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

by J. Edward Neill

  “So many…” Marcus looked in awe.

  “Even so, it wouldn’t have been enough. We were but half the Furies’ number. I remember standing in Jacob’s tent. I told him about Mooreye and the rumors of dead Furies rising. If I’d not mentioned my…feeling, we never would’ve gone through with it.”

  “Feeling?” Marcus stared down the table.

  “I told Jacob I had a feeling. You remember what I said about Garrett and the little wizard. Well…I reckoned, time being what it was, they must’ve made to Furyon by then. I thought maybe they’d done what they’d set out to. More importantly, our scouts said the Fury camp was spread out, and that few sentries were posted. If the fiends didn’t expect our first attack, they surely wouldn’t guess a second.”

  “But about this feeling…” Marcus pried.

  “Yes…well…I was awake. I dreamed it all the same. Father came to me. I heard him whisper, ‘Now’s the time, boy. If your friends made it to Furyon, there’s no sense in waiting.’ I never thought Jacob would listen, but he did. We marched east again. I saw the Fury storm and I remember thinking, ‘I’ve gone and killed us all...again.’ The battle began the same as the others. The lightning killed thousands in the fields. We almost fled. I’m not sure why I begged for a second volley of arrows, but when the wind went away, Nico’s men loosed, and we saw the Furies dying. Jacob ordered the charge. Nico slew the storm-maker, and our host ran every last Fury into the ground. None of the enemy lived, so the counters of the dead say. Father’s not come to me since.”

  A period of quiet followed. He nibbled on his mutton, potatoes, and wine, not truly hungry but wise enough to know he needed to eat. Through a high window, a beam of moonlight struck the table, pooling pale against the dark wood. He could not help himself. The deep silence coupled with the moonlight reminded him of Andelusia.

  “The Furies won’t be back, I think.” The sound of Marcus’s voice startled him.

  “Not for a while,” he agreed.

  “That brings me to my next question.”

  He knew what was coming. After five days in Orye and hundreds of tower doors rattled, no one had been able to help him. At an ancient tower at the edge of town, one old woman swore she had glimpsed a red-haired girl, but only for a few breaths, and at too great a distance to say who the lass was or where she was going. A little boy splashing with his friends in a pool of rainwater had mentioned seeing a pretty woman riding a Furyon horse, but with a hood and dark raiment like nothing Andelusia would wear. No matter who he had asked, no one had uttered a word about a tall soldier from Trebidal, a burly captain of Gryphon, or a skinny warlock. Because none of them are here, he told himself. Nor have they ever been.

  “…to go home?” He heard the end of whatever Marcus had asked.

  “Home?” he murmured.

  Marcus ambled to his end of the table. “You are your father’s son,” the old man declared. “And a friend to House Graf besides. Winter will soon be on us. It’s time to accept the truth. Your ladyfriend and soldiers are lost. Perhaps not dead, but gone beyond your grasp.”

  “Perhaps so.” He glanced to the moonlit window. “But what if not? What if they’re out there?”

  “Then they’ll surely find you, given time. Searching for them is folly. If they live, it’ll be much easier for them to come to you. You might wander through every city in Mormist and miss them. And what if they’ve already returned to Gryphon? They might sit in your hall all winter and you’d never know it, for no one knows where you are.”

  “They’re not in Gryphon.”

  “Perhaps not, but—”

  He set his palms on the table. The old man saw the look in his eyes and fell silent. “If someone were journeying from Furyon to Mormist…” he said. “…where would they have to go?”

  “What do you mean?” Marcus raised a brow.

  “What’s the easiest way to leave the mountains? Is there a valley, a hidden pass, a cave? I should’ve asked Garrett before he left.”

  Marcus sank into the nearest chair and folded one wrinkled fist inside the other. The crows’ feet crawling from the corners of his eyes made him look even older than usual. “All the common trails lead to Minec. It’s always been so.”

  “Are there towers in Minec?” he pressed. “High enough to watch over the passes?”

  “Yes. Several. Unless the Furies tore them down.”

  “Then you know what I must do.”

  Marcus withdrew into a moment’s thought, and then straightened in his tall-backed chair. “No Rellen, I don’t. There’s nothing you must do, only what you want and do not want.”

  “I want answers,” he said. “But since none are here, seems I must leave to find them.”

  “But…Minec?” Marcus looked baffled. “What birthed this idea? The city’s haunted, Rellen. The Furies took every single soul across the mountains. Winter will hit there harder than any other city. There’ll be no food, and—”

  He ignored Marcus’s protests. “If Ande’s dead and gone, the matter of Garrett remains. When he returns to Graehelm, I mean to be waiting. Will you give me food? Maybe a draft horse to carry it? What about blankets? I could use a few for when the snows begin to fall.” Marcus stared at him like he was mad. And perhaps I am, he thought. “Well?” he asked. “Can you help me?”

  Marcus looked so, so tired. “You’ll grow old waiting in Minec,” the old man said. “You’ll die alone, far from what family you have left. Have you considered your friend might return by some other route? There are other, smaller passes. For all we know, he might already be in Mormist. But then of course, he’s probably…dead.”

  The suggestion that Garrett could die sloughed off him the same as the rain. “I know what you think,” he said. “You believe me suicidal, torn into so many pieces by my grief I mean to throw my life away. It’s not so. I’m not a madman.”

  “Then why go?” Marcus argued. “This isn’t about Garrett or the girl. This is about you, and what becomes of you in their passing. If a respite is what you need, there are other things you might do. Stay in Orye for a season. We could use someone like you. We’ve so few able men. The people mean to move south come springtime. We all would go, and you could help us.”

  He leaned back in his chair. Marcus made plenty of sense, and yet none of it mattered. “I’d help you, but for this.” He laid his palm over his heart. “Father always taught me a friend in the field is worth twenty behind a castle wall, and Garrett was better than any I’ve ever known. I owe him this much. If Minec’s his most likely road, I’ll go there. And besides, the time alone will help me. All this talking and asking questions; it clutters my head. I need to be alone with Ande.”

  “Alone with her?”

  “With her memories.”

  Marcus furrowed his brow, the skin on his forehead crinkling like a century-old scroll. His expression wandered through a gamut of sorrow, disappointment, anger, and even a glimmer of understanding. In the long, slow silence, it dawned upon Rellen his demands must sound petulant, but it was not so. The old man knows what this is like, he knew. He lost more than most. If I should have a sliver of hope, he can’t deny me. And if I should go away to grieve alone, he must know there’s nothing wrong with it.

  “Minec.” The word fell from Marcus’s mouth like a stone. “If your friends travel through the mountains on the way back from the sea, it’s possible they’ll end up there.”

  “So you’ll help me?”

  Marcus swallowed a sob. The tears Rellen saw in the old man’s eyes were for Dennov, who lies beneath the stones of Verod, he knew. Marcus had tried to be strong, to mask his misery with half-smiles and generosity, but Rellen knew the darkness lying beneath. Because the mask he wears is the same as mine.

  “I’ll tell you the way.” The old man dabbed at his cheek with his sleeve. “And I’ll give you what food I can. But I beg you to reconsider. Grief enough will make a ghost of you, no matter whether Minec kills you or not.”

  Two days later, he
left Orye behind.

  Save for a few nosing children and a tower topped with raucous crows, no one saw him go. The rain was gone, and the morning’s mist parted before his stallion’s snuffling nose. Marcus had no draft horses to lend him, and so his stallion’s rump bulged with blankets and sacks stuffed with food. When he reached Orye’s eastern edge, where the broken stone paths melted into the dead, dry trees, he halted in the shadow of the city’s last tower and peered down the street behind him. My thanks, friend, he spared a thought for Marcus, who had stuffed his bags with food left behind by the fleeing Furyons. If I ever make it home, Gryphon will know its debt to you.

  For eight days and seven nights, he followed the trade paths through the forest just as Marcus had instructed.

  Eastern Velum was a lonely, desolate place, and each village he glimpsed seemed a skeleton of its former self. He saw cabins blackened by fire, stone towers turned to rubble by the Furyon storm, and rings of rotted stakes used to pen captives. He cut through valleys half-drowned in black water, thickets where but one tree in ten still lived, and lonely hillsides upon which the sun seemed reluctant to shine. His father’s old cloak moldered on his back, his horse’s shoes rusted, and the foodstuffs he had garnered from Marcus began to dwindle. He never once thought to turn back. Even when the rain ruined his sleep and bitter winds came down from the mountains, few thoughts for comfort crossed his mind.

  On the eighth evening, as the sun set fire to the sky behind him, the trees of Velum ended. He came to a river frothing at the feet of the mountains, its waters raining mist upon every rock in sight. The enemy must not have stayed here long, he reckoned. The water’s clean. There are no corpses. White boulders pocked the grass on either side of the river, casting long shadows across the earth. Wending between the great stones, he came to the water’s edge, where he washed his feet, refilled his skins, and let his stallion drink its fill. Afterward, though his bones ached and his eyes stung from the cold, he climbed back into the saddle. If Marcus’s map is right, Minec is close. Why not find it tonight?

  Night fell, and he rode north beside the river. He hoped to encounter survivors here or there, sleeping beside the river or building fires to burn away the cold, but he saw no one. Just like Marcus said. The Furies took everyone.

  The moon blazed white upon his face, the stars seeming sharper than anywhere else in the world. He pulled his tattered cloak snug to his shoulders, shrugged off the wind, and prodded his horse onward. A stone’s throw away, the river rushed southward, its waters black, but its surface teeming with silver shards of moonlight. Well after midnight, and well after his fingers felt frozen, he came to a pasture, and not long after that a bridge. The great arch of stone and timber spanned the river at its narrowest point, joining the pasture with a stony valley on the water’s far side. He was surprised the Furyons had not felled the bridge during their retreat. But then, why would they? Who would they fear? No one in Mormist is left to harry them.

  He trudged across the bridge, horse’s reins in hand. On the other side, it was just as Marcus had promised.

  The spires of Minec were visible, stark as swords against the stars.

  Even at a distance, Minec looked like a graveyard. None of its tower windows shined, no guards patrolled its streets, and no sounds but the wind came crawling from its wide-open gates. After so long, he had trouble remembering what he hoped to find here. His dreams had faded in recent nights, and his memories of Garrett and Andelusia were dulled by lack of sleep. Not that it matters, he told himself. I’ll stay the winter whether anyone passes through here or not. Too tired to go any further, he led his horse to a patch of grass outside Minec’s gate, erected a lean-to against the wall, and lay his weary head down.

  Dreamless, he slept. When he rose to a cold, cloudless dawn, he clambered to his feet, plucked up his stallion’s reins, and ambled into the city. When Marcus had said Minec was abandoned, he had not believed it, but now the old man’s truth struck him. No one’s here. Not a soul. For half the morning he wandered from tower to tower and house to house, seeking even the smallest sign of life. A smoldering hearth, a bed freshly tousled, a chamber pot steaming.

  He found none of it.

  Minec was graven in the likeness of Orye, with pale marble towers and white domes vaulting against a backdrop of mountains, and yet the place was gutted even more so than Marcus’s home. Its dwellings were empty, the rooms beyond each door stripped bare, the wind free to wander as it liked. Once, he heard a door creak and drew his sword for fear of a lurking Furyon, but when he flung the portal open and shouted into the hall beyond, he saw nothing but a starving cat slink away. Another time, he wandered into a tower, chasing the clap of what he hoped might be boots against the floor, but instead he came upon a window against which broken shutters cracked in rhythm with the wind. No matter where he went, he saw no signs of the Furyons, not so much as a wagon, a red and black banner, or even a pile of Dageni dust from a disintegrated sword. He thought the whole thing unnerving at first, but later concluded Minec’s emptiness was agreeable. He desired nothing more than peace and quiet, which is exactly what I’ve found.

  The first day was quick to pass him by.

  He wandered the streets and familiarized himself with the arrangement of Minec’s towers and dwellings. No one troubled him. Nothing took him by surprise. Come late afternoon, he returned to his chosen dwelling, the highest of the city’s watchtowers, a white sword of marble jutting from the eastern quarter of the city. He climbed the tower’s winding stairs to the top and dropped his bags in a vacant room with ten windows and sharply-angled walls. In the center of the chamber hung a rope as thick as his calf, and in the dome above a great bronze bell. I can ring it every hour, he thought. Anyone in the city will hear and come running. Did it ring when the Furies knocked on the door, I wonder?

  Other than a hearth, a little round table, and a stool carved of stone, he found no comforts in his room. The floor was bare rock, the shutters too thin to keep out the cold, and the walk down to his horse some thousand steps long. He remained nonetheless. The room was perfect in his eyes, high enough to watch over the whole city, sturdy enough he did not fear the wind knocking it over. When the day died and the sun plunged beneath the horizon like a golden coin into black water, he leaned over the easternmost sill. The window afforded an excellent view of the vale leading into the east end of the city. If anyone comes, they’ll have to come from there. Hurry, Garrett. Get here before winter.

  So began his days, the last days of autumn.

  He spent his first week inside the tower, leaving only to search for food or take the occasional twilight trek through the moonlit streets. He made a pact with himself to ring the bell every hour, pulling the huge rope until his hands went raw. I’ll go deaf from all the noise, he mused. And then when Garrett comes shouting, I’ll never hear a thing.

  No one ever answered his bell, and yet he persisted. One day, he opened the city’s eastern gate, spending hours’ worth of energy turning a great winch to crack the doors, and yet in all the hours afterward he saw nothing enter save for windblown leaves and a starving dog. On still another day, using a hammer, nails, and a brick of black chalk he found in a guardsmen’s barracks, he wrote simple signs and posted them on several streets, though only ghosts are likely to see them, he knew. And even they’ll not come to see me.

  The days grew shorter.

  The nights grew colder.

  Hour after hour, he waited and watched, haunting his window as though he were the last spirit left in an entire city of dead. Though he saw no one enter his gates, luck was his in one regard. One morning, while scavenging in a cellar for scraps of food and cords of wood to burn in his tower’s hearth, he came upon two barrels of salted pork, each barrel stuffed with enough meat to last him a month. It seemed poor fare for a man who had once dined in Gryphon, where the mead was always crisp and the slabs of beef always dripping, but he minded it little. As long as I eat better than the dead, he told himself.

&n
bsp; And how hard will that be?

  Winter fell upon the city. The empty streets flowed with rivers of orange and brown, the cold sweepings of countless leaves across the stone. Three weeks in, after freeing his stallion to the wilds, he expected to go mad with loneliness, and yet somehow he felt as calm as ever in his life. Garrett would be proud, he mused. What did he used to say? A few days alone might hurt the heart, but a few years will make the mind a fortress?

  His sadness became serenity. The gloom in his heart faded, replaced by the hard routines of living alone in a city meant for thousands. The east window was his favorite vigil, and the hearth his only friend.

  A month in, with no sign of anyone, he considered returning to Orye. His hopes of finding Garrett had dwindled to nearly nothing. He spotted a few urchins here and there, lost souls wandering the city the same as him, but none so tall and stark as his mountain friend, and none whom he cared to approach. After several nights’ deliberation, he decided to stay. The city felt somehow like home anymore. He began to feel like Minec’s warden, its last caretaker, and the time alone was healing his heart.

  In the fifth week, the snows came, turning the city even whiter than before. He rather liked it, but hated the winds accompanying it. The gales from the mountains blew in, baying like wolves whose hunger could never be sated. The wind ripped through his windows the same as claws, tearing the heat away from his hearth, wanting to strip his skin from his bones. The clear skies fled, and the clouds from the mountains made a curtain to keep the sun away.

  Most days became grey as slate, and most nights the moon and stars seemed but candles behind sheaves of gauzy cirrus. In time, he gathered enough blankets to bury himself in while he watched from his window. Come the sixth week, he hardly noticed the wind any longer, and by the seventh, he almost longed for it. The cold lulled him into sleeps deeper than any he had ever enjoyed. He dreamt seldom anymore, and never of dark pools, dead Garretts, or weeping Andelusias.