,” a familiar voice answered from further down the passage. Without turning Dril knew his father stood in the spectrum there. “Son, you know you could have done nothing to stop this thing from happening. Gefiny said herself that her time was come, and those who you met in the passages of Grundagg needed to meet such a mighty warrior as you. You, Dril’ead Vulzdagg, are destined for a greater purpose; to despair now would throw the whole reasons for this world’s awful happenings to nothing. People will die – innocent people that you still have a chance to save. Find them, Dril’ead. Save them all.”
“And Neth’tek,” Dril’ead asked, kneeling beside Razarr’s body. “What of the warrior-wizard?”
“What of him?” Vaknorbond pressed. “Son, dear son, you must find him and save him as you would save all those who have gone before you. Use what determination you have left, what strength is still flowing through your blood, and save him and all of them. You must do this.”
“How can I?” he demanded, letting his head rest against the shelf holding Razarr. “I’m trapped in this world of eternal shadow we have all been since the foundation of this wretched empire. I read your book, father, and know all that you know. There is no way I can find Neth’tek, whether he be on the surface of buried beneath the world already.”
“They had hope,” Vaknorbond told him. “Your ancestors, those who recorded the words of our forefathers and mothers; they had an undying hope that there was still a way open for them to return.”
“But they dreaded that hopeful possibility,” Dril reminded him.
“Only because some of us aren’t worthy to come back to the surface: Some of us, those who cannot put aside the need to destroy and gain power doing so, cannot return. But you, Dril’ead, have learned to gain power without using destruction. You can capture the hearts of those you follow without having to murder.”
“I’m a warrior,” Dril’ead told his father evenly. “Killing is what I do.”
“But it is not all that you do,” Vaknorbond told him. “They have seen you outside of battle; teaching them how to fight, when to fight, and what purpose they should be fighting for. That is all that matters, after all, isn’t it?”
Dril hesitated as he thought it over. “Yes.”
“You didn’t just teach them, though, Dril’ead,” Vaknorbond continued. “You showed them.”
“But I didn’t show Neth’tek!” Dril retorted vehemently, standing up to face the spirit of his father. “I failed Neth’tek, father, just as I failed you and your fathers! Gefiny, she thought I was something greater than I ever thought I could be, and I admit that for a time I believed her. I believed in myself. And then this happens! The very thing that we tried to destroy when destroying Zurdagg comes back to ruin us, and it has ruined this very nation to an absolute destruction! How, father, am I supposed to hope for a belief in myself again?”
Vaknorbond’s response was simple and somewhat startling for Dril’ead to hear. “Remember the child you were, are, and have yet to become again. Remember that undying hope, however childish it may have been.”
“There is little time left for you, son,” Vaknorbond added suddenly, backing into the passage wall and disappearing from view. “There is some left of our estate, few though they may be. They are the unlucky few, and it is they who shall deliver this lasting hope unto a glorious ending. Farewell!”
Find them.
Dril’ead knew what he had to do. Gathering the last remnants of his household would be the easiest part, but uniting them for a hopeless cause would be near impossible. He suspected their spirits were drained of all such hope, faith, and belief in an impossible success. Once before he had done it, leading the broken armies of Vulzdagg and Grundagg against the vicious monster that crawled from the Lesser Realms to destroy them; but that was under desperate measures. No one was thinking straight with all the chaos going on around them that day.
But he had to. Dril had to unite his shattered forces against Swildagg before they came upon them, and astonish the treacherous Branch with the unyielding strength of the basilisk. It was what he always had done, and what he knew he would always do. No matter the situation, whether the greater odds were against them, Dril’ead always charged the opposing force with the hopeless hopefully following behind.
They would die, every one of the hopeless wretches would be slain by Swildagg blades, but at least he could grant them the chance to die fighting instead of fleeing. He would lead them to win their way to glory, to fight for the glory that they would all succumb to in the end. If they were to fall, then Dril’ead Vulzdagg would have them rise in a last fight for glory before they fell.
He left the tombs and returned to the citadel, where, sitting or standing on the steps to the broken doors, the last twenty or so of the Vulzdagg people were gathered by Naomi to wait for him. They were all solemn and sad looking soldiers or mages, sitting down on the steps to the citadel with bowed heads and clenched fists, waiting in a state of grief and shame as they were the last of their people. They lived because they were unable to stand between Gorroth and their matron, therefore left alone to die by the coming of Swildagg into their domain.
Naomi rose as Dril’ead stopped before them, looking at each sullen figure in the gloom of that hour. “These here are they who have lived through the awful moment of our Lady’s doom, lord Dril’ead Vulzdagg,” said Naomi. “They wonder what you would have them do.”
Dril’ead did not answer right away. He looked each face in the eyes as they were raised toward him, and saw the shame of having survived when their comrades had not reflecting back on him. “We few,” he began in an even, steady tone, “We unlucky few! We have lived when all around us have perished, have fought but not fallen, now sit upon the footsteps of our ruined home. The unlucky few live to fight another day!”
The scimitars strapped to his hips leapt from their scabbards with a flash amid the infrared spectrum, and Dril’ead raised them above his head as he cried to those few survivors of his people one final time, saying, “I cannot grant you your glory, but I can secure the passage unto it! Will you use this extended life that has been given you and follow me into the fight for glory? Who will die, and who will live before they die? This is the fight for glory!”
Naomi stepped up beside him, unsheathing her own sword. “Listen to him,” she said to the disheartened soldiers before her, repeating what her chief commander had said only the day before, “It is the sound of glory!”
Two of the soldiers rose slowly to their feet where they sat on the bottom steps to the side, and coming forward they turned to face their comrades beside their chief commander and lord. With weary glances to one another, each discouraged in his or her own way, the rest came forward one by one, or in small groups of two or three, until the last twenty fighters of Vulzdagg were standing round their chief and master.
Dril placed his swords back into their scabbards as he looked round the group before him, nodding his appreciation to each of them. “Well, what have any of you to say?”
One of them answered, the one of the two who first stepped forward, and he spoke slowly as he said, “You are our lord, and you are our chief commander; what have we to say indeed?”
“Than you would gladly march to your deaths if we commanded it?” Dril’ead asked the warrior.
“We would,” replied the warrior. “At least, those who have trust enough would.”
“And if we knowingly sent you to your doom, then would you still trust enough to obey?” Dril asked.
“We would,” the warrior answered with a nod. “Most certainly if it proved the uprising of our people.”
“But if it meant the downfall, would your trust in us still to lead your forward?” said Dril’ead, squaring his shoulders before the warrior.
“To the death our trust would have then been betrayed,” he said evenly, looking his noble lord in the eyes. “But you, lord Dril’ead Vulzdagg, would never do such a thing.”
“I would never,” Dril agreed. “Your death would then be of a glorious and faithful end, while mine would be one of treachery and shame.” He looked to each somber face surrounding him, “To die for a cause unjust is a thing worse than death. We few – we unlucky few – we not suffer such torments after death as that shame, but shall rise once more before we fall. It is our fated end.”
Passage to Glory: Part Two of the Redemption Cycle Page 16
