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

by J. Edward Neill

And then he heard the howling.

  Somewhere in the darkness, two wolves haunted the night. The sound of their wails was hollow, the chill in their voices far worse than the wind. Garrett heard the others spring awake in the snows behind him. Their voices were fearful, their weapons clattering.

  The howling came closer. He waded through the snow toward the men, and his hand dropped to the hilt of Lorsmir’s sword. No wolf lives so high, he knew. There is no prey here, nothing but stone and death.

  “It’s not from above!” he heard Marlos shout. “Too steep for anything to live up there!”

  Huge battleaxe in hand, Endross faced the direction they had come. The knight had keen ears, and he gazed to the same spot Garrett did, fixating where the dark was deepest. “From there.” He pointed the axe. “Something’s followed us.”

  The howling drew closer. Two creatures, gibbering and whining, traded deadly music in the dark. They stalked in the starlight at the edge of perception, pacing the deep shadows with maws wide open. Both were as big as mastiffs, Garrett saw, and both had eyes bright as moons, only deader.

  “You said nothing about wolves,” Marlos pried his swords from their frosted scabbards.

  “Not sure that’s what they are,” answered Dank.

  All eyes were fixed on the mountain rib, where the wolves stalked and the moonlight fell palest. Garrett knew these were no natural hunters. Each was the length of a horse and more than half as tall. Their coats were grizzled ivory, darkest near their jaws, their teeth seeming to drip with white fire. The wolves shambled forward, their heads slung low to the ground, a predatory yearning set deep into the black of their eyes.

  “Come on then! Come to death!” Marlos challenged.

  Garrett slid Lorsmir’s sword from its sheath and ran to the forefront of the men. He felt the blade grow hot, and though there were no flames, he saw the snow melt beneath his boots. Saul stood to his right, battlestaff swaying, and Endross to his left, axe hoisted atop his shoulder. For a moment, Marlos’s fury kept the wolves at some thirty paces away.

  While the beasts paced, Dank made a vanguard of himself, standing out in the snow between the two sides.

  “Aren’t you going to greet your monsters?” Marlos clanged his swords together.

  “Silence,” Dank rasped. “Listen closely. The wolves are pets. There’s another sound.”

  The men fell silent. Garrett closed his eyes and attuned his senses to the night. I hear it. A heavy sound. Footsteps crunching in the snow. The wolves howl, but do not breathe, the same for whatever lurks behind them.

  And then he saw it, a huge shadow looming in the pitch. It was no man, no animal, no living thing. The shadow’s body was black and featureless, but its face was illumined by a pair of hateful eyes, malevolent and white, hovering high above the moonlit snow.

  “Stay back,” warned Dank. “It’s him.”

  The wolves bayed no more. Like dogs fearful of their master, they slunk to the sides of the mountain rib. From the horror lurking in the shadows beyond, there came a groan, a sound grating against the night like a thousand dead howling to escape their coffins.

  “Morg Umal,” said Dank.

  “Tell us how to kill him,” said Endross.

  “Or do it yourself while the rest of us run,” added Marlos.

  Dank’s usual smile was gone. “And so I shall.” He flexed his fingers, already hot with molten shadow. “The horror’s mine. The wolves are yours.”

  Garrett gripped Lorsmir’s blade tighter than any other in his life. He felt the fire come alive in his blood, and he saw the similarity between the flames writhing on Dank’s fingertips and the violet fire smoldering on the sword’s surface. Morg Umal stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight. The horror was thrice as high as a man, his shoulders many times as wide. Long, dangling strips of filth-covered bearskin hung from his sallow shoulders, doing little to cover the grotesque hide stretched across his bones. Morg’s eyes were sunken like a corpse’s, while his face was veiled by strands of white hair like ragged curtains across his skeletal jaws.

  Garrett’s breath left his lungs. Morg bellowed, freeing a century’s worth of dust from its diseased ribcage. The creature loosed its weapon, a massive, spiked flail carved of stone and fossil, from its shoulder, and smacked the mountain rib so powerfully that it forced shudders from the stone.

  Dank strode into the snow, his arms outstretched as if to embrace the monster. Morg hoisted his flail and cracked it in the snow a second time, but the little man never quavered. I wonder which of them is the monster, Garrett thought. Perhaps they will destroy each other.

  Morg looked upon Dank, pleased by the snack awaiting him. The horror opened his mummified jaw, and the language that crawled out was none Garrett could comprehend. Morg’s words were not unlike the twisted tongue Dank had chanted to calm the wind, only fouler. The Ur speech, he called it, Garrett remembered. The language made not by men, but by those who came before us.

  For a crushingly long moment, Morg bellowed and grunted, cackled and crowed, and although Dank looked pitiful standing in the beast’s shadow, the little man stood fast.

  Then came the wolves. Garrett lunged into the snows between the first wolf and the rest of the world. Lorsmir’s blade roiled with flames. He felt the heat roil beneath his skin, the power searing his every sinew. The first wolf charged, eyeing Dank for its next meal, but upon seeing Lorsmir’s blade turned its hateful glare to Garrett instead. The others will have to handle the second one. He saw the second wolf leap toward Marlos, Endross, and Saul. No man can fight two of these at once.

  At three paces, the wolf snapped at him, biting at the flaming sword with jaws that could snap a bear’s leg. Scything deftly through the snow, Garrett swished the burning sword before him.

  Wait for the right moment.

  Wait for it.

  It will come.

  Their battle became a dance. A dozen times, the wolf lunged. And a dozen times, Garrett sidestepped its snapping teeth. Growling, the wolf backed away shook its pallid white coat. Chiseled bits of ice flew from its fur, its ivory mane rippling like waves on a frozen sea. As if tortured by something inside its belly, the beast sucked in a great mouthful of air. Twisting its maw, the creature opened its teeth. Out came a blast of numbing air, a blizzard of hail and ice. Garrett reeled. The wolf’s frozen breath burned him the same as fire. His arm went numb and his flesh turned sickly white.

  The sword…extinguished. He watched Lorsmir’s weapon fall from his fingers. With the violet fire snuffed, the wolf hurled itself at him and drove him to the ground.

  He might have expected Endross, maybe Saul to save him, but never Marlos.

  Two swords flashing, the Gryphon captain sprinted across the snow and barreled into the wolf’s flank. In one moment, the creature’s jaws were spread wide above Garrett’s throat, and in the next he saw only clouds where the wolf had been. He heard the sound of short, sharp blades skewering the wolf’s flank, and he glimpsed a spray of black blood leap like volcanic ink into the night. Before the beast collapsed, he rolled onto his side. His face was planted in the snow and his arm afire with the cold, but when next he looked he saw the wolf lying dead beside him.

  “Filthy, stinking cur!” Marlos skewered it a dozen times more just for good measure. “Your brother, and now you! Garrett! You alive?”

  He lay on the snow and held his arm close to his chest. The wolf’s breath had stolen all the heat from his body, all the breath from his lungs. He clamped his jaw shut to keep the shivers away, but the pain was almost more than he could bear. “The cold…” he said to Marlos. “Its breath…”

  Marlos grimaced. “Aye, the other hit Endross even harder. Stay there and try not to die. The big one still needs killing.”

  He watched Marlos run back to battle. I must rise, he told himself. I must fight. The breath only glanced me. Pain is nothing next to death.

  He tried to sit up, but failed. The feeling in his body was as if he had slept for a century.
Each time he tried to move, his muscles misfired. Need time to thaw. Have none.

  He could but watch the battle between Dank and Morg Umal, and so watch he did.

  Morg was near enough to see fully now. His deathly skin looked grey and sallow in the moonlight cracking through the clouds. The horror took thunderous steps through the snow, closing the gap between itself and Dank. Even in the monster’s shadow, Dank held fast. His hands roiled with black, serpentine flames, and his eyes were afire with fury. Morg descended upon the little man, but Dank let his fires loose like two striking snakes, the black flames twisting out of his palms and into Morg’s vile, rotted flesh. Morg let out hideous moan, a noise that turned the stomachs of all who heard it.

  A soul-curdling scream, a thump of his flail, and Morg spoke again. As its dead skin burned like paper in a bonfire, it opened its jaws and said things only Dank could know, but Garrett grasped the meaning of nonetheless.

  “Pain. Morg has felt worse.

  Ur fire. Morg has walked through colder.

  Warlock. Morg has slaughtered hundreds.

  Men. Morg has buried thousands.”

  Morg attacked again. This time, Dank was not so dauntless. The monster whirled its flail and slammed it against the earth, crashing through snow, ice, and mountain stone. Again and again it strove at Dank, heedless of Saul’s shouting, ignorant of Marlos’s pelting it with arrows from Garrett’s bow. Dank ducked and skirted a dozen earth-shaking blows, but still Morg came, driving the little man back to the mountain rib’s edge. Dank’s fires caught Morg in its knees, its hands, its face, and its chest, but though the horror’s skin smoked and curled, it attacked, and attacked, and attacked.

  Again Garrett tried to stand. The numbness in his flesh was diminished, but still enough to thwart him. Palms planted in the snow, he pushed himself to his knees, but knew he could go no further. “Marlos!” he shouted. “Arrows do nothing! Take this instead!”

  From well behind Morg Umal, understanding dawned in Marlos’s eyes. Yes, see me. Garrett stared him down. You know what you have to do. He touched Lorsmir’s blade long enough to set it afire, and then sent it spinning atop the snow toward Marlos.

  For what seemed an eternity, the blade slid across the ice before coming to rest in Marlos’s grasp. Marlos stared at the still-smoldering thing as though it would burn him. “Use it!” Saul shouted at him while kneeling over Endross, who had crumpled. “Damn you! Use it!”

  Marlos snapped out of his trance, took up the sword, and propelled himself forward as fast as his legs would carry him. He skidded to a stop in Morg Umal’s shadow, and there he summoned his courage.

  Garrett watched. He felt the earth shake as Morg’s flail cracked off a chunk of mountain and sent it spiraling down into the abyss. Dank had no room left. Trapped at the mountain rib’s edge, the warlock’s confidence finally fled. He is just a man now, Garrett thought. For all his spells, he will die like the rest of us. He thought it more so when Dank, choked by the smoke tunneling out of Morg’s mouth, stumbled to the ground and shielded himself with nothing more than two tiny hands.

  Sensing victory, Morg’s rotten fingers squelched around the haft of its flail. Its hands and face were seared and its cursed shape bent like a crone’s, but it endured. As it hoisted its flail high above Dank and prepared to squash the little man like so much rotten fruit, it seemed not to care for its injuries, for the eight arrows jutting from its back, or for Marlos standing right behind it. When Lorsmir’s sword, bright and burning, tore through its lower back, scoring deep through wicked bone and tendon, it seemed at first to suffer only the slightest twinge. But when the blade escaped Morg’s flesh only to pierce it again, the second stroke split his spine into two, and the horror’s mouth fell open. Garrett sensed the creature finally knew the meaning of pain. Molten flames tunneled through the spaces between its ribs, boiling the soft flesh inside, turning to ash whatever foul organs pumped inside it. Wounded, the horror lurched and fell backward, sending Marlos sliding backward.

  Garrett rose, but could not move to aid the battle. His legs felt like frozen saplings, and his fingers like they would snap if he dared grasp a blade. Still as a stone tower, he watched as Morg clawed itself back to its feet. It is already dead, he feared. It cannot die again. The wounded horror tore at its back, wanting to pull out the sword, succeeding only after inflicting more injury upon itself. With its spine shattered and its entrails burning, the thing bellowed and cursed.

  “Old fires and true pains!

  Purpose not yet served!

  Eat and eat, crush and crush!

  Make powder of little men, and sleep until there is no sun!”

  Impossibly, Morg gathered what strength was left in its body and crawled toward Dank. It seemed not to care that its insides were boiling, that its bones were falling apart like ashes in a furnace. The horror opened its maw and lurched within inches of Dank, who no longer cowered, but who knelt in the snow and stared at Morg eye to eye.

  “Kill it, you fool!” Saul shouted. “What are you waiting for?”

  Morg jerked his jaws forth. A single gnash from his putrid teeth, and Dank’s bones would be but powder. The little warlock was ready. Moving swifter than Morg could comprehend, Dank waved an open palm through the frozen air and whisked his creation, Lorsmir’s blade, into his grasp. The flame roared to life, and Dank hammered the sword down onto Morg’s forehead with all the might his tiny frame could muster. The sword is most powerful in its master’s hands, thought Garrett as the sword flashed. The fire burns hotter, and is not violet as in my hands, but black.

  Dank was no warrior, but his aim was true. With one blow, he split Morg’s skull open wide enough for the stars to see in. A breath later, Dank swirled his free hand and summoned a boiling sphere of ebon flame. He plunged it into Morg’s skull fissure, and the stink of it filled the air. Garrett saw best from his vantage. He saw Dank’s fist strike the filthy, coiled mass that served as Morg’s brain. At one brush of the black fire, the horror shrieked and shuddered. It fell backward, all its bones popping out of place. Its death noise was a single, horrified wave sweeping across a sorrowful ocean, and then it made no more sound.

  The silence thereafter was deep.

  The clouds evaporated, and the stars looked brighter than when Morg had been alive. “Don’t talk. Just listen,” said Dank when Garrett staggered to him. “Do you see now? Do you see why you’ve come? Without you, without all of you, my journey would have ended here. The Furyons would have won, and creatures like this would have walked the earth from now until the end.”

  Lamb of Furyon

  Andelusia awoke with a shiver.

  Somewhere deep in the forest, the dawning sun crept over the treetops and gilded their sides. A chill was on her, and her skin full of gooseflesh as the breeze washed over her. Lifting her head from her satchel, she shielded her eyes from the light and swiped the beaded dew from her cheeks.

  No Pale Knight? Her eyes darted. I am still alive?

  Her keeper, Arjobec, had kindled a small, snapping fire. She smelled his breakfast of oatmeal, eggs, and fowl, and her mouth watered.

  “Good morning.” He smiled for her.

  “We are still alive.” She shivered.

  “Aye. And why would we be dead?”

  She blinked hard. Arjobec’s breakfast smelled so good, and his fire looked invitingly warm, yet still she felt uneasy. “I dreamed again,” she sighed. “I thought I saw someone watching us while we slept.”

  “There’s no one,” he reassured her. “We’re alone.”

  He tells the truth, she knew. For the last eight days, she and he had ridden through tangled passes and over close-forested hills, across swift rivers and into dark valleys. This morning, her ninth dawn since leaving Orye and her fourth since passing through Minec, she awoke deep within the Crown Mountains. Beautiful, she thought of the slopes screaming toward the sky on either side of the valley. I could die here and be happy, if not for the Furies. The five nearest peaks rose up abov
e her in pointed walls of magnificent white rock, each of them knit almost to its top with a dozen shades of green. If anyone had asked her to describe it, she would have told them the mountains were like the silver spines of a king’s crown, peering impassively over their restless subjects far below.

  The breeze tossed her hair over her shoulders, washing away the night’s worries. Breathing easier, she took stock of her surroundings. Another valley, she looked to the hard walls of stone hemming her on either side. And enough stone to make ten cities of. Even if I could escape, where would I go? How would I survive?

  There were no cities here, no villages, not even a Furyon camp. Orye and Minec were well behind her, and thankfully so. She remembered the Furyons in Minec leering at her. She remembered the caravans of slaves, the wagons teeming with young men and old women bound for their dooms. The women were elsewhere, she presumed. On Fury beds, plump with Fury children, or floating in the river after being passed around like copper coins. Minec had been beautiful, every street, statue, and perfect pale tower graven right out of the mountain, but when filled with Furyons it had reminded her of a graveyard for the living. Filled with ghosts. She shuddered at the memory. All the Mormist folk gone, and every window haunted with Fury eyes.

  Thankful for Arjobec now more than ever, she shivered and joined him as he breakfasted.

  “Tell me you are well, and I’ll be happy,” he remarked as she plunked down beside the fire and wrapped a bundle of furs around her shoulders. “We’ve come far and survived much. It pleases me you’ve not tried anything foolish.”

  Though liking herself less for it, she felt comfortable with the old soldier. Of all the Furies she had encountered, he was the only one she counted as anything other than an enemy. “I am still alive,” she said less melancholically than usual. “But I miss home. I miss Rellen and Garrett and Saul. My only consolation is that I am not in chains. I am not like those poor creatures in Minec. I dreamt of them again last night.”