Down the Dark Path (Tyrants of the Dead Book 1)

by J. Edward Neill

  “How on earth?” Marlos kicked himself away from the flame.

  “What is it?” Endross leapt to his feet and backed against a tree.

  No sooner did they speak than Dank flicked his hand like a whip, banishing the flame utterly. The searing shadows vanished into the night air, and the gentle flicker of the campfire returned. “You see,” said Dank. “The Furyons aren’t the only ones with power. Should you ever be afraid, remember this night. Our enemies have as much to fear as you do. They think they are strongest, but I say woe be to those who dare hinder our coming. With my magicks and your steel, we’ll undo the evils of Furyon. We’ll destroy them, that someday each of you might return home to your wives, your children, or whatever you hold dearest.”

  Garrett was the only one still sitting in his place. Though the flame had nearly burned his beard from his cheek, it had not driven him to terror like the others. He was unscathed, and his most powerful thoughts were not of the flame, but of what Dank had uttered at the end. No wife, no child, no dearest for me. I shall be first onto Furyon soil, first to charge. Better the fiends slay me in place of the others.

  Dank allowed no questions. He smiled at the men and walked into the blackness beyond the camp, uttering only, “Sleep, and be ready for tomorrow.”

  For Garrett, sleep was hard to gain. Long after Dank vanished and the others drowsed, he remained awake, lurking beside the oldest tree at camp’s edge. For more than an hour he lingered and mulled, recounting Dank’s stories in his mind. Black fire, he murmured to himself. Towers of bones, houses of stretched skin, men kept alive for a hundred years just to be tortured. These are not the deeds of men. The Tyberians were something else, something…less than human.

  After too much time spent thinking, he snapped back to the present. The starlight glinted off another man’s face, a traveler awake the same as he.

  “Awake?” Marlos had found him in the darkness. “You who sleeps so deeply? Not planning on running, are you? Could hardly blame you if you were.”

  “No, not running. And I do not sleep half as well as you suppose. Least of all on nights like this.”

  Marlos softened slightly. “Well at least we agree on that much. It was quite a saga your friend told tonight. Not like the bedtime stories I remember. Who can sleep after a tale like that?”

  “Indeed.”

  Eyes glinting with starlight, Marlos leaned against the old tree. “Hard to swallow, you know, the Furies and their Object. Your little friend won’t say what it is. A building? A weapon? A little rock stuck in the bed of some black-watered river? Why not just tell us?”

  “Perhaps he does not know. More important is where it is hidden.”

  Even in the dark, he sensed Marlos rolling his eyes. “Aye, secrets and more secrets,” the captain complained. “But worse still was all the smoke and flame. Did you feel like the fire wanted to eat us? Hours have gone by, and I still feel it biting at me. Emun never mentioned Dank to me. Passing bizarre to have a warlock in your house and nobody knows a thing.”

  “Not even Rellen knew.”

  “Not even Rellen?”

  “Dank was known only to the elder Gryphons.”

  Marlos slid to the ground and came to a rest against the tree’s moss-covered trunk. “The Gryphons have never kept ill company. I suppose Dank should be no exception.”

  “No need to like him. Just believe in him.”

  “Aye, so you’ve told me.”

  A comfortable silence reigned for a while, after which Marlos stirred again. Garrett sensed the big man’s discomfort, hearing him shiver even though the night was not particularly cold. “Something else is on your mind,” he observed. “Else you would be sleeping.”

  “Aye,” said Marlos. “I was just thinking…just dwelling on something I saw. Not the wizard, but something else. It’s bothered me since yesterday.”

  “You may as well tell me.” Garrett sank to the ground on the opposite side of the tree. “The way to Furyon is long. Secrets will be hard to keep.”

  For once, Marlos yielded without complaint. “Aye. No secrets. Well…it was just yesterday morning. Lord Dennov, the royal brat, came to me before supper. Earlier, we had chased three Furies down. Two we caught, and Saul killed the other.”

  “Go on.”

  “We took the bastards to the dungeons. Dennov gave me leave to interrogate them, and so I did. I went down to the black room and listened to their babble for a while, but it was just Furyspeak, just nonsense. I started to walk away and leave them to die, but then I overheard them. One of them had been tutored in our language. He spoke to me in broken words, but it was Grae all the same.”

  Garrett’s interest was piqued. Any truths told by the enemy might be useful. “He said something to you. Tell me.”

  “Aye. I’d rather have told Rellen, had the lad ever come back,” Marlos muttered. “I’m not even sure why I tell you now, but I know how important some things are to say. The Fury…I heard him speak some of our language. I put a sword to his chin and asked as many things as I could think of, as nicely as a man like me could manage. I’d a mind to take his fingers, one, two, three. Ah, crows be merciful, I wanted to. But the poor fool was just his master’s dog, I knew, and he’d nothing to say I wanted to hear. But then…that’s when the strangest idea floated into my head. I don’t know why, but I asked him if he’d seen Rellen’s lady, the girl Andelusia. You remember her?”

  His heart stirred to life. “I remember.” He felt as though a fire had been lit beneath his ribs. “She is hard to forget.”

  “Aye, she is.” Marlos seemed not to notice his emotion. “And when I described her to the Fury, he said he’d seen her. Can you believe it? The bastard told me, ‘Girl. Fire hair. Green dress,’ and I swear I could’ve fallen dead as an eyeball in a crow’s beak. I asked him more, and he said she was alive when last he saw her, traveling in the company of one of his masters. I swear to you, Garrett; I looked for that girl for days after we came back. I tried to find her because I know how much she meant to Rellen, his tastes in women be damned. But now I know the truth. The Fury said enough. He said, ‘Cage. Concubine. Slave,’ and I knew she was done for. If she still lives, they’re doing terrible things to her, I just know it. I wish I’d never asked. Some things are better not to know.”

  Garrett heard only, ‘Cage. Concubine. Slave,” and he died a little bit as the words settled upon his heart. Say it is not so, he thought. My oath, broken. My ward, a Furyon concubine. If Rellen knew, I could but bend a knee and offer my neck to his blade.

  Marlos was ignorant to his pain. “We can only hope they’ll have mercy on her,” he said unknowingly. “Ah, the poor lass. She should never have come. It’s not your fault, anyhow. I saw how she was. She was damned persuasive, and so pretty. I’d have done the same.”

  If sleep had been hard to find before, it was now impossible. Lying on his bedroll well beyond midnight, Garrett felt a pit opening in his gut, an abyss of pain where once Andelusia’s laughter had roamed. He imagined a thousand ways she might be suffering. They would not have killed her outright, he feared. No, they are worse than that. They are the sorts to abuse her, ruin her, and kill her only after she breaks.

  For the rest of the night, his stomach curled and his breaths felt cold and painful. He wanted to find solace in the possibility she might still live, but his imagination would not allow it.

  Marlos was right.

  He never should have told me.

  The next morning, a cool breeze carried the sweet smells of breakfast to his nose, rousing him from shallow sleep. By the campfire’s blaze, he found Dank on his knees, preparing a meal to rival Marlos’s delectable stew. The little man had done well in gleaning food from Verod. Using a sweet selection of fruits, spiced meats, and cold cider from his bag, he made a feast fit for Gryphon Keep on the bare earth between the trees.

  “Enjoy it while it lasts,” Dank told each traveler. “We’ve enough for a few days of this, but a week from now it’ll be hard bread an
d salted meat, altogether as succulent as starched stone.”

  Dank’s meal was a welcome one, though the men were still somber from last night’s stories. They spoke little and laughed none, and Garrett was glad for it. When the meal was finished, he gathered his weapons, hauled his pack over his shoulder, and stared into the grey, rain-tattered forest. Dank took the lead again, declaring how the path he meant to take would stray far from the Furyons. Garrett paid the little man no mind. Were there ten of me, he mused. I would send nine to find Ande, and only one with you to Furyon.

  When the day’s journey began, he took his position at the rear of the company, marching beneath the trees who watched over his every footfall. The others worried of encountering Furyons, and Dank was careful to ease their minds. “No enemy will want to go where we go,” he told them. “Our road is the forest bottom, the ravines and river valleys, and the glooms beneath the thickets. Will it be pleasant? No. But safe? Assuredly. And never mind that even fifty Furyons would be no match for us.”

  For that day and seven more, they walked.

  Dank seemed to know the way as though Mormist were mapped upon his skin, and so remained always in the lead, always the vanguard. Resistant to Marlos’s complaints and Saul’s myriad questions, the little man maintained a ritual pace toward the mountains, hasty and eager in the morning, steady and surefooted in the afternoon. The journey was a quiet one, leastways in its beginnings. They cut through mazes of vines, skirted scores of rock-crowned hills, and slunk through valleys dark and full of mist. They chanced upon no Furyons, no cities, and no signs of war direr than a few distant curls of smoke. The farther away from civilization they went, the more alive Velum seemed, and the brighter the sun seemed to shine.

  All the while, Garrett kept to himself. Dank takes us this way on purpose, he observed. No burning villages, no graves, no war-camps. He wants us less mindful of the war. He wants us to believe we might survive. But it is a lie, for no matter whether we succeed or fail, we are doomed.

  Faster than seemed possible, eight nights were behind him.

  At dawn of the ninth day, he awoke from dreams he could not remember. His breath was lightly frosted, and with his first glimpses into the new day he caught the western slopes of Crown Mountains, where Velum’s tumbling hills and climbing colonnades of trees conjoined with stark spires of grey and violet. Beautiful, he thought, feeling almost calm again.

  Before the others were awake, he walked to the camp’s edge and stood at the boundary of Velum and Crown, lingering for a few hundred breaths beneath the mountains’ imposing shadows. Between forest and mountain lay a meadow, waist-deep with lavender flowers, all of it untrampled by the Furyons. Across the meadow, gleaming brightly at the heel of the mountains, a swift, sparkling river flowed north to south, its banks beset on both sides by seas of jade grass. I have never been here. He longed to lie at the river’s bank and sleep. Had I seen this place before now, I might never have become a soldier.

  As ever, Dank chose to interrupt him at the least desirable moment. The little man strode out into the sea of flowers, holding his arms wide as if to embrace paradise. “Come out,” he called to the others. “There’re no Furyons here.”

  Garrett watched as the others came forth. After so many days spent skulking in the shadows, they seemed nervous of the meadow’s openness. “We’re safe here,” Dank assured them. “The Furies are still busy at Verod. They won’t corrupt this place until their conquests elsewhere are complete.”

  “How do we cross the river?” questioned Saul.

  Dank smiled. “We don’t cross, not here anyway. North is where we’ll go. A waterfall, an old bridge, and a deep valley on the other side. That’s our road.”

  “Odd that you know this place so well,” groused Marlos. “And hard to imagine you ever lived here long enough to learn the lay of the land. If you were any shorter, the flowers would drown you. Any skinnier, and the wind would snap you in half.”

  Dank had long grown accustomed to Marlos’s cracks. Smiling like the sun, he walked out into the grass, where truly the grass reached up to his elbows. “Be glad we’re friends,” he said, and Marlos smirked. “Were you a Furyon, I might roast you and this field the same.”

  It was only a joke, but it served to silence Marlos for a time. Garrett used the quiet to his advantage, approaching Dank alone amid the flowers. “The journey grows harder here,” he said.

  “Yes.” Dank nodded.

  “If we should become lost or our food runs out, we are dead men.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Consider offering them a last chance to turn back.” He glanced at Saul, Marlos, and Endross. “You have ridden them hard to get here, and they have followed you. These mountains have claimed thousands of lives. Your magicks aside, you might do well to warn them.”

  Dank contemplated his request for a time, smiling grimly at the end. “I need these men, Garrett,” he said beneath his breath. “There will be no warning. If they’d not joined us willingly, I’d have made them come one way or another.”

  That evening, Garrett and the others hunkered in a deep, dark vale on the far side of the river. His boots were sodden, for the promised bridge had been found in ruins, and the crossing had been a dangerous thing. He had pulled Saul to safety when the bearded man of Elrain had stumbled in the water, and he had hunted alone while the others dragged themselves to camp. All was quiet now, for which he was thankful. Dinner was devoured, darkness fallen, and he more than ready for sleep.

  “Two weeks,” Dank murmured during his meditations beside the small, snapping campfire.

  The other men stirred. Garrett lifted his gazed and stared across the fire. Here it begins. This is the part when he tells the truth. There will be little sleep tonight.

  “Don’t look to the stars, my friends.” Dank referred to the small sliver of clear, starlit sky visible between the shadowy valley walls. “If you look upward, you’ll see no end, no goal to reach but infinity. But if you look forward, you’ll soon see our road is much nearer.”

  “What’s that mean?” Marlos grumped from his bedroll.

  “It means we’re almost halfway to the sea.” Dank’s answer was for Marlos, but his grin for Garrett. “We’re not going around the mountains, but through them. The Furyon road into Mormist is clumsy and slow, not to mention clogged with enemies. I’ll take you the swifter way.”

  “How likely are we to die?” Marlos quipped.

  “Only somewhat. There are hundreds of mountains in this range, but we need only climb one.”

  “One mountain?” Marlos scoffed. “You’re a liar, and a bad one.”

  Dank shrugged. “You have wolfskins in your bags, many thanks to Endross and the wolves who lent them. Our food supply holds well, thanks to Garrett’s bow. A bit of luck and a few sharpened swords, and the way will be easier than you think.”

  The way Dank said it snared every man’s attention. Garrett narrowed his gaze across the fire, the flames spreading red ashes into the night as if knowing to separate him from the warlock on the other side. “We might have left our weapons at home,” he rumbled at Dank. “For the all the Furies we have seen.”

  “No one ever said your blades were for the Furyons.” The little man shrugged.

  He leaned back and let Marlos have his say. “If not for Furies, what else would we need weapons for?” the Gryphon captain growled. “Chopping firewood? Picking our teeth clean of your awful breakfasts?”

  Dank lowered his head and folded his hands in his lap. He looks truly troubled, thought Garrett. He will tell a story now. It will not be good.

  “Snow in the summertime,” Dank said cryptically. “Closest to the sun, but the coldest place in the world.”

  “Oh,” groaned Marlos. “Enough with the riddles. Tell us plainly already.”

  “A mountain,” Saul interjected. “He speaks of a mountain.”

  Dank grinned. In the campfire light, the little man’s teeth looked like daggers, his green eyes gone crimson. “
Aye, Saul,” he said ominously. “You’ve the truth of it. A mountain, tall and sharp. In three days, it’ll be our road, paved with ice and cobbled with the world’s oldest stones. The mountain rib, so they call it. If we climb it, we might reach the Furyon harbor faster than hoped for.”

  “Wiser would be to cut through the valleys,” Saul reasoned.

  Dank shook his head. “Sadly, there are few safe valleys beyond here, at least not until we cross the mountain. There are other ways we might go, but we’d have to climb ten mountains instead of one, most of which are guarded by Furyons.”

  Marlos glared. “You said somewhat about sharpened swords and somewhat else about not needing them for Furies. Finish that part before you tell us how we’re all to die.”

  Garrett expected Dank to laugh, but saw only darkness in the little man’s gaze. “The cold on the mountain is sharp, my friends, enough to kill a man.” Dank closed his eyes as if imagining it. “Your bones might freeze, your eyes crack and shatter, or your skins turn grey and shrivel while you sleep. But the cold isn’t the truest killer there. Have any of you ever heard of Morg Umal?”

  Garrett searched his mind. That is no Mormist name, he knew.

  “Didn’t think so,” Dank said before anyone could answer. “Morg Umal isn’t a place, nor a person, nor even the name of the murderous cold.”

  “No more riddles,” said Saul. “Just tell us what it is.”

  “So I shall.” Dank cleared his throat and settled into place. “Once, some thousands of years ago, the folk who roamed these mountains had a legend. The storms were wickeder in those days, and from time to time they’d sweep down from the mountains like a farmer’s scythe, claiming entire villages. They had a name for the storm in those days. Morg Umal, they called it. Though where the name came from they never knew.”

  “What good is steel against storms?” Marlos snorted. “Are we to hack the clouds to pieces?”

  Dank shook his head. “No, my friend. Let me finish. The villagers were wise to fear the storm and wiser still to name it, but it’s not the weather we should be fearful of. The words Morg and Umal come from the Archithropian tongue. Together they mean frozen soul, as in cold and dead. The villagers gleaned the phrase from ancient carvings in the mountain rock.”