The King of the Vile

by David Dalglish

  The sounds of battle faded away. The carnage ceased, for there were no more soldiers to kill. Only a small group remained in the heart of the battlefield, and Azariah hovered over them warily. By their black armor and burning blades, they were clearly paladins of Karak. Eight of them gathered around King Bram, protecting him against any attack by the angels. Azariah knew he could stay airborne, casting magical attacks of fire and ice until the paladins lacked the strength to defend themselves, but he didn’t.

  Azariah’s eyes had opened to many things over the past years, allowing him to see the paladins of Karak in a whole new light.

  He landed before the group, keeping a safe distance in case they refused to listen to reason. The paladins readied their weapons, bunching tightly together in anticipation of battle. Azariah looked them over, surprised by their youth. In the times before the first Gods’ War, when injury and disease were abolished by the Wardens’ constant care, he’d have considered them nothing more than children. Yet here these children were, wielding powerful weapons bathed in fire as hot as their faith.

  “Who among you may speak for the rest?” Azariah asked.

  “I may, if we must,” one said. He had a freckled, scarred face, and two lion tattoos on his neck.

  “And who are you?”

  “Umber,” said the paladin. “And stay back unless you want an ax in your gut. You may be uglier than we remember, but you’re still angels of Ashhur, bloodthirsty ones at that.”

  Azariah lifted his hands to show he meant no harm.

  “I only seek words,” he said. “Are you willing to listen?”

  Umber glanced around at the thousands of angels hovering about, watching. Sweat trickled down his forehead and neck, but despite his obvious nervousness, he kept himself together well enough.

  “If you bring words instead of swords, then we’re willing to listen,” Umber said.

  Azariah nodded. He felt oddly hopeful, despite the supposed impossibility he knew he was about to propose. Ever since Karak and Ashhur warred, so had their followers. Centuries of conflict, all stemming from that defining moment when Celestia flung both gods into the eternal void, imprisoning them in their respective domains. But Azariah remembered the days when he’d been a mere Warden. He remembered when loving one god did not make you an enemy of the other’s followers.

  “There was a time when Karak and Ashhur were brothers,” he said. “When they worked together in search of a way of life for mankind that would result in peace without slavery, happiness without perversion, and wealth without suffering. Those times may come again, if only you are willing to listen and learn just as we have allowed ourselves to learn.”

  Umber still seemed wary, but the ax in his hands wasn’t lifted quite so high, nor clutched so tightly. “And what lesson might you angels have learned?”

  What lesson? Only one, which he’d learned as he came upon a heartbroken Ezekai outside the remains of the slaughtered village of Norstrom.

  “No matter the lessons we offer or how many laws we create, mankind will still be sinful creatures,” said Azariah. “That sin wears on us like nails clawing the length of our spines. Sin is an act of selfish rebellion. A chaotic act against a natural order, Karak might say. My kind endured the sin out of need to save the sinner, but that cost us dearly. We need peace. Dezrel needs peace. And there is only one way to find peace in this broken world.” Azariah smiled. “Emptiness. In absolute emptiness, we may find peace.”

  “And in absolute emptiness, we may find order,” Umber said. He lowered his ax and offered his hand in friendship. “Perhaps you are right, and there is still wisdom we may share.”

  Azariah shook his hand, and he couldn’t help but feel proud. In a single day, he’d healed the rift Ashhur and Karak had created. In a single day, he’d proven himself more capable than the gods they followed. The dark paladins stepped aside, making open the way to King Bram. The man stood tall, blade drawn, unafraid of his impending death. It didn’t seem an act, either. Impressive.

  “My wife yet lives,” Bram said as Azariah approached. “Riding on my fastest horse toward Ker. She’ll rally my people. Every man, woman, and child capable of lifting a weapon will tear at your wings and cut at your flesh. We will not submit to Ashhur, nor his abandoned followers.”

  Bram swung his sword. Azariah caught Bram’s wrist before the blade connected. Azariah’s other hand grabbed the king by the throat and lifted him into the air.

  “They will submit, or they will die,” Azariah said. “The same choice offered to kings and beggars alike. A fair offer, and a fair punishment. Let your nation resist, Bram. We’ll burn it to ashes if we must and start anew. Time means nothing to us...and nor do your impotent threats.”

  Bram’s free hand pulled at Azariah’s, trying to loosen the grip enough to breathe, but he was too weak. Azariah stared into the king’s eyes, never blinking, never relenting. He watched the life dwindle away, that precious spark fading into deathly stillness. A life of temptation and selfishness ending, an imprisoned soul breaking free of its tattered, sinful shell to find peace in the hereafter. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

  Azariah tossed the worthless bag of flesh and bone to the ground.

  “These are grand days,” he told the paladins of Karak. “The future of Dezrel is in our hands. Let us rebuild Paradise like it was before war tore it asunder. Let us build it wiser, and stronger, so it may withstand the ages. A land ruled not by sinful creatures, but the gods and their servants. A righteous land. An orderly land.”

  Umber put his fist to his breast and bowed, and all other paladins bowed with him.

  “To Paradise reborn,” he said.

  “To Paradise reborn,” Azariah echoed, and he smiled.

  A paradise reborn...and ruled by a crown of bone.

  28

  Tarlak’s portal opened in the grasslands twenty miles away from the two towers, but it wasn’t far enough. He’d prefer to be all the way in Mordeina, but that required energy he simply didn’t have. Twenty miles was nothing to mages using locator magic. So as Deathmask lay on his back in the grass, Tarlak scrawled a few quick runes into the dirt with a stick, cast a spell over them, and then plopped onto his rear.

  “What do you think?” he said. “Hide out here for a month or two, then go storming back and rip those damn towers to apart brick by brick?”

  “Sure,” Deathmask said, arm over his eyes. “I might need more time, though. The Council’s going to the bottom of a very long list of people I need to skin alive, starting with Azariah.”

  Tarlak frowned at the mention of the angel. Roand had claimed he worked with Azariah to bring Avlimar crashing to the ground. He’d expected to miss a few things while trapped in the towers, but that one seemed like a doozy.

  “Roand and Azariah working together,” he said. “Care to help me make sense of that?”

  Deathmask sighed and sat up. Black circles surrounded his eyes. Tarlak doubted he’d gotten any sort of restful sleep while chained to the wall. Still, given all Tarlak had done to get him out of there, it only felt fair to get a few answers before they both passed out for the night.

  “It happened not long after Antonil’s army was crushed,” Deathmask said. “I have a feeling the Council had a hand in that. Would I be right?”

  “Absolutely. Bastards bombarded us with magic as we approached the tower seeking aid.”

  “Why go to them for aid?”

  Tarlak sighed.

  “Because we had our asses handed to us by an orc army led by a war demon. When we reached Ker’s border, King Bram refused to let us cross. At the time, I thought he was being an opportunistic jerk, but given Roand’s plans of taking over Ker, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bram was being manipulated by the Council in some way.”

  “That answers a few questions,” Deathmask said, his eyes glazing over as he thought. “During Gregory’s crowning ceremony, Avlimar came tumbling to the ground. Not an angel was there due to the ceremony, a convenient little fact I should
have noticed far sooner. I always thought it was so whatever magic necessary to destroy it could be cast in secret, but obviously it was because Azariah didn’t wish to lose any of his people.”

  Tarlak drummed foreign fingers against his kneecap. “You said Gregory’s crowning ceremony. I’d feared Kevin Maryll would attempt to usurp the throne when the Council betrayed us. Did he?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Queen Susan died in the attempt?”

  “Unfortunately. Susan’s death elevated Gregory to the throne, at least in theory.” He chuckled, the glazed look vanishing from his eyes. “And yes, Harruq and Aurelia both survived just fine, in case you were worried about that. Harruq even cut off Kevin’s head and tossed it out a castle window. You know, sometimes that half-orc knows how to do a display just right.”

  Tarlak let out a sigh of relief despite immediately feeling guilty about it. Susan had always been kind, and surprisingly accepting of Antonil’s odd collection of friends. Losing her was terrible, but he couldn’t deny his relief at knowing his friends had survived. Tarlak had lost enough people close to him to fill a dozen lifetimes, and the last thing he wanted was to add more to the list.

  “I can piece together most everything else,” Tarlak said. “Though I’m curious, why did the angels capture you?”

  “Azariah blamed me for Avlimar’s collapse.”

  “You? But why?”

  Deathmask shrugged.

  “I guess I have a guilty face.”

  “Yeah,” he said, wincing. “Sorry about that, by the way.”

  The guildmaster chuckled, his smile stretching the worn, wrinkled scars across his mouth, cheeks, and jaw.

  “At least my face is still my own,” he said. “The same cannot be said of you.”

  Tarlak laughed. “I spent the past few weeks focusing on polymorphic studies just for such an occasion. Give me a few days. I’ll be my old self again, or at least a fairly close approximation of it.”

  “Excellent,” Deathmask said He settled down into the grass. “Speaking of a few days, that is how much I would like to rest. Wake me come morning so that doesn’t happen.”

  “Will do.”

  Tarlak removed his hat to use as a pillow, and then lay down on his side. Not the finest of beds, and nothing compared to the ridiculous softness of his mattresses in the towers, but Tarlak felt himself relaxing better than he had in weeks. No burning amulet clung his neck, chaining him against his will. No more wondering when he might ever see his friends again. Come the morning, he’d rip open a portal to Mordeina, march right up those castle steps, and wrap the Tun couple in a gigantic bear hug.

  Granted, he might want to explain his new form first...

  Tarlak woke with a splitting headache and an aching stomach. Grimacing, he pulled his knees to his chest and tried to go back to peaceful dreams where he suffered neither ailment. Maddeningly, a toe poked into his back.

  “You were supposed to be the one waking me up, remember?”

  Tarlak groaned as he rolled over. His eyes fluttered open. Deathmask hovered over him, arms crossed, scarred lips locked in a frown.

  “I beg your forgiveness,” Tarlak mumbled. “By chance you find us anything to eat?”

  “The sun’s barely risen. Did you think I caught, killed, skinned, and cooked a rabbit for you during that time?”

  Tarlak reached into an inner pocket, but the robes weren’t actually his. This meant no hidden stash of topaz, which meant no whipping himself up a simple meal with a few wags of his fingers.

  “Well, I know exactly where in Mordeina I’ll be taking us,” he said, envisioning the open air marketplace in the eastern district. Stumbling to his feet, he shook his hands and twisted his neck in an attempt to clear his head. Casting a portal over such distances wouldn’t be easy, and the last thing he wanted was to make a mistake and send both them to a random location, or even worse, right into the middle of something solid like a mountain.

  “Roand mentioned the angels ruling Mordan,” Deathmask said as Tarlak prepared the portal. “Gregory might have already been overthrown. If that is the case, the city may not be safe for either of us.”

  “Caution may be your thing,” Tarlak said as the portal ripped open before him. “But I’m more of a ‘bust in and blow things up’ kind of guy. The angels want to capture either of us, they’re welcome to try. Besides, I’m hungry, damn it.”

  Tarlak stepped through. He’d focused on the rooftop of a home beside the market, a place he figured would be safely concealed and bereft of people. When he stepped out, he moved aside so Deathmask didn’t bump into him, then turned toward the market. Before Deathmask could even appear next to him, Tarlak already knew something was wrong.

  “What happened here?” he wondered aloud.

  On any given day over two hundred people should have been walking through the lengthy street, browsing the dozens of tables. There should have been the smell of cheeses, pastries, and fresh bread, all arrayed on plates and cloths. The sun was low in the sky, and many would need to eat prior to heading off for their daily labors.

  Only there was no one here.

  “Clearly we missed something,” Deathmask said. The portal hissed shut behind him. “A rebellion of the angels?”

  “Perhaps,” Tarlak said. He snapped his fingers and stepped off the roof, gently floating down to the center of the barren street. Deathmask hung from the side of the roof before dropping onto his feet. Tarlak wandered down the road, the pain in his stomach growing worse. Many of the tables were overturned the stalls trashed. A stone wall sealed in the market to the right, but on the left were many buildings tucked behind the stalls, and Tarlak saw a quarter of them were damaged in some way. A few had broken windows or holes smashed into their thatched roofs; almost every one of them had a door that hung off its hinges.

  Most frightening of all was the blood. There were thick puddles of it, splashes of red on walls, and long streaks upon the road as if someone had been dragged along it.

  “Tar, over here.”

  Tarlak turned to see Deathmask standing before the post of a particularly large stall that had escaped damage. He hurried over, eyes narrowing as he saw a thick piece of parchment nailed to the post. Tarlak ripped it free of the nail.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “The Laws of Ashhur,” Deathmask said. He glanced up and down the street. “I don’t know if you sense it, Tarlak, but I do. The essence of death lingers about here like a plague, strong enough for a necromancer to get drunk on. Look at the blood in the streets. It’s like the Abyss came to visit Mordeina in the middle of the night.”

  Tarlak read the first few laws. Do not steal. Do not rape. Do not worship Karak. At ‘do not murder’ he crumpled the parchment up and tossed it into a drying puddle of blood.

  “Seems like someone’s not paying attention to their own damn laws,” he said. “This is bad, possibly very bad. We need answers.”

  Deathmask waved a hand to the cobblestones.

  “Then we follow the blood.”

  The smeared tracks were easy enough to follow. Tarlak kept his eyes open for any sign of human life, but the market was home only to a few rats and buzzing flies. Surely if they moved closer to the residential districts they’d have better luck. The idea that a city of thousands could be dead was too mortifying to consider.

  The market ended at a main street running north to south. The blood smears turned north. So much blood. Tarlak followed it, wincing at the pungent smell that assaulted his nose.

  “That’s what I think it is, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “I fear so.”

  It took another minute of walking down the eerily quiet street before reaching a junction. The smell grew stronger, nearly overwhelming in its power. The blood smears turned left, and Tarlak’s fears were confirmed.

  There had to be at least two hundred bodies piled atop one another in the center of the road. Those near the bottom were an indecipherable mess of gore and rot, while those
at the top sprawled out, skin pale, eyes milky in death. A rickety cart was parked beside the pile, four bodies atop it waiting to be dumped. Several men stood beside the cart, working together to lift the corpses and toss them upon the pile. They wore cloths over their faces against the stench, but given how strong the reek was, Tarlak assumed it didn’t help much.

  “Hey,” Tarlak shouted, giving the corpses a wide berth as he rushed around. “Hey, who did this? Who’s responsible for this?”

  The men watched his approach with dead eyes. It gave Tarlak the chills.

  “The angels,” one of them said. “How could you not know?”

  “We only recently arrived,” Deathmask said. “What caused this? Why would angels massacre so many?”

  The men clammed up, their eyes lingering on something behind Tarlak, and he felt his chills worsening. Leaving them to their work, he turned about to see an winged monster standing atop one of the nearby buildings, arms crossed over his chest. His skin was ashen, his robes dull, his breastplate the color of bone, his wings dark as ink. His lips parted to reveal broken teeth sharp as knives. It was an angel…but it wasn’t.

  “Go about your work,” the angel said. “If you are new here, heed the laws of Ashhur, for they are now...”

  He paused, as if seeing Deathmask’s scars for the first time.

  “You,” he said, drawing his sword from its sheath.

  “Me,” Deathmask said,

  Several bruises swelled across the angel’s exposed arms. They deepened in color, from green to purple, and then exploded with showers of blood. Tarlak knew such a spell could devastate a man if given enough power, but Deathmask didn’t have that power to give, nor was the angel a normal man. Though he’d had a night to rest after his ordeal at the hands of Roand, Deathmask was still far from recovered. Spreading his black wings, the angel dove toward them, sword leading.

  Tarlak shoved Deathmask to the side and rolled. The sword drove into the street, easily breaking the cobblestones. Coming up from his roll, Tarlak weaved his hands through the air, fingers hooking into the proper shapes. Ice flew from his palms in a flood, forming a curved wall between them and the angel. Tarlak prepared a blast of lightning, expecting the angel to fly over. Instead, he shattered the ice with a single swing of his sword and lunged forward with a burst of wings.