The Last Garrison (Dungeons & Dragons Novel)

by Beard, Matthew

  Erak pulled Temley in to himself, and rubbed his hair.

  Temley returned to his cell to gather his belongings—his vestments and traveling gear, his emblems, and his sword. There, surrounded by his meager possessions—his wooden bowl, his thin mattress, his chair—he thought of his arrival at the temple, so many years ago.

  The Raven Queen’s temple, where Temley was raised and trained, was built against a sheer rock wall in the shadow of the Dusk Peak Mountains. The high priest had told Temley that primitive hunters had used the high wall of rock and the bowl of a valley beneath it as a trap for the plains beasts that lived and fed nearby. “They chased them, herded them toward the wall, cornered them against the impassable rock, and slaughtered them for their meat and hides and horns,” he said. “The blood of the creatures consecrated the ground to the Queen, then not even a member of the pantheon of worship.”

  The worshipers gathered at the table for dinner, and the high priest would relay nightly the story of their Queen’s temple’s origin. “She was the primal personification of death, the one who brought it to the world, and the great number of beasts who had fallen on that spot of land made it a place where her power was focused.”

  “Years later, when she had deified herself, she inspired a group of her followers to build there, on the soil that was filled with the pulverized bones of the mass slaughter,” he would say, forking lamb or fish to his plate.

  In the valley, it always seemed to be dusk. It always felt like autumn. The Raven Queen’s power was so strong there, a little bit of the Shadowfell leaked in. To her worshipers, it was paradise. It was where they would train her assassins and her punishers—her elite and deadly hand in the world.

  The high priest would sit with Temley, and even though he never asked, the man would tell him how he came to the temple. “You were sold to the temple as a young boy,” he would say. “Your family were refugees of a broken peace that had led to the broken gates and walls of a keep on the northern borderlands, the outlands of the last human empire. They fled a horde of demihumans, lanky, gray-skinned goblinspawn, who swept south and took scalps as they went.” Temley would look away from the high priest, hoping he would stop telling the story, but knowing he could not ask him to.

  “Your family and a small band managed to stay ahead of them, I was told. But through a mountain pass on their way to the relative safety in the south, they were ambushed. Most were killed.”

  The older priest would smile at that point in the story, inspired by the way the Raven Queen’s plans seemed to work, how often tragedy was simply a step on the way to a greater purpose. “Your age—just beginning to walk on your own—made you valuable alive. We paid gold for orphaned children back then and did not ask questions.”

  When Temley was brought to the high, wooden temple door, carried over one of the bandit’s shoulders, he was examined by a priest who saw in his tiny frame and frightened eyes the potential for the zeal they needed to bring out of every child in their care. “It was me who found you. Your eyes were wet and you trembled as I turned your face from side to side.” The high priest would wrap his knuckles on the arm of his chair at that point.

  “You were dirty and your nose was oozing blood and phlegm. But your core,” he would say, jabbing a finger into Temley’s chest, “was a pillar of ice. Your mind, under the fear and the confusion, stored a biting winter wind. I knew training would solidify the core. Training would turn the wind into a blizzard.” The priest could see it in the shadows that surrounded his eyes, hidden to all but those who knew what to look for.

  First, though, Temley learned to walk. He learned to say “As you wish.” He learned to look down at the ground, down to his naked and bruised feet, when an elder priest approached. He learned to thank the Raven Queen for the scraps of food he was given. He learned to sweep and he learned to read. “That was what we taught you first.” Temley would nod at that. He remembered those days as difficult, but he was not ill-treated through his early years. He was simply taught his place. He was given enough food to sustain him. He was given enough attention to keep him focused. There were other children his age there, but games and songs of childhood were discouraged. There was discipline and servitude. There was study. There was no corporal punishment for misdeeds. Instead, the priests of the Raven Queen used solitude and neglect to foster in Temley a desire to obey and stay in line in order to continue feeling a part of his new family.

  “Praise to the Queen that I learned so well,” said Temley, grabbing the last of his gear and heading to the entry hall to meet Erak. They were to leave immediately.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Although Nergei had no love for Pyla, he had still thrilled at hearing the council member nominated to lead the expedition into the city, because he instantly suspected—and rightly so—that Pyla would bring Luzhon along. She was his only child, and he had been widowed many years, and he would not have entrusted her to anyone else. So it was that the Stargazer’s mandated expedition swelled by one, thus Nergei once again found himself in closer proximity to Luzhon than he had previously dared imagine.

  Unfortunately, that also meant new proximity to Kohel, who had only increased his taunting of Nergei in the aftermath of the battle with the kenku.

  The council had provided the five with a sturdy cart, a nag to pull it, and all the provisions they would need for two weeks, a public display of support for what quickly became a nearly secret mission. There had been rumors in the days before they left among the other villagers of bird men and worse, but the council members had tried to suppress those, to suggest instead Pyla taking the teenagers to the city was no more than a trading trip, meant to acquire the few things that Haven could not supply for itself. In that way, Nergei thought, it was not a lie; Haven had no true warriors of its own, but supposedly the city would have idle swords in abundance.

  The beginning of the journey had not been as difficult as Nergei had imagined it might be, although that had not stopped the soft Pyla from complaining, or his own feet from aching at the end of every day. Although the paths around Haven were narrow, they eventually joined a wider road, once paved with heavier stone but made uneven by upturning roots, rainfall and wind, centuries of each. None of the other travelers seemed to notice, but Nergei could not help studying the road, its well-made construction. It was old—although exactly how old Nergei couldn’t have said—but it had weathered its long life upon the mountain better than most structures did, and anyway, what was the point of the road? It did not lead all the way to Haven, but there were no other junctions, no crossroads anywhere along the miles the party had traveled to that point.

  Nergei thought back to the history the Old Stargazer had taught him, but so little of it had had to do with Haven itself, or the mountain around it, a realization Nergei had never had before. Why would he have needed to learn about Haven? He already knew it well, spent every day trapped between its low walls, or by the forest around it. Instead he had learned of the empire, of its fall from greatness, the wars against the elves and the orcs and worse. He had read volumes about more ancient heroes too, ones that predated the empire, that worshiped different gods and died for forgotten kings, and his master had also taught him of wizards past, of the forces in the sky and across the planes to which they owed their fealty.

  Once, Nergei had tried to brag that he was the most educated person in Haven, at least after his master, and while that was perhaps true, it had done him no favors. There was no glory in being smart with books, at least not in the village, which outside of the Peloran priests had no other scholars, and even if they had they might still have prized other knowledge more highly, those of the trades, and of the hunting and farming that sustained those trades.

  Nergei’s studies had not prepared him for life in the village, but they had made him an able apprentice for his master, and he had never considered what else they might one day do. Only as he trod down the mountain road, lagging behind the rest of his companions, did he wonder if there m
ight be some other purpose to his education, if his knowledge of the world’s history might somehow prepare him for understanding its present.

  He did not know, but he would soon find out, and for now that was enough.

  It was midday, and while Nergei knew the youths could all push ahead, Pyla would call a halt for lunch before long anyway. His fat waddles slowed them already, and his whining even further. The only thing that kept Nergei respectful to Pyla was his own learned politeness, and also his observation of what happened when someone was less forgiving. Kohel pushed Pyla hard, made faces when the older man protested, and all it did was infuriate the councilor—who Kohel clearly did not feel threatened by, as Padlur or Nergei might—and also his daughter, which Nergei would also not want to do.

  Every time Kohel joked at Pyla about his weight, his pace, his need to break and eat or breathe, Nergei watched Luzhon’s face instead of Pyla’s. What he saw there was a growing disgust with Kohel, perhaps a manifestation of what had always been there, or so Nergei allowed himself to hope. For so long, he had assumed Kohel’s interest in Luzhon would be reciprocated, and only since the day in the clearing had he realized the shame of his error. He had assumed Luzhon would pick Kohel over him because he himself would do the same, not because he knew anything about her, not about who she’d become since they’d entered their adolescence, when the decline of Nergei’s master had also isolated Nergei.

  And there he was, out in the world, farther from his master after only a day than he had ever been before. There was a week of travel to get off the mountain, but even the whole mountain was not all of one piece, as it was easy to imagine. Only Padlur had gone that way before, but as usual he was quiet when asked about what was ahead, about how far they had to go each day, always shrugging, always saying, “You follow the road, and the road leads you to the city. There’s no need for anything else.” Then he would disappear again, leaving Kohel to march alone beside the nag and the cart while he scouted around the road, up the cliffs and through the trees, ignoring his own advice.

  At first, Pyla had complained about his absences, recognizing as Nergei did that the sword and bow Padlur carried were their best weapons against whatever dangers the mountain might have held, but even those objections faded fast. The mountain did not seem threatening, and even as their distance from the safety of Haven increased, there didn’t seem to be any worse waiting for them. At night, their fire held back the darkness, and while they heard the howls of wolves upon the heights and the sound of other beasts moving in the trees, nothing approached. Nergei hadn’t necessarily slept well, but that had more to do with the hard ground and the cold air than any fear, and that too puzzled him.

  He found himself walking during the day, hanging behind Luzhon, afraid to speak to her, thinking, I am not afraid, I am not afraid. Repeating it not as an affirmation but in unending wonder, and where did his new confidence come from?

  The fire he felt in the clearing with the kenku, he had thought had left him after he had burned through the bird man, after he had set the tall grasses to smoldering, but he was once again able to feel it, something heating up within his blood. It wasn’t anywhere near the level it had been when the flames had arced from his hands, but it had only diminished, and if he concentrated it was there to be felt.

  As he walked, he focused on that feeling, focused on isolating some part of it, because it was more than one thing. It was a heat, yes, but it was also an icy shiver, was also a darkness floating in the hollows of his chest. Always before, Nergei had felt constrained, trapped by his circumstances, but his new feelings felt reckless, dangerous, made him feel reckless and dangerous, too.

  Control, he thought. I must remain in control of myself.

  He thought that, but still he teased at the feelings, like a loose tooth better left alone, like a scab that demanded to be picked. There was the taste of acid under his tongue, never felt before, and lights that could be made to dance before his eyes, blinding sparks.

  It was in one of those states, halfway down the mountain, that Nergei found himself when Luzhon spoke to him for the first time on the trek. He had been chasing some sound in his footsteps—something barely there, but that might be able to be amplified, if he could just feel it more, a thunder perhaps—when his concentration was broken by a smell, or rather a scent: Luzhon, beside him.

  He looked up, a guilty flush on his face, as if he’d been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing, and perhaps it was that, because there was a curious look on the girl’s face.

  “What are you doing, Nergei?” she asked, matching her stride to his, and just like that, the feelings were gone.

  Not gone, thought Nergei. Just harder to find, with Luzhon standing there.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, trying to blank his face of his concentration, to its previous determination.

  “You’re soaked with sweat,” she said, cocking her head at him.

  “I’m just tired,” he stammered, lying at first, but then, as soon as he said it, feeling truly exhausted. He hadn’t realized that chasing the hints of magic had been so tiring, not with the exhilaration there to mask it.

  Exhilaration, and also fear, for so long had his master forbidden him to explore the magic he himself practiced, and—before—Nergei had always obeyed him.

  “Maybe we’ll stop soon,” said Luzhon, smiling. “You’re not the only one.” She adjusted her own pack, hiking it up her shoulders, its weight at least as heavy as Nergei’s, if not heavier. Her green eyes glowed in the lowering light, and Nergei marveled at the muscles in her arms, pushing at the sleeves of her travel clothes. She was stronger than he was, by perhaps a significant margin, and it was a welcome reminder that even if the kenku had not interrupted Kohel’s unwanted advances, chances were that Luzhon could have done so herself.

  At that, Nergei found himself smiling, despite his tired muscles, despite his nervousness about their journey, its seriousness still not something he had fully reckoned with. He couldn’t help his grin; Luzhon taking down Kohel is something he would have gladly watched.

  “What are you smiling about?” she asked, interrupting his descent again into his thoughts.

  But Nergei didn’t say, couldn’t say. He shook his head, and Luzhon didn’t press him. For a while they walked together in silence, and for Nergei, that alone was enough, enough for a while.

  Luzhon lay awake throughout the night, her bedroll dragged beside the lowering flames of the fire, as close as it was safe to do, while behind her slept her father in the tent they were meant to share, and in another Nergei and Padlur. Only Kohel was still awake, keeping watch farther away, in the edges of the lit space beside the still-wide road, where he claimed he would be able to see better, his eyes better adjusted to the dimmer light. Luzhon had no doubt that was true, but of course she also knew he was avoiding her, both for what he had done to her in the woods, and also what he had failed to do, after the attack. His pride had been injured, and if there was one thing Luzhon had learned about the boys of the village, it was that no good would come from injuring their pride.

  All her life, Luzhon had been among the most beautiful girls in the village, but that was something she could not control, and so thought little about. What she had wanted instead was to be like the boys, with their archery, their forestry skills, their abilities with hammer and anvil, with the butcher’s tools. She had been told from the first that there were no constraints upon her in those ways—that if she wanted to be a hunter, she could—but that had not turned out to be true, and mostly that was her father’s fault, and even there on that trip she was along not because her father believed her the equal of the three boys, but because he feared to leave her alone in the village.

  No, what Luzhon had learned was that when you showed the boys that you could wrestle as good as they could, that you could throw a knife or shoot a boy, all you did was push them further away. The boys of Haven did not want to be bested by a girl, did not believe her when she clai
med that had never been her intent after she had hit some target, or won some race.

  And then there was the journey, another chance to prove herself, and still she did not know if she would take it. There were no women in Haven who Luzhon wanted to grow up to be like, and she was not sure that what the men were was what she wanted, either. Somewhere, there would be some better model for her, and Luzhon would keep her eyes open for it.

  Until then, there was the night all around, and the fire to keep fed, helping even though no one had asked her to help. Outside the halo of light from the fire, the land was flatter than Luzhon had ever seen, if not exactly flat. Above, where Haven was perched, the slopes were steeper, the paths less sure, and the sounds different, or at least less noticeable. There in the dark, Luzhon heard the wing beats of bats overhead, the hoots of owls, the scurrying sound of animals in the brush, hopefully small ones. Two nights before there had been a bear somewhere in the dark, growling in the distance before Padlur moved through the trees to scare it away, and after that Luzhon felt safer in a way that had persisted not just the rest of that night but in the days after. Yet again she felt anxious, but more for the longer-away future to come, the danger in the city to come, the danger at home in Haven, waiting for their return. And what if the kenku attacked before they returned?

  The idea of returning to find their home gone was unthinkable, and so Luzhon stopped herself from thinking it.

  Still, some other worry nagged at her too, some feeling that something watched them from the trees, or from above the trees. Not the kenku again, not exactly, but something like them, maybe.

  As if to confirm her fears, a sound grew through the trees, and then the sky was filling, all above her, with black shapes, flapping their wings, blocking out the moonlight, the stars. Luzhon shivered, thinking them a roost of bats, but as she stood out of her bedroll she saw that they were not bats, but ravens, hundreds of ravens, and all at once they opened their throats and began to caw, to call out to each other, and, Luzhon thought, to her, so many voices all speaking at once, and all of them warnings, warnings or else threats, and even after the birds had flown away and left the night to return to its quieter hours, even after that she knew that whatever bravery she had been summoning was undone, and there would be no more sleep that night, no matter how badly she needed it.