by Dylan Doose
The assassins that blocked the stairs did not pursue. They turned and rushed into the gatehouse, all of them but the helmless leader, the shadows of the crevices on his scowling face intensified next to the fire. He raised his sword, tilted his head back, and lifted the claymore so that the blood of the slain dripped down the center of the sword’s blood groove into his open mouth.
Yet again Ken heard the chimes and the drums, and he no longer thought that was coincidence.
Sorcery.
“That is Dammar’s song they play as they march on the wall,” said Chevic, still as cheery as ever, stomping away on the corpse of the bird-headed slave girl with his heavy boots. “They pop just like insects, don’t they?” he said, and burst the beaked skull by stepping on it with all his hatred, bits of bone and brain going in all directions.
Same freaks, same war, same nightmare. Again and again.
Ken looked back to the wall where the enemy champion, the one drinking the blood, began to bleat like a goat, louder and louder. There were other noises, too, all of them bestial. They echoed through the city and from beyond the wall.
In the alley, men and women, naked but for masks fashioned from the skins and bones of beasts, marched forth banging drums with their hands at a slow, steady rhythm. They carried banners fastened with bells and chimes swaying back and forth. The warrior on the wall above them was bleating madly now and shaking his head side to side with such speed it looked a blur. The fire still burned in the doorway next to him, the embers whirling around the warrior as horns burst from his skull and curled around like those of a ram.
Chevic fired his bow, but Ken saw no foes fall. When he turned around the Golden Son was stringing another arrow and aiming north to where into the alley poured another disordered score of naked men and women wielding bone daggers, cleavers, sharpened stakes of wood, and mallets.
“The beasts of the wood,” Chevic yelled. “They would see the holy white stone city covered in filth. They would see the Luminescent’s golden light forever snuffed out.”
“You truly believe this, even now?” Ken asked.
“I’ll not stand idle and let it be done!” was Chevic’s reply as the pagans closed in.
The odds of me being the one to kill Chevic this night just got a whole lot slimmer.
* * *
The Jarl’s face looked skeletal beneath the night sky with the light of the flaming hall before him. His braided red beard was blackened with soot, and his right eye was closed shut, making the vertical pupil that split the frozen blue iris of his left eye all the more apparent and all the more monstrous.
They had attacked the village in the night, just as this clan had done to them. The Jarl was not in his hall when it burned. His daughter and his son-in-law, they were not there, gods be praised. But his last surviving brother had been, and his brother’s children, their wives, many of his warriors and friends…killed like that. No glory in it, just fear, pain, and suffocation.
“I saw the son and the daughter. They ran out the back,” said the Jarl without looking up at his son-in-law, who was circling on horseback. “Go after them. Thaller won’t be enough. The boy is good with both a sword and an axe. The girl will fight, too.”
“I’ll not cut down the girl. She’s pregnant.”
“That is why she must die. And her babe. Kill her or the blood feud doesn’t end here, do you understand? Do you want her son to one day come after your son?”
The Jarl’s son-in-law hesitated, and the Jarl knew he made arguments for good and evil in his mind, as was his wont. They had had many a discussion over the contents of the book the boy had used to teach the Jarl to read. The Jarl was not disputing the science or validity of goodness, only that such things had any place here.
“Are you a hunter, or are you not?”
“I hunt beasts,” the son-in-law replied. “Monsters. I don’t run down pregnant girls and their brothers like swine.”
“We are all beasts and monsters.” The Jarl walked dangerously close to the blazing hall, picked up a burning piece of tinder, and hurled it with great accuracy at the rump of his son-in-law’s white mare, setting it off running. “Hunt them and kill them, Theron, lest one of them live to hunt down your pregnant wife!”
* * *
Chapter Fourteen
The Monkey
Theron’s task was to investigate the Basilica for places the demon could use to open portals, but his real intent was to find clues as to the true identity of the Patriarch. And more importantly, who financed his white city. The church kept its vast wealth in Brynth. Yet the Patriarch seemed to have a remarkable share of it.
What mortal man, beast, or celestial being had given to him that golden glass that contained lightning? Who created for him his armor of solid gold, a soft metal, yet the Patriarch’s armor was as solid as Kehldeshi steel? If there was a smith in the country of Romaria that could have done such a thing, Theron would have long since found the man.
Was the Patriarch puppeteer or puppet? Theron suspected the latter.
Theron neared the end of the eastern corridor, where the guests had been entering over the span of the evening. It would soon be midnight, and if the Patriarch’s knowledge of Dammar was accurate, Theron would soon be called upon to choose a side in a fight he had no interest in. Caught in a battle again on the very day he had finally decided to stick to hunting monsters. Not an auspicious new beginning.
Earlier, Theron had hurried through the upper level of the Basilica, searching for the Patriarch’s quarters, thinking to start his hunt there. Perhaps the man kept a journal, or kept a key to some locked chest that would provide Theron with information.
Two men had guarded the double doors to the chambers.
It was regrettable, but both those men were dead now. Knocking them unconscious and binding them was out of the question. Time was of the essence. The Patriarch had said so himself.
Besides, Theron could not risk them wriggling free and sounding an alarm.
There had been books in that room, enough rare volumes that Theron had regretted the lack of opportunity to stop and better acquaint himself with them. He wondered how a fanatic could keep such a closed mind with so many opportunities to open it at his fingertips.
There was a set of golden brushes with long hair. So either the Patriarch saved strands from before his skull became the glowing pate that it was, or someone else—Theron’s guess was a woman, or two—was sharing these chambers. Yet the Patriarch preached abstinence and claimed to have no congress.
Theron’s search had taken him through chests and drawers and even a small, hidden space beneath a loose tile, but he found nothing of import save a key, a simple black key, quite large. Too large to open anything small. But he could find nothing in that room that the key would fit.
The key was tied on a thick leather strap that he had pulled over his head, the cold metal pressing against his skin beneath his shirt and mail now as he strode to the end of the eastern corridor. Paces from the entrance were more smiling, gold-masked guards welcoming two more guests: a man and woman from the Dragon Dynasties beyond Kehldesh. Their hair was jet black. They were small and youthful in appearance, but their dark eyes missed nothing. Robes of brilliant red and gold with embroideries of long-mustached dragons draped from shoulder to ankle.
The woman first and then the man looked up at Theron. There was a time he would have been horrified to be caught in such regal company looking like the worst sort of miscreant. He knew what they saw: a towering man, stinking, the scruff of a traveler’s beard on his jaw, the rest of his face covered by dark northern iron, spiked horns protruding from the sides. He knew what they would have seen when he was still Theron Ward of Wardbrook: a man with an easy smile and a handsome face and attire that would have put a peacock to shame.
The woman spoke in a foreign tongue, and the man turned to one of the guards, and in common asked, “Who is this armed barbarian? Why was my armed escort made to wait outside?”
; “This man,” began one of the guards, “was appointed by our holy Patriarch as the head authority of the Basilica’s security on this night. He is here for the safety of all our guests.”
The man spoke to the woman in their language as Theron passed. Both grimaced.
Theron looked back at them and smiled, so widely he could feel the edges of his mouth touching the iron of his helmet. He was no longer Theron Ward of Wardbrook. He was Theron of nowhere and everywhere.
To his left was a thin hall with an open archway at the end leading to stairs going down. Theron bowed, turned, and began toward the stairs. Churches, just like every other building, kept their secrets in the basement.
He moved as quickly down the hall as he could while maintaining a walk. He worried for Kendrick, who was supposed to go and check that the gates were secure, and then come back. He had been gone too long, and Theron did not like it. Ken would not have lingered had he any choice.
He was soon to face a demon, a wizard garbed in gold, both their armies, and for the moment, it looked like he might be doing so alone.
Theron passed through the archway and started down the stairs, and he wondered if the Patriarch had yet discovered the two dead men who guarded his chamber doors.
He continued down the stone stairs, passing paintings of saints that lined the walls, men and women on crosses, breaking wheels, stretching racks, and other apparatuses often used on the path to Enlightened martyrdom. From their mangled, mutilated bodies rose their beaming souls to the sun.
Theron reached the stairs at the end of the hall. Small, glowing golden orbs of the same otherworldly glass as the sun tower’s dome lit the way.
He continued his descent, and far off, over the noise of a few hundred nobles bantering, and even beyond the Basilica, past the roar of the thousands of pilgrims and citizens celebrating in the city center, he thought he heard the sound of wind chimes and the thudding of drums. The sound, whether real or imagined, seemed to stress the impending black hour, and Theron hurried to the bottom of the steps.
He stopped. He had to. For he could go no further unopposed.
The room at the bottom of the steps was ten feet wide and four times as long. At the end of it was a golden door flanked by the orb-shaped lanterns that lit the Basilica’s interior. In front of the door stood a gold-armored knight. Unlike Chevic’s mask and the masks of the other soldiers Theron had seen until then, this knight’s mask was frowning, and there were white threads sewn through the mouth. His eyes were tilted down as if he were weeping, and from the top of his masked helmet was a white horsehair mane. He was heavily armored; not as absurdly as the Patriarch, only as heavy as a strong mortal man could carry. In one arm he held a golden lance, in the other a tall golden shield.
“Turn back,” he said in Romarian, but without any intensity, as if he offered advice to a stranger and not a command.
“Easy there, my melancholy friend. Do you know who I am?” Theron asked in common, walking forward, not quickly, but not so slow as to appear cautious. Only enemies were cautious.
“Theron Ward, the hunter,” said the sad knight, in common now. “You are here in service of his holiness, the Patriarch.”
“Yes. I am here hunting a demon, and I must check every room of this place for potential locations that the fiend may manifest,” Theron said. “So, aside.” He dipped his head, motioning for the guard to get out of the way.
“Turn back,” said the sad knight, his tone changing from a stranger giving advice to a man pleading. The sad knight slid his right foot back, bent at the knees, lowered his lance, and raised his shield.
This will be the place where I find my answers.
Theron closed his eye a moment and took a deep breath, reflecting on the day’s events and the furious throb in his head. The urge to begin hacking his way toward the sunrise was growing to the point of overflow. “I would have enjoyed having the chance to converse with you, my good man,” Theron said. “I would have told you how you have been lied to and manipulated into your loyalty to a tyrant. I would have tried to show you a better path.”
He drew his short sword and brought it up with the same speed and precision he had seen his sister perform with the killing tool at Wardbrook, at Dentin.
The sad knight was fast, very fast, and had he not been wearing all those pounds of glamorous ore, he may have lasted a few seconds longer. Theron, in contrast, wore light mail; he did not like being overburdened by plate. Hunters must be agile. He relied on his skill to stay alive, and he relied on his accuracy with his weapons just as much as his strength to kill his enemies.
The sad knight tried to lunge at Theron with his lance, but Theron twisted out of the way and grabbed hold of the lance’s shaft with his free hand. He simultaneously pulled on the lance and feinted a high cut. The sad knight raised his shield, and he would have blocked it had it not been a ruse. When the tall shield went up, Theron let go of the lance and did a tight spin. Using the torque of the motion, he kicked into the side of his enemy’s knee. With a crack, the knight’s leg gave way. Theron took only an instant to realign from the kick and assess the damage. The knight’s knee was snapped in half, but in the frenzy of desperation, he found strength to stand back up on his good leg, using his lance and shield to balance.
Before he was upright, Theron snatched the white horse plume of the helm and pulled it up to expose enough human tissue for a quick kill. The instant he saw flesh, the sword plunged, and stuck him just below the bridge of his nose. The blade crunched out the back of the knight’s skull, and as fast as the motion was finished the helm was tossed to the ground. Theron’s boot was on the knight’s chest and kicking him off the blades.
Theron looked at the remainder of the man’s face, a young man, perhaps Theron’s own age. It’s hard to say now.
Far off, or maybe just in his head, once again Theron heard the wind chimes and the thudding of drums.
He shook his head, denying both the sound and the ache in the back of his skull from his performance in the breaking square that morning many miles away. What a day this shaped up to be, and at midnight, as the morrow is born, everything is to get worse if the swine’s prophecy proves true.
“I told you to step aside, and had you known anything, you would have known your limits, and you would have listened, and despite likely being this sad knight for many years—indeed, you were probably shaped to guard this door since you were a boy—you still had a choice. You made the wrong one. You gave up your life because some lying bastard told you he is the Luminescent’s mouth in this world, and it was your destiny to guard his wealth. Perhaps it was your destiny to die today, this hour, this moment… But it did not need to be here. The fault is your own,” Theron said as he looked at the center of the lustrous, unadorned golden door.
There was a thin slot dead center of it.
For a key.
This had all been too easy. Hubris. The Patriarch was so bloated on his own certainties that he had left a key as easy plunder and a single man to guard his riches. Theron reached into his shirt and produced the key on its leather strap. He placed it into the slot and turned. Within the walls metal clinked, and the golden doors split in two and slowly ground open.
The room stretched back a great distance, with a path of white tile through the center. On either side of it were heaped mountains of golden coins and jewels that neared the ceiling of the two-story-tall room. Theron entered. He considered dragging the sad knight’s corpse in and hiding it for a moment, on the off chance that anyone came down, but there was so much blood pooled around the corpse that it would be pointless to hide it. So he left it there like he had the other two corpses by the door to the Patriarch’s chamber.
Theron’s heart and brain pounded equally and in tandem as he reached into the nearest pile of gold, and from it took a single coin; on one side was the bald portrait of the Patriarch. He flipped it over and his stomach knotted, his chest tightened, and then he grinned, because any moral dilemma he had been having
over the actions of the past months was cleared from his conscience. Those actions had led him here, to this moment of certainty. He had returned to the righteous path. Indeed, he once more hunted monsters.
He ran his thumb over the flip side of the golden coin, where the image of a many-headed serpent rising from the sea was set in relief. Leviathan. They were the Patriarch’s backers, the same shadow senate of sorcerers whose agent Theron had slaughtered in a cave in Northern Brynth. The same order that had killed his sister, taken his eye. The same one that took Ken’s hand and attacked Theron’s lands and his villagers, set their homes ablaze and fed on their flesh.
He had killed the Emerald Witch in her lair, but she was only one of the many heads. His fight was not done, and he was ready.
This night would see justice done.
He threw the coin down, and again there came the sound of the chimes and the drums. Light footsteps descended the stairs, and the chimes and drums faded as he focused in on the sound of those footfalls.
All at once the music and reveling from the Basilica’s main chamber came to a halt. There was a cry of female agony blended with the tremendous roar of a beast. Of a demon.
Midnight.
A blade scraped on stone.
Theron pulled his claymore free from its sheath on his back.
The screams of the slaughter above carried to him.
“Quite the sword,” said a man from behind Theron. He had a low, rasping voice, and a thick Romarian accent, and Theron was not surprised to hear it, for he had sensed someone creeping up upon him.
“You’ll be sure of that soon enough,” Theron said, and turned around to face the man who had been following him. He was almost a head shorter than Theron, with receding gray hair that exposed the top of his pate and ran down to his shoulders; his beard covered his jaw and chin but was shaved above the lip. The man looked much like one of the apes Chayse had described to Theron from her adventures in Azria. He held two crescent-moon-shaped knives with a reverse grip.
