The Hidden Relic (The Evermen Saga, Book Two)

by James Maxwell

  "However, I know what you want most of all," Dain Barden said.

  Melovar knew he was too eager, and that the Akari knew it. He didn't care.

  "Yes, I want the secret."

  "The reason we were exiled." Dain Barden regarded him with level eyes.

  "Yes, yes, I want it."

  "Let us show it to you first, and then we'll see if you're still so eager."

  ~

  THE Primate wished Zavros was with him. The sharp-eyed templar would understand much more than did Melovar himself. Nevertheless, it was beautiful to behold.

  Dain Barden spoke as he showed the Primate the cavernous chambers deep beneath the ice city. "The dead are animated using the necromancers' arts. Depending on the age of the body and the skills it possessed in life, it may become a warrior, or a servant, or a, how do you say it, a creature of pleasure?

  Melovar shivered. "How long do the revenants last?"

  Necromancer Renrik spoke up. "We do not call them revenants, that is a word of your people." He gestured to a corpse that lay flat on a slab of ice. "To us he is a draug, the plural of which is draugar."

  "Not ghouls then?" Melovar smiled thinly, his lips splitting again and blood trickling through the cracks.

  "No," Renrik bristled, "not ghouls. They were once beloved, and they serve the Dain in death as they served in life. They are draugar."

  "I understand," Melovar said. Not being a man of lore himself, he enjoyed pointing out their pretensions.

  "The draugar are obviously better suited to colder climates, such as we have here in the north. The decay is our greatest challenge, for they will remain animated long after they've started to rot, or in battle when they have lost limbs or been stabbed many times."

  "Impressive," Melovar said.

  With Renrik leading and the Dain and Primate following close behind, the three continued past a massive vat, as high as the tallest tree and as wide around as a large house.

  Renrik halted them. "Here, in Ku Kara, when the dead have served their purpose, and can go on no longer, they are recycled. The Lord of the Night gave us something far greater than your Lexicons." The necromancer and his Dain both looked up proudly at the vat. "We Akari have no Lexicon," Renrik continued. "We have no harvesters or extraction plants, eking out droplets of essence from the plant matter and the lignite. The Lord of the Night instead gave us a method of extracting essence from those with the most life force of all. We take our essence from those with much more life than plants. We, Akari, extract our essence from the dead."

  ~

  MELOVAR left the lands of the Akari jubilant. He had his agreement, he still had the book of the Evermen, and he would now head to Seranthia to prepare for Dain Barden's arrival. It had turned out better than he had ever imagined.

  The Primate would send a fast messenger to Zavros, ordering him to Ku Kara where the templar would learn from the Akari. In particular Zavros would discover how they extracted essence from the dead.

  Soon the Akari would send their armies to Seranthia, and Melovar would unleash the draugar against his enemies.

  When he had his own supplies of essence again, and his own method of producing more, he would once again have power at his disposal. When the Primate ruled all the world he would give the Akari the same fate he planned for all of the houses. He would destroy them and give the world peace from lore at last.

  Dain Barden believed Melovar would tell him where to find the hidden relic, this powerful magic, the Evermen's greatest work. Melovar still didn't know where it was, but he was determined to find it.

  When he did, he had no intention of sharing it with anyone.

  ~

  DAIN Barden spoke with Renrik as they watched Primate Melovar Aspen's departing back. "Stick to the letter of the agreement," he said, "but don't trust them. When we have this relic of the Evermen, and when we have our avenue back into the Tingaran Empire, then we'll show them how powerful we've become since the exile."

  Barden turned to his necromancer, the tall Dain looming over the man with the circle of finger-bones around his neck. "Never forget, Renrik. Never forget. They will always hate us."

  16

  EVRIN Evenstar cursed. Limping and hobbling, he'd managed to drag himself away from Salvation until he'd taken refuge in a forest far from the road, and then his fatigue, combined with the wounds he'd received at the Pinnacle, had the better of him, and he lost consciousness.

  He sat up and cursed again. What time was it? Morning? More importantly, what day was it? How much time had passed since the destruction at the Pinnacle? How long had he spent in that dungeon?

  He was lucky to have escaped, and lucky to be alive. A senior templar had visited the dungeon to make sure the Primate's orders were being followed — that the prisoner was being fed and watered, but also being kept under lock and key.

  Evrin had looked up at the templar through the bars of his cell, his eyes suddenly squinting against the glowing pathfinder the templar held in his hand. When the templar turned the device to the cell, scanning the floor and walls, Evrin could finally see.

  The templar had an enchanted sword, a straight length of rune-covered steel with a bronzed grip. The sword wasn't scabbarded; the templar had it drawn and was casually leaning on it, perhaps to impress the other guards.

  Evrin had quickly scanned the symbols on the sword, looking for the activation sequence, finding the upper limit of what the enchanted blade was capable of.

  "Shekular-suk. Ran-rumaya-tul-lan," Evrin spoke.

  Evrin put his hands over his face, even as he continued to chant and his words took effect. The templar screamed as the sword expended most of its energy in a blinding flare. A wave of heat came from the blade, and with the sword's length close to his legs, the templar screamed and dropped the sword, jumping as far away from it as possible. It clattered to the ground, just in front of Evrin's cell.

  Quick as a snake, Evrin's hand slipped through the bars and, ignoring the fierce heat, he gripped the hilt and pulled it through. The scratched thing was heavy, and Evrin sighed, he'd never been one for swords.

  He activated three more sequences, careless to how much of the sword's energy he was draining. Evrin swung at the bars, and with three mighty blows and a shower of sparks he sliced through them like a scythe through wheat. On the other side of the hole the old man had created the templar stood gaping, and Evrin was relieved to see the man's eyes were clear of yellow.

  Evrin felt the strength in his arms giving out, and took the sword in both hands. He swung the sword in a great sweeping arc in the direction of the templar's head, a clumsy blow that missed, but nevertheless shocked the templar into fleeing.

  Evrin surprised and then cut down one of the more sadistic guards before the others leaped away from the blinding light of the blade.

  This old man still had some strength left.

  Once outside he'd discarded the sword and then hidden among the poor of Salvation — just another dirty pilgrim — before hobbling out of town, the wounds from the explosion at the Pinnacle still causing him to wince with each step.

  Evrin's thoughts returned to the present. Here he was, leaning against a tree, when he needed to get up, and take action.

  "Scratch you, old man," he cursed himself yet again.

  Rather than destroying what he'd gone to Stonewater's summit to destroy, he'd helped the book to fall into the worst possible hands. Perhaps the Primate had already figured it out.

  There was no other course of action. Evrin needed to enhance the protection around the pool of essence. The book was gone, and only by going to the relic itself could he keep it safe.

  Evrin finally stood up, ignoring the pain in his bruised body. He walked back to the road and looked along it, away from Salvation, before beginning the long walk to Seranthia.

  ~

  ONLY much later did Evrin think of visiting the Temple of the Sky in Salvation, and by then it was too late to turn back. He could have used Killian's help, but he d
idn't know if the lad had waited for him, or if Killian had even made it out of Stonewater alive.

  As he walked along the road towards the great city that men once called the capital of the world, Evrin realised that while it was too risky for him to go back to Salvation, he may be able to send a message.

  It took a few tries, and a near-beating from a protective farmer, but Evrin finally found a pious woman who felt sympathy for the old pilgrim and promised to get his message to the Temple of the Sky in Salvation.

  "Come to Seranthia," Evrin wrote. "Meet me at the dock, at a tavern called The Floating Cork."

  Evrin was going to need a scrill and essence. He needed to visit one of his caches; yet another reason to get to Seranthia.

  Perhaps Killian would find him, and Evrin would get some help.

  Either way, with help or alone, Evrin was determined to see this thing through.

  17

  THE squat trader ship rolled on the waves like an old drunk, showing too many years yet too little sense to head for home. The mast tilted one way, then another, as howling winds buffeted the sails and the huge waves threatened to tip the ship over again and again.

  Ella balanced precariously on the poop deck, at the ship's stern above the cabin the captain called his own. She held onto a stout rail with either hand, shifting her weight from one hip to another, gazing out at the stormy sky and thinking dark thoughts.

  Ella saw a figure climb up the ladder up to the poop deck, and realising who it was, she laughed. In sodden wet clothing, Jehral looked like nothing so much as a black housecat that had fallen into the bath.

  Jehral glared at the young enchantress. "You are insane," Jehral shouted at her above the wind. "This is a major storm. Don't you realise that?"

  The ship crashed into the sea with a boom, and a great wave of spray crested their heads, falling down and soaking them both to the skin. Jehral cringed, but Ella laughed again; she was already wet, what did it matter?

  When they'd reached Castlemere, Jehral and the Hazaran wise woman who summoned darkness at Jehral's command had guarded Ella and Shani while they awaited their transport. Ella had tried to engage Jehral in conversation but he silenced her with a glare, and if that didn't work the darkness soon came over her. He still hadn't explained what Prince Ilathor wanted with her.

  Then Ella and Shani were again put into the covered wagon. It rumbled and bumped over the cobbled stones, and they soon heard the sounds of the sea — the crashing of waves and the shrieks of seagulls. Dressed in their simple garments, without their tools, the two captives had struggled, but it was no use. They were bustled onto the Castlemere trader ship and left in full daylight with the changing of the tide. Rescue from Miro or his men was now out of the question.

  A week later, Jehral had finally let Ella and her Petryan friend out of their locked cabin. "There's nowhere for you to go," he'd said, gesturing to the open expanse of the ocean, "and I doubt either of you know how to sail."

  Even so, Ella had revelled in her new-found freedom.

  Alturans weren't the greatest sailors, but Ella's people knew the river, and she was familiar with boats. As a Petryan, the only water Shani had seen was the boiling Lake Halapusa surrounding the tiered city, the Petryan capital of Tlaxor. But the worst-affected by the journey was Jehral, a desert warrior born and bred. The proud leader of fierce horsemen couldn't keep his food down, and the swarthy skin of his face had turned a sickly green.

  "Please, come down with me," Jehral shouted into Ella's face. The sail snapped with a gust, and he looked up with fear as the mizzen-mast creaked alarmingly.

  "It's actually better for your seasickness up here," Ella shouted back. "Ask him." She pointed at the helmsman, a bearded Castlemere native standing at the wheel a dozen paces away, not the friendliest man Ella had met. "Keep your eyes on the horizon, and stand where the ship rolls the least, that's the key."

  "Come down!" Jehral cried.

  "Not until you tell me where we're going."

  "We're going to see Prince Ilathor," Jehral said.

  "I know that! Where are we going?"

  "We're going to the Hazara Desert. We're travelling south and east, and then we'll find a river mouth, hidden by the cliffs. The river will take us to Agira Lahsa, the hidden city."

  Ella drew back in surprise. "Your people have a city? I thought you lived in tents, and that you loved the freedom to roam the desert."

  "All great civilisations have cities," Jehral said. "When our lore was lost, when the knowledge faded away, Agira Lahsa was abandoned. Prince Ilathor's father, the Kalif, is rebuilding the city. We are a house now, Raj Hazara, and we have you to thank for it, Enchantress Ella."

  "Then give me my dress back, and talk to me again as my friend, Jehral."

  "We shall see," Jehral said, his voice clear against a momentary lull in the storm. "We shall see."

  ~

  THE storm passed, and the ship's motion subsided as the waves grew smaller and she made speed with a brisk wind behind her.

  Ella spent much of her time on deck, sometimes on her own, other times talking with Jehral about life in the desert, or Shani about the terrible things that happened in Petrya under the rule of their High Lord, Haptut Alwar.

  In the absence of their tools, Ella and Shani had initially shared their knowledge of enchantment and elementalism in hushed tones at night. Finally they began to share their more private selves.

  Petryans were fiercely competitive, and Shani had needed to completely devote herself to her calling. After initial training, the competition had become stronger, even dangerous, as one budding elementalist was pitted against another. Shani didn't speak too much of this period, but her shadowed eyes said enough.

  There was no turning back, no way to escape the training except with two red cuffs and mastery of the elements. Shani had no time for love; in fact, she had never been with a man, something Ella would never have guessed from the shapely woman's world-wise demeanour.

  Shani had transferred all of her love to her nephew, Sendak. He was a sturdy boy of fifteen years, brave and strong, skilled at contests and holding his own in the boys' rough fights after temple school.

  Sendak and his Aunt Shani would stand on the shores of Lake Halapusa, looking away from the tiered city and skipping stones across the water. Sendak would ask Shani whether she thought he should become a warrior or an elementalist, and Shani would tell him that only he could decide. Secretly Shani had hoped that if he really wanted to be a fighter he would follow in her footsteps, rather than those of his father, but she always did her best to let Sendak be the one who would decide for himself. On the day her nephew told her that he had decided, and he wanted to be just like her, Shani nearly cried.

  Then came the war. One day Petrya was at peace, the next the marshals were rallying the soldiers. The teardrop and flame raj hada of Petrya was raised from every tower, and anti-Alturan rhymes were heard on the gleeful children's lips. Some questioned why they were fighting, but High Lord Haptut Alwar ruled his people with strength and terror, and where he led, they would follow.

  Prices in Tlaxor immediately began to rise. It was difficult enough to bring goods over Lake Halapusa to the tiered city — the Halapusa Ferry could only carry so much. One silver deen bought only half of what it had days before.

  The young men among the Petryans were called up to fight. Any lad over the age of sixteen would be going to war. Only those training to be elementalists were excluded. Sendak, Shani's nephew, would be sixteen in a month. Shani's brother knew he himself would be fighting, but both he and his sister knew they had to get Sendak enrolled swiftly.

  Shani had saved plenty of gilden; she had little to spend her money on, and had been putting coins aside from her stipend for ten years. She visited the lender she had her funds with, and shaking his head he'd told her what he was evidently telling all his customers: Shani's money had been confiscated by the High Lord for the war chest.

  When Shani told her brother, he had seem
ed surprisingly calm, given that without gilden, Sendak's dream of becoming an elementalist would be thwarted, and the boy would soon be called up to fight Alturan bladesingers and Halrana constructs.

  The truth was, Shani's brother had his own source of income: he was making money selling Alturan-made goods on the grey market. The importation of nightlamps, heatplates, pathfinders and the like was banned by the High Lord, and the man who risked the High Lord's wrath could name his price.

  Shani kept this part of the story short. Someone betrayed her brother; she never found out who it was. The High Lord put Shani's brother, his wife, and Shani's nephew in a cage, and they slowly lowered the cage into the boiling water of Lake Halapusa.

  They'd nearly taken Shani too, but her brethren elementalists had vouched for her. Instead, along with the other residents of their neighbourhood, she was forced to watch, and endure the screams and cries of her only family as the flesh was taken from their bones.

  As she looked on, despair came over Shani and she could take no more. With her jaw clenched tight and her fists held out in front of her, the fireball appeared between her cuffs before she even knew she'd made a sound. With a flick of her wrists, Shani threw the fireball at the cage, ending the cries in an instant.

  They'd pursued her, but Shani was good, and no warrior could touch her. Only another elementalist could take her down, and none could be summoned before Shani forced the ferrymen guiding the Halapusa Ferry to take her across. All alone, she made her way over the Elmas to Altura, fleeing to the very people she was supposed to hate.

  "And you know what? You Alturans aren't so bad," Shani finished.

  Ella's eyes were red, but her mouth was set in a grim line, her forehead creased with determination. "Don't stop, Shani," Ella said. "Don't stop until your people are free. It isn't much, but I'll do everything in my power to help you."