The Destroyer Book 4

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “Your entire race deserves to be annihilated, just as the Betrayer wanted.” Turnia shifted in her seat and her voice cracked. “My brother was a friend and advocate for your race. He was impressed by your fortitude and cleverness. You repaid his kindness with treachery and murder, yet I know that if he could speak to me from behind the grave, he would still want me to forgive you and feel sympathetic to the plight of your people.” Telaxthe nodded, but the creeping fear soon overtook her composure.

  “But, if my brother were in my place, and you had killed me instead, he would have already exacted revenge. He would have set his rage upon your people, innocent or not.” Turnia and Telaxthe stared at each other for a few seconds, then Turnia continued, “So feel fortunate that you betrayed the stronger of us. I will allow your servants, Vernine, and Dissonti to leave my camp unharmed. Your other guards are already dead. You will serve as the Pretender’s concubine for the remainder of our journey. Then I shall delight in ending your miserable existence. After you are disposed of, I will beseech the Council to rid this world of the Elven scourge and free the humans you have overtaken.

  “And as you die, know I will dedicate the rest of my life, all of my strength, energy, and power, to ridding the universe of your race. We will enslave every one of your people and farm your skulls for Ovules. My clan will rise to dominate the others, the Two Bears will colonize every planet. Each life we take from an Elven, each skull we harvest will send us to another world to find and eliminate thousands more.”

  Telaxthe’s face finally cracked and a single tear dripped from each eye. Her jaw clenched and I could hear the sound of her breath come out in painful gasps of agony. Vernine was moments away from drawing her sword, but then the empress raised her hand.

  “Can they leave now?” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper.

  “I suggest that they scurry back to the rest of your army quickly and leave no path for my scouts to track.” Telaxthe nodded and turned to Vernine.

  “Make sure she returns safely.”

  “As you command, empress.” Vernine nodded with renewed composure.

  “I have seen how this ends.” Dissonti sighed and stood up from her seat with a swish of her gown.

  “And how does it end?” Turnia smirked.

  “Everyone that opposes him suffers the same fate. If his generals could not kill him, your Council will also fail.” The jade-haired woman turned to me and said the words as if she was commenting on something unimportant.

  “The Pretender will face his punishment, as will your empress, and eventually you will too, Dissonti. This is just a stay of execution. When I return to this world, I will come for you.”

  “He isn’t a Pretender, Turnia, and you will never return to this world.” Dissonti nodded at Telaxthe and then seemed to float through the door. Her empress nodded back, but the movement seemed odd. I wondered if Dissonti was the other Singleborn. Vernine saluted one last time, opened her mouth as if to speak, closed it, and then turned to follow Dissonti out of the tent. When she passed me our eyes met but I couldn’t decipher the flurry of emotions in my ex-lover’s ruby eyes.

  “Please return with Vernine and Dissonti,” Telaxthe said to her servants. I knew that they were trained warriors and bodyguards who would gladly die for the empress, but they nodded at her command and they solemnly filed out of the exit.

  This left Telaxthe, Turnia, her two warrior women, and me in the empress’s grand pavilion.

  “We will depart in an hour.” Turnia stood as gracefully as a panther and her guards followed the movement. “You may make use of this tent during the rest of our sojourn. I will have guards around the perimeter, Pretender, so do not think that our agreement allows you to flee.”

  “I understand.” I nodded and began to relax. Vernine, Dissonti, and Telaxthe were still alive. The outcome could have been much worse.

  “We will tell you when it is time to begin traveling again. My staff will tear down this tent and set it up each night.” The three women walked toward the exit.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Pretender.” Turnia was a few feet away from the stairs leading out of the pavilion when she turned around. “I hope your request to keep Telaxthe alive for a few extra weeks is not part of some grander scheme.”

  “No,” I answered and I felt my stomach twist into knots.

  “Good. I have over a hundred warriors here and there will be thousands more once we reach Green Solo. There is no escape for you or this Elven bitch.” Turnia smiled like a pleased cat and her two flanking warriors mirrored her expression. Then the three women turned and walked up the stairs.

  Telaxthe and I were alone on the circle of pillows.

  We stared at each other for half a minute without speaking. I listened to the conversations from the campsite surrounding our tent. Those sounds had been absent during our meal and I wondered how long Turnia had this ploy planned. A few hundred yards away I picked out the voice of the O’Baarni leader telling someone to bury all the Elven corpses. Then she spoke again and assigned guards to the empress’s pavilion. Turnia told them to listen for sounds of us fucking and if they didn’t hear any in the next five minutes to come and get her.

  “Do you think she will actually let Dissonti and Vernine leave?” I asked.

  “Fuck you, Kaiyer,” she whispered, and the expression of anger on her face reminded me of the last conversation I had with Nadea.

  I sighed and stood. The dishes from the meal were still arranged by each pillow but I stepped around them and walked toward the empress. She stood with a graceful movement and took a small step away from me.

  “I will not enjoy this. I will curse you every time your vile body violates me!” she seethed and spat the words.

  “Shut up and take off your clothes.” I sighed again and shook my head. I said the words loudly and hoped the guards heard. She didn’t move to remove her garments and I raised my voice again. “I can just tell Turnia you aren’t cooperating.”

  “Vernine and Dissonti are probably dead already.” Her voice faded into a whisper.

  “Do you want to risk it?” I shrugged, pointed my finger at her, and twirled it around.

  “Fuck. You. Kaiyer.” She reached down to the silk belt on her robe and untied it with a practiced move. The garment fell open and she shrugged her slender shoulders in a motion that made it slide off of her body with a swish. Underneath the robe she wore a thin green embroidered pair of lace shorts. A matching lace cover hugged her small round breasts. She started to remove the undergarments.

  “Stop,” I commanded and her hands froze. Her hair hung over part of her face and she looked up from the ground with a single eyebrow raised and a furious gleam in her eyes.

  “Come here.” I beckoned with a finger and opened my arms as if to embrace her. She dropped her arms and I could hear her teeth begin to grind. She took a hesitant step, then another, and then she stood before me. I wrapped my arms around her beautiful body and pulled her against me.

  “How long will it take for you to teach Jessmei how to close the Radicles?” My voice was a fraction of a whisper and I muttered the question into the empress’s pointed ear. It was hard to ignore her scent while holding her so closely. It was a mixture of pine, lavender, and lilac.

  “Months. Perhaps a year,” she whispered back into my own ear.

  “We are going to have to steal their Ovules and escape,” I explained so softly I almost could not hear my own voice, but my lips were touching the inside of her ear now so I hoped she understood.

  “You are speaking madness.” One of her hands reached up to my hair to hold my head while she whispered.

  “Do you want to die? Do you have a better idea? We find out where they keep the Ovules, steal them, and then get back to Nia and your army. Then we kill these fuckers, and Jess closes the Radicles so no more can come through.”

  “Is this your idea of a plan? It won’t work.” The closeness of her body combined with her hand on my head and her s
cent was bringing me to a state of arousal. I wondered if she was using her magic to control me again, but perhaps she didn't need the power. The way I held her body pushed her firm breasts into my chest. I debated dropping my hands to the small of her back but that would only bring our hips closer together.

  “You would be dead right now if I hadn’t begged for you to stay with me, and you’ve yet to tell me a better plan. Are you going to give up now? We are still alive and I plan on staying that way and staying on this world.”

  “No. I am not going to give up. There has to be a better plan. I will think of one.”

  “Did you find out how many days we have left?” I could hear conversation outside of the tent. A voice asked why it was so quiet inside. It seemed that Turnia took her mandates seriously.

  “Less than a week. Was this your intent, to keep me alive? Why?”

  “I’d rather be on this world than dead by their Council.” She tilted her head away from my mouth and studied my face for a second. The anger in her eyes was gone and she pulled her mouth to my ear. A shiver went down my spine and I wished I did not find her so attractive. She looked too much like Nadea and it didn’t help that she was mostly naked and in my arms.

  “Thank you. This does not mean I forgive you for all the horrors that you have inflicted upon my kind, but it is a small step.” It surprised me that she actually voiced the words of gratitude. “I will cooperate, and if the Dead Gods bless us with a massive amount of luck, we might be successful. At least we will live for a few more days,” she finished.

  “We aren’t going to be able to do much of anything if Turnia suspects we are conspiring. If we can sound convincing, they might leave us our privacy.”

  “What if they come down and see that we aren’t naked?” Her voice had another hint of anger to it.

  “Then I’ll rip off my clothes and fuck you. If you don’t want that to happen, you better make your moans convincing.” I pushed her away from my ear and let go of her body. We stood a few feet apart now, but she didn’t make any noise. A few dozen seconds passed and I frantically waved my arms at her and shot the Elven woman a glare. She let out a long breath, inhaled, and began to moan as if she was in the throes of passion.

  It only took a few seconds for my manhood to let me know that Telaxthe’s efforts were more than satisfactory.

  Chapter 33-Iolarathe

  “We need to accompany you,” Relyara said again. My sister and brother nodded, but I shook my head for the twentieth time.

  “No.”

  “Why?” the blue-haired woman asked. “This is insane and you will be destroyed if they are actually in the cave.”

  “They might not even be in there. If they are, then I want to be alone so that they know that I mean them no harm.”

  “Can I speak to you privately before you enter?” Nyarathe was angry, they all were, but her eyes were pits of tar and she smelled of hot coals.

  “Fine.” It wasn’t the first time she had asked me since we arrived at the mouth of the dragon’s cave yesterday and I already knew what she was going to tell me.

  I took another look at the large maw of black depth hidden under a rocky outcropping on the south side of the central peak. I had used the artifact Nyarathe and I had found in the tower to pinpoint the rough location of the lair. My scouts had found it after two weeks of searching the precarious surfaces of the jagged mountains. The wind here blew ice-cold and it carried the scent of snow, pine, and terror.

  The terror was my own.

  “I know why you are doing this,” she said when we were far enough away from the group to prevent them from overhearing.

  “Because I want to win this war!” I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “No. You are taking the coward’s way out.” She glared at me and I could taste her anger like a red pepper.

  “I do feel like a coward. I am terrified of entering that cavern.” I smiled at the white woman and thought about how much I had changed in the last few decades. Though Nyarathe was my most beloved sister, there was a time when I would have killed anyone who would dare to call me a coward. Even her.

  “You don’t want to face him.” She leveled a finger at me. The frigid wind caught her snow-colored hair and it spun behind her like a tornado. I tasted more pine on the air and it helped calm me. I wondered where the scent originated. We were well above the tree line and had not seen anything with needles for two days of marching.

  “Who?” I asked, though I knew the answer.

  “Kaiyer, damn it! You know where this battle will end. You don’t think we will win and you hope that the dragons are still somewhere in that cave. You hope that they will kill you. You want to be rid of this problem.” She shook her head and I could smell the pain and remorse coming from her body like a rotting lime.

  “We aren’t going to win.” When I said the words her eyes opened wide and her scent changed to one of fear. “Even with the dragon’s aid, it will not be possible. Have you seen Kaiyer in combat? It is too late for us, Sister. This is the only chance, and it is slim.”

  “No. There is another way,” she said.

  “Are you going to tell me about these bullshit other worlds and those towers?”

  “Yes. There are free worlds for our people. I just need time to figure out how we can reach them,” she pleaded.

  “Fine. I’ll just ask Kaiyer not to destroy our kind. He’ll gladly take that truce. He destroyed half of our race because he just wanted an apology from me.” I closed my eyes and a small part of me wished that the dragons would eat me.

  “Have you tried that?” Her question surprised me and I stared at her. When my eyes couldn’t tell if she was jesting, I ran my tongue over my lips to detect any sarcasm. There was none.

  “Meet with him. Offer a truce. Give him what he wants and buy us some time so I can figure out how these Radicles function.”

  “What if he wants my death?” I asked the obvious question.

  “Would you be willing to die to save us?” Her eyes narrowed.

  “There would be no guarantee that he would be satisfied with only my death. We are assuming these shrines work the way you hope, and that you will be able to figure out how to use them in time.” I inhaled her scent and raised my hands away from my chest in a motion of surrender. “Fine, fine, Sister. Yes, I would sacrifice myself for my people. Kaiyer is my creation, after all.”

  “Good.” She smiled for the first time since I told her of my plan to speak to the dragons. “I will send an envoy to his army.”

  “You will wait,” I commanded and the smile dropped from her face as quickly as it had appeared. “I am still going to speak to the dragons. If they kill me, then you can negotiate the truce with Kaiyer. If he wants me dead, tell him the dragon already did the job and he can take revenge on them if he wants.”

  “No. Please, Iolarathe, I beg you.” Her hands clasped my arm. “Can’t you sense the evil from that place? The malice? I never believed in such creatures, but if any existed, they would live in that abyss.” I nodded at her and in my heart I agreed. The cave looked like the twisted maw of a carrion beast. It was wide enough to ride ten horses through and half as tall. A stale, dry air poured out and it reeked of a foul scent I had never tasted. It was a sick mixture of fungus, bones, and rotten meat.

  “Kaiyer might just say no outright. I will need a backup plan, Nyarathe. Have the warriors retreat a mile down the mountain. It is time to smell these creatures up close and determine if the legends of their power is true.” They were brave words, but the ice in my stomach was beginning to turn into nausea.

  “By the Dead Gods, you are so stubborn! Fine, go die in there. There is just one more item I wish to discuss with you.” Her face became impassive again and she waited for me to respond.

  “What is it?”

  “I am with offspring.”

  “Fusik?” I asked.

  “Yes.” A faint smile came to her lips.

  “I expected that outcome eventua
lly.” Perhaps I should have felt happiness for my sister, but I didn’t care much for the thought of children now. It would hamper our ability to fight Kaiyer’s forces because I would have to withdraw her from the war after a year; when her body became too swollen to be effective in combat. “What about it do you wish to discuss?”

  “You do not seem to care,” she said flatly.

  “You mistake my focus on important matters for apathy.” I gestured around the mountain and toward the cave. “Perhaps I caused all of this, but the genesis was my conception. I never asked to be the Singleborn. I never wanted to have offspring, let alone for the profit of my father and our mother.”

  “But now you can do what you want, Iolarathe. Your womb is your own.”

  “No. I can’t.” My eyes rested on the entrance of the cave and the last pangs of my fear finally fled my body. “This is my last chance to save our race. I don’t even know if we are worth saving.”

  I walked away from my sister and toward the mouth of the mountain. She followed behind me but said nothing. I finally reached Relyara and then turned back to Nyarathe.

  “Your plan is sound. If I don’t return, attempt to make peace with Kaiyer.” My sister nodded and her mouth set into a firm line. The air tasted of lemons and salt instead of pine.

  I regarded the two women for a moment. The terror surged in my stomach and I fought it down again. I was Iolarathe. The Singleborn. I was afraid of no creature on this world or any other.

  Save for Kaiyer.

  I wanted to thank them for their love, loyalty, and friendship. I wanted to tell them how much I loved them. But voicing this would be an admission of fear. An admission that Nyarathe was right, that the dragons awaited me in the deep. That they would devour me.

  I told myself this was foolish. These dragons were dust now. These dragons had never existed. I would enter the cave and return with nothing. Return with my life, but no more options to save my people. Return unharmed to face Kaiyer.

  So I said nothing. I faced the black hole of the cave and walked toward it. The wind moaned again across the frigid mountain peaks and my breath filled the air with the scent of lilacs. I tasted freshness and pine again, and the faint remnants of the scent of my sister, of my people.