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

by J. Edward Neill

  Everything changed then. The robed one opened his mouth, and an Archithropian word crawled off his tongue. A warlock? She wondered as roiling black flames erupted into existence within his palms. He is one of us!

  She flattened her back against the column. The heat of the robed one’s magicks felt like a furnace on her cheeks, threatening to melt her if she dared move. She glimpsed him step out from his ring of protectors, the flames fluid in his hands. He snapped his wrists and a dozen guardians disintegrated, bones and armor dissolving. He spun in a half-circle, annihilating twenty more. Ribs, skulls, and limbs flew apart as though the guardians were made of paper. The robed one uttered a second syllable, and little orbs of black fire popped into being on his fingertips. The balls of molten shadowstuff were like nothing she had ever seen, each of them like a boiling black moon. The robed man hurled them, and every horror they touched caught fire, collapsing in the blink of an eye into piles of empty armor and smoking ash. Even the robed one’s companions seemed stunned by the sight. In one moment, their blades were tangled with the guardians’, and in the next they were alone again.

  Impossible. She gaped. Is this the power Master would teach me? Her eyes glimmered with the dying remnants of the black fire, and her heart thrummed with desire. Victorious, the men strode past her, delving toward the Orb cavern. She became their shadow, stretching long behind them, swift as a sparrow and silent as death on their heels. When they reached the room’s far end, where only the languid glow of two lanterns kept the darkness at bay, they stopped. She would have crept even closer, but it was then she heard them speak.

  “Is this it?” asked one in a strange yet familiar language.

  “Yes.” The robed one pointed to the aperture beyond which the Orb lay. “Just through there. Can you feel it?”

  “I feel it.” The tallest of them nodded.

  “Aye, me too,” agreed the burliest.

  You should not go in there, her thoughts felt sinister. Warlocks or no, Master will cook you. You are his lesson for today.

  The robed one set foot on the topmost stair, his tattered raiment swirling at his heels. The armored ones flanked him, four towers without faces. Their swords swayed in their grasps, and she swore she saw the tallest one’s blade smoldering with lavender flames. Are they all warlocks? She crept behind them. Master, if you can hear me, be wary.

  The robed one took six steps down before halting again. The Orb and the mountains of bones must have frightened the other four, for they did not follow.

  “There,” uttered the robed one. “The Object. Believe me now?”

  “Crows take my soul,” said the burly one. “It’d fill Emun’s hall!”

  “How do we destroy it?” asked another.

  The robed one threw back his hood and traced his fingers though the empty air as though the Orb were only inches away. It hurts him, she knew. The Orb causes him pain. When he glanced back to his companions, she saw lines of age rutting his face, his fingers seeming to shrivel. He is reading the Orb, and he does not like what he sees. Who are these men? What do they want with us?

  After a moment more of gazing down at the Orb, the robed one glanced toward the top of the stairs. She saw his eyes gone grey, the flesh sagging from his cheekbones as though the sight of the Orb had aged him fifty years. “Brothers, we’re here.” His voice cracked when he said it. “This is the end.”

  “The end?” asked one of the others.

  “He means our end,” said the burliest. “We’re dead, is what he means to say.”

  The tallest of them took another step down, the sword in his grasp burning the same color as the lanterns flanking the entrance. The leader, she understood him to be. Maybe he means to talk some sense into them. Or maybe…

  “We have come this far. Tell us what to do,” the tall one boomed.

  The robed one seemed to wilt. “The Object…look at it. More powerful than I imagined.”

  The tall one grasped the robed one’s collar. “There is no time. Tell us,” he commanded.

  The five invaders might have gone to war among themselves, did not her Master’s voice cut the conversation short. It thundered from the bottom of the stairs, seeming to shake the world inside out, causing tremors in the Orb cavern. “Friend,” Revenen boomed, and the sound of his voice dizzied her. “I’ve waited so long. Centuries, eons, all spent longing for your return.”

  “Who goes?” The robed one spun.

  Revenen emerged from the deep shadow of the Orb cavern with Vom striding silently beside him. He held out his empty palms as if to welcome a favored guest, though she knew it a false gesture. This will end poorly. Perhaps I should run, she thought, but dared not move.

  “You don’t remember me?” her Master said to the robed one. He used the Archithropian tongue, his rasps and guttural roars like bones breaking and thunder cracking. “You do, I think. You know very well, for it was I who summoned you here.”

  “What’s he saying?” one of the armored men shouted, but gained no answer.

  “Your life spent searching, such a sad and wasteful thing,” Revenen mocked. “So unfortunate you should return now, when we’ve no more use for you.”

  The robed one’s face reddened. He is afraid, she knew. These two have met before. But when?

  “We’re not here for you.” The robed one wagged a finger at her Master. “We’re here for it.” He gestured at the Orb.

  Revenen made a sound like laughter, though excruciatingly louder. “A feeble disguise you’ve chosen, Dancmyrcephalis. What did you tell these poor companions of yours? Did you tell them you were from Niviliath, or did you dare the truth? How many lies did it take to convince them? How shattered would their hearts be if they knew?”

  She crouched in the shadows, only two arms’ length from the rearmost invader. What if they destroy each other, and I am left alone here with Vom…and those things?

  She watched as the one named Dancmyrcephalis took a step backward. He looked to his companions, cracking his lips as though to tell them something, but her Master corrupted the silence yet again.

  “It would pain them, dear Dank,” Revenen boomed. “It would crush their spirits to know they came all this way clinging to the promise of a traitor. Was this the best you could muster? Four fools, and but one of them blooded? Perhaps, before I turn you over the Orb, you’d like to tell them the truth.”

  The one named Dancmyrcephalis grew angry. He shouted back, though not in any tongue his companions seemed to understand. “It makes no difference what I was,” he seethed. “A few thousand years of dwelling on what we did has enlightened me. Would that you had spent the time so well.”

  Revenen’s laughter split the air. He will destroy them soon, she sensed. Five more for the Orb, barely enough to ensorcel a piece of string.

  She saw the shadows at her Master’s feet pooling like black blood. “You disappoint us,” Revenen thundered. “To think it could’ve been you standing here beside me. Who are you to destroy that which you helped resurrect? Who are you to live so long only to stand before the giver of your immortality and rail against it? You doom yourself in returning here. You throw yourself at our mercy.”

  “Silence!” the one named Dancmyrcephalis shouted. “Quiet your filthy tongue! What’s done is done. The rest of our brethren are dead. I hunted them down, one by one. Only you and I remain. ‘Tis time to finish it. ‘Tis time for us both to die.”

  Revenen floated twenty steps higher on the stairs. He looked more spectral than ever, his organs dangling from the cavity below his ribs, his bones visible through the pallid shadowstuff serving as his flesh. No more words, she hoped. Please…Master…they do not belong here. Destroy them.

  It began.

  Dancmyrcephalis uttered the Archithropian word again. She knew what was coming, as did his companions, who recoiled and spread out on the stairs. The little warlock evoked a smoldering ball of ebon flame, the size of a child’s toy, boiling in his palm like a newly made star. He hurled it down the stairs,
where it yawned and swallowed Revenen whole. She gasped in horror. The explosion gave off a light like a planet cracking in two, the molten innards of the fireball frothing on the obsidian floor. No! She screamed inside her mind. Master! You must not die!

  A cloud of black smoke consumed the bottom half of the stairs. No one moved. No one breathed. After a long silence, she thought she heard Dancmyrcephalis snort, but no sooner did he than the smoke began to clear. She glimpsed a shadow in the heart of the fumes, a ghost rising from the ashes.

  When Revenen emerged unscathed, she felt the life rush back into her lungs.

  Her Master arose and wrung away the gravedust gathered on his shoulders. He uttered a syllable of his own, and a fell wind gusted over him, clearing the smoke away as though it had never been. “Is that all?” he rumbled. “How did you destroy our brethren? Surely not likewise.”

  “Do it again!” shouted one of Dancmyrcephalis’ men. “Kill him!”

  Another of the men ripped off his helmet. She saw only a glimpse of his face, an older man, his haggard cheeks bearded and dripping with sweat. He is afraid, she sensed. And he should be. Beside him, the burly one cursed, though his words were muffled by his Dageni mask. Seeming fearless, the tall one with the burning blade took several steps down and halted at Dancmyrcephalis’ side. He is saying something. She strained to hear. But what?

  Revenen floated another thirty steps higher. His palms were spread wide, his finger bones like claws. “Goodbye, old friend,” he said in Archithropian. “A pity it came to this.”

  She watched, enraptured, as her Master squeezed his skeletal hands open and shut. The one named Dancmyrcephalis opened his mouth, but no sound came out save a gasp and a gargle. The two foes were still some hundred stairs apart, but it seemed to her Revenen’s fingers were clutching Dancmyrcephalis’ insides, tearing and rending the tissues therein. The little warlock retched and stumbled, and the tall one caught him. Blood began to flow from the warlock’s eyes and nostrils, dripping from his cheek and striking the stairs like shards of painted glass. Save for the tall one, every soul in the chamber looked frozen. Revenen chanted, and his words were a chorus of nightmares. His ghostly grasp reached invisibly up the stairs, squeezing Dancmyrcephalis’ heart like a carrion bird clawing at the most tender morsel of its meal. “Die,” he thundered. The tighter he squeezed his fleshless fists, the more he ripped the little warlock’s life from his body. The one without a helmet ran to support his dying companion, while the two at the top of the stairs shouted and screamed. They are dead and they know it. They have no weapons capable of hurting Master. He will feed them all to the Orb. I see it now. I see the lesson.

  Dying, Dancmyrcephalis made one last gesture, a final effort in vain. He gripped the gauntlet of the one without a helm and lifted a pallid finger toward the Orb. A final gasp, a horrid shudder, and his lips rained blood upon the stairs. He sagged, dead in his companions’ arms. I understand now. She shivered at the sight. He lied to these men. He was Tyberian…Master’s apprentice…or maybe even his teacher.

  This was his last hope for atonement.

  “What now?” she heard the burly one shout. “Do we run?”

  The tall one let the slain warlock slide from his grasp. “Nowhere to run to,” she heard him say. “There are only two darklings here. Kill them both. Destroy the Object after.”

  End of the Beginning

  No one can see me, Andelusia realized as the battle began. Either Master’s spell makes me invisible, or these are my powers, and I am this way because I will it.

  When one of the men shouldered past her on the stairs, he seemed not to feel the touch of her arm against his armor. Another of them looked right at her, or through me, but even with the Dageni helm shrouding his eyes, she knew he saw nothing of her.

  Breathless, she backed into the archway between the Orb cavern and the rest of the citadel. She watched as chaos took hold of her world. Her Master uttered three Archithropian words and shadow-walked into the sea of candles surrounding the Orb. Vom sprinted up the stairs, where the tallest of the invaders stood waiting, his sword fuming with a flame so hot she wondered if it could melt the Orb.

  And she heard the dead cackling.

  The noise was unlike anything of the natural world. It sounded as though the earth had cracked, splitting the same as an eggshell. She trembled at the clamor, and dared a glance into the grand vestibule behind her. Between the pillars of glass, Revenen’s creations reawakened. The piles of ash and blackened bones destroyed by Dancmyrcephalis scuttled together and rejoined inside the scarred plates of Dageni mail. New bodies were formed, lifeless husks of bone and corrupted tissue. And this time without a warlock to destroy them. She saw at least thirty of them, then sixty, then more. Resurrected, her Master’s creations stalked across the chamber floor toward the Orb cavern, their limbs and twisted armor scraping against the floor, echoing in the great darkness like the nails of dead men clawing to escape their tombs.

  “We’re damned,” said the burly one, the same who had shouldered past her.

  “We have to hold them back!” shouted the other, who held his sword as though he disliked the feel of it.

  She stood in the middle of it all, a sapling in a storm.

  To her right, the dead swarmed over the two men, hacking with half-melted swords and grasping at the men’s necks with blackened fingers. Beneath her, the tall one and the helmetless one met Vom in a tempest of blades. A part of her feared to be here, but the larger part relished the violence of it all.

  She focused first upon the stairs. After a flurry of slashes, she saw the intruders retreating toward her. The tall one looked to his helmetless companion, and she swore words passed between them even though nothing was said. Vom pressed the attack, driving the tall one up another seven steps. His slender longsword flashed with inhuman speed, leaping against the intruder’s burning blade like lightning against a river of fire. Black and white sparks hissed off the edges, showering the obsidian stairs with fragments of both men’s blades. She almost hoped the tall one would cut Vom down. Forgive me, Master. She hoped he could not hear her thoughts. But I should be the only apprentice here.

  The tall one possessed the advantage of position, but it seemed not to matter. Vom moved like fire crackling, driving the intruder back and leaping up the obsidian stairs as though they were nothing. His enemy did not panic. The tall one parried a hundred blows, none so much as grazing his armor. “Go!” he shouted at the helmetless one. “Help the others!”

  Helmetless swept past her. She glimpsed his face as he sped by. His beard was salted grey, his eyes wide and filled with pain. An old knight, she thought him. Is he Grae? She let him pass, her gaze trailing his arrival into the fray against the dead. At least until now, the two fighters had held their own against the sea of corpses. They stood back-to-back in the heart of the swarm, carving up all the dead who came at them. Piles of black bones lay in a circle about their feet. Both men’s Dageni mail were dented and scored, but still they fought, cleaving off hands, arms, and ribs. When Helmetless waded into the battle, she was amazed to see the looks in the undead guardians’ eyes, the white lights in their sockets dimming as though they were somehow capable of surprise. Five more guardians fell, smashed to bits.

  Valiant. She smiled for the sake of the intruders. But useless. As soon as they kill one, another regenerates.

  She faced the stairs again. The combatants were fewer, but the battle no less exhilarating. For all his speed, Vom seemed to possess a dozen swords. His longsword sprang against the intruder’s a hundred times, a blur of grey steel crashing against the fiery marvel of the tall man’s blade. She felt the cold streak through the air whenever Vom attacked, and a flush of heat beneath her flesh whenever the tall one parried. She wondered who was hidden behind the Dageni helm, and why he would dare challenge Vom. He is too fast for you. Better for you had Master crushed your insides like the warlock.

  Like a moth drawn to the flame, she followed the fighters’ every mo
ve. It was ecstasy to watch, a ballet of blood soon to be spilled. Theirs was not a graceful dance, but rather a storm, their swords flashing like meteors and their footsteps falling like hammers. Vom drove his enemy all the way up the stairs, and the fight swept past her, the intruder’s blade so close to her face she felt the heat of it on her cheek. The intruder retreated into the throng of swarming dead. He backed through the mass of blades and flailing arms, lashing out whenever a guardian came too close. As he chased, Vom took no care with her Master’s minions, felling three of them without so much as a sidelong glance. Her heart blasting away, she trailed them through the tunnel of carnage. The cold bones of fallen guardians felt like shards of ice beneath her toes, and the broken skulls stared at her as she passed, somehow able to see her.

  Vom drove his enemy through the dead. They met again in the vast emptiness beyond, explosions of black light marking every meeting of their blades. She followed them, leaving the other battle out of sight, out of mind. Their fight spanned nearly a quarter of the grand hall. Vom drove the intruder toward the far wall, and the intruder willingly gave ground. Hardly an accident, she guessed the intruder’s plan. He wants Vom away from the Orb. One fewer protector. It will not matter. Master is waiting.

  After a dozen more lunges, parries, and showers of sparks, the battle penetrated a doorway and passed into the tunnel beyond. It was a dark place their fight led her to, a vast, worming tunnel she had never seen before. Whole armies might walk its twisted floors, and whole cities be built within its vacant depths. The walls looked like the ribs of some giant beast, long dead and turned to obsidian. If the tunnel had a bottom, she wondered where it might be, for it seemed to go down forever, coiling into places even lower than the Orb cavern.