by Marin Landis
“There was a woman, their leader I believe. She was most unlike all women I had theretofore met. She was softer and more pleasant than the females of Llanifre and ultimately seductive. I never would have thought before of mating with a woman, let alone such a barbaric and large woman as she was, for a purpose other than procreation, but I felt myself having such thoughts almost immediately after meeting her.” Sjarcu was astonished at this. Luchis must describe the woman who had bested him. This was becoming promising.
“Go on, Luchis,” he said reassuringly, only afterwards realizing that tone of voice meant little to Luchis.
“She held, and pray believe this, a copy of The Unspeakable Rites of Rotting.” Sjarcu had heard of it. A treatise devoted to Necromancy, held in high esteem by the ancient sects who worshiped Ain-Ordra. Sects long since vanished or destroyed, in Talvar society and others. “I needed that book, brother, and I would have done many things to get it, but she barely wanted anything for it. A collaboration. One backed up with some odd threats, but I knew she would not harm me, that her words were for the benefit of the lesser cultists. I suppose this may seem like I have allied myself with a religious groups, but remain assured that I, no matter the temptation, would not stray from our mission to rid the world of superstition. Are our beliefs so much different, brother? We consort with demons do we not? Is that so different than drawing power from the Gods, or the undead? Should any path to reason and dominion not be taken seriously and used to further the cause of the Talvar?” He had the look of the fanatic now, he was definitely caught up within the hysteria of the religious.
This was enough, Sjarcu was sickened to his stomach. To think that he as well was taken in by this woman, the Reliquarian, and that his feelings were stirred by her. There was doubtless more to this story and further details were there to be gleaned but he needed but one further piece of information and one other fact confirmed.
Luchis was still talking, his eyes aglow with self-righteous fervor. Sjarcu slammed his clenched fist directly into Luchis’s solar plexus, preventing further ranting. He coughed and spluttered and gasped a lot and Sjarcu waited patiently for him to finish.
“I will speak and you will answer as concisely as I know you can,” hissed Sjarcu. Luchis nodded, fearful. “Where is that book now?”
“I did not receive it due to my failure…”
“At Summershade, I know of that. Very well, I believe you.” The prisoner sagged a little, inadvertently, with relief. Sjarcu struck him in the face this time. Not hard enough to break anything, but hard enough that Luchis would have bruised eyes for days afterwards. His head flew back and he started to sob, watery mucus mixed with the blood flowing from his nose. His eyes were wide as he regarded Sjarcu.
“Mercy, I beg…”
“Shut your mouth!” screamed Sjarcu, as wildly as he could. He was genuinely angry, so it didn’t take much acting. “The only mercy you will get from me is a quick death!” He pulled out his asp knife. Six inches long, with four blades. With this he had slain Prince Sunar of Maresh-Kar and others before him.
Luchis started to wail. Spittle flying from his thin lipped mouth.
“Silence, you sackless worm, I will take your tongue!” Again Sjarcu screeched his words like a madman, his throat starting to feel rough, his captive’s wails turning to muffled sobs. “You have one chance to redeem yourself and be warned, there will be no second chance. One lie, one pause, will mean your guts spread about the room and I’ll leave you to the rats.”
Luchis heaved at this, vomiting down himself, coughing and spitting. Sjarcu ignored it.
“The Reliquarians. Where are they?”
“Uth-Magnar, brother. She is a librarian.” That was simple. As most things are.
Sjarcu pulled a chair over and sat on it, regarding Luchis as if in thought.
“What will you do, brother? I pray, release me, I know little else of their motives and composition. The lich, his name. Samarkus.” He spoke rapidly, eager for his life to be spared.
There was no need to let him live.
“Luchis. You must know that I do not work alone. Should you speak of any of this or make any further contact with any religious groups, I will kill Lissa first. Go and live your life in simplicity and diffidence. Have no thoughts above your station and encourage her to do the same. If you see me again, know it will be your end.”
He untied Luchis’s limbs and watched indifferently as he hopped in agony from paraesthesia. The relieved, yet still terrified, scholar hobbled to the door opened it and stepped blinking into the sunlight. He started with shock when he realized that he stood on a street in Llanifre, the building he exited an unused residence. He turned, almost fearfully, to find the room he left, now empty.
CHAPTER SIX
Librarian
“I thought she was broken, but all along she was hiding a deep well of hate. It took the love of a bad man to help her let it out.” - Accus on Finulia
Three hundred years ago, the city of Magnar was in its infancy. The surrounding lands were controlled by feudal chiefs, bandit kings and petty warlords. The largest city in the area, Stonehaven, had recently been ransacked and then rejuvenated by a small band of marauders from the North. Those intrepid, some said desperate, adventurers from beyond the Tarkan Mountains had braved the barbarian tribes and made their way south. Their leader, Calra Alpre and his two brothers had set out on a campaign of ruthless subjugation of the disorganized and mostly ragtag groups they encountered.
Seventy miles east of Stonehaven, Calra Alpre found the idea place for his capital. Nestled in the embrace of the edge of the mountain range that separated his new kingdom from his homeland of Malann, he felt he could become invincible. With an almost inexhaustible supply of gold and an idea that would make him and his dynasty the richest in history, he set out to build a grand city; Magnar.
In those early days , Calra and his brothers intended to work together to create an empire, but cracks began to show after not very long at all. It soon became apparent that a triumvirate would not work, they agreed on few things and their egos were unstoppable. Each believed that only they were fit to make the big decisions. Unfortunately for Sunar and Thacritus, Calra was the biggest, the oldest and the most aggressive.
After a physical altercation between Sunar and Calra, the younger brother taking a terrible beating, the Principality of Maresh-Kar was created. In a terrific sulk, Sunar, claimed a small section of uninhabited land near the coast less than two score leagues from Magnar and set his metaphorical flag in the ground.
Similarly, Thacritus staked his claim, in a less dramatic fashion, to an island off the southern coast. It was a large piece of land, but overrun by cannibals and monsters, so Calra was happy to leave that uncontested as long as he was left to rule Magnar alone.
It took decades for Calra, a born diplomat, to repair his relationship with Sunar. The discord between him and 'Critus however bubbled under the surface unacknowledged for centuries.
Being a lover of knowledge, Calra, now King Calra Alpre, was overjoyed when Thacritus offered to found the world's second greatest library in Magnar, the premiere example of course, Thacritus's.
What Calra didn't know, is that his little brother set up a cult of black mages under his very nose. It was minor at first; the head librarian being a protege of Thacritus, a team of cultists scouring the Empire of Malann for rare grimoires and forbidden texts, subtle integration of death cults into Stonehaven, Magnar and in time, Maresh-Kar. Thacritus named them the Reliquarians.
His ghastly work in this area culminated, with no one more surprised than he, in the hope of a fulfillment of prophecy regarding twin girls, one of fire, one of earth, who would plunge the world into a second darkness. A scrap of paper from a diary discovered in a temple of a forgotten lunar deity, almost discarded, it held words that prickled something in Thacritus:
Ween in twain, soil and flame
Shrouding agin, o’er sun fil not
Such ramblings me
ant little to him and he put the memory of it to one side. Until, three centuries later, it appeared beneath a dusty tome in a large pile of unread books. Thacritus shrugged and threw it to the side and went to attend to his business on the mainland. There was the usual mummery and uninteresting, but fanatical nonsense from Magnar’s head librarian, now almost a priest-like figure to the Reliquarians, when it was announced loudly by a rather intrusive and ugly woman that “Reba has had ‘em, two byooties they is.”
“Who? Who are these beauties,” he growled, turning on her, suddenly fascinated.
She shrank back. “Lord, I didn’t ken ye was in ere, apologies,” she mumbled and retreated backwards, bowing and scraping as she went.
“Forgive her, Lord Thacritus, she is the midwife. Reba, a barbarian girl, who we found lost and filthy and heavily pregnant has given birth.” Darmug, his secret representative in Magnar, functioning as the foremost scholar and scribe in the city, seemed to be proud of his philanthropy.
“Do I fund you to take in strays? Bring the children here at once.”
“Err, yes Lord,” he left quickly, returning minutes later with the midwife in tow carrying the bairns.
“Don’t ‘urt ‘em, Milord, they’s just innocent babes,” she was weeping and Thacritus could hear a wailing in the distance. The mother no doubt.
“I’m not going to hurt babies, are you mad?” He peered over at them, fascinated. He couldn’t remember seeing a child at this distance before. One of them had a dark fuzz on its head and the other’s hair had a reddish hue. The prophecy? Or mere coincidence? “Are they both females?” He knew the difference between males and females, certainly, but was probably the oldest virgin in existence. The thought of having physical relations with a woman terrified him.
“Yes, Lord,” she nodded, making no gesture to confirm that fact, but he was satisfied.
“Keep them safe. Both of you, they are important! Ensure the mother is cared for well, she might be important. And the father, ensure he is here when next I come.”
He was gone, shocking the midwife and even Darmug was nonplussed by Thacritus’s sudden appearances and disappearances.
There was no father that Reba could name. She invented some ridiculous story about giants in the mountains, but this was either a lie or delirium. She died when the children were nine years old and Thacritus immediately took them to the Gardens of the Mother in Fallset. A secretive school within the grounds of the Temple of Ain-Ordra, it produced many priests and priestesses devoted to the Dark Goddess’s works. The two girls, Finulia and Runild, took to their studies with gusto, raised as they were in the arms of the Ordran Church. Runild, the more vicious of the two by far, decided that growing up to be a priestess wasn’t her calling and gave herself over to the discipline of Tumar and learned the arts of the Shadow Assassin at the feet of Mistress Surakoita the Faceless.
In time the girls left Fallset to take up their respective positions. Finulia as leader of the Amaranth chapter of the slowly burgeoning cult, Runild as the Head Librarian in Magnar.
To her credit, life as a double agent didn’t worry Runild one bit. She did the bidding of Thacritus to the best of her abilities and he had no idea she also took instruction from Surakoita. If the truth be known, her own agenda was rather basic; become as influential as possible and eventually supplant the priesthood of Ain-Ordra with Shadow Assassins. There were other factions that revered the Dark Goddess, but they were the most powerful of them all. At this time, as was true throughout all history, the priesthood was unassailable in their position of power and Runild felt Surakoita lacked ambition as well as a face, not understanding her teacher’s goals at all. If she had to supplant her before making her play for supremacy she would. Her true loyalty lay firmly with herself and herself only.
Runild had all the physical skill that one could imagine. An incredible knife fighter, gifted in the arts of unarmed killing, adept at using Tumar to blind and terrify; she was a seductress and murderer. Two things she lacked entirely were a conscience and self-awareness. Surakoita knew well her pupil’s ambitions and Thacritus didn’t trust her one bit. The web of deceit and intrigue that connected them all was complex. Runild with her personal lust for power, Thacritus with the same but his desire included mastery of other realms and Surakoita who wanted to destroy all religion, save her own, or so she claimed.
The Temple of Ain-Ordra in Fallset was almost its own city within a city, if Fallset could really be termed a city. It was more of a collection of different temples in relative close proximity to each other. A loose confederation of religious sects held the area and each supplied guards in the only collaborative effort any of them made. Founded after the Sundering by renegade worshipers and grew over the centuries from there. There were no maps extant of the city, most of it being secret and it was safe to say that none had seen its entirety. Only a very few could ever have claimed realistically to have visited more than one section.
Fallset could be reached by a road that began before the Great Caravanway thrust north through the Tarkan Mountains. The road ran east into what seemed to be impassable mountains, but ran smoothly through valleys and gullies for a good day and a half before opening up into a vast area, originally uninhabited. It was rumored that survivors, stragglers and deserters from the time of the Sundering hid here from the wrath of the Gods or from their people. Unable to seek succor from their own people, these renegade Aelvar and Talvar made their own peace and created their own mystery school. They brought in workmen, funded by an unknown source, to build a keep on an island lake. Over the next few decades a trickle of religious refugees made their way here, protected from mass invasion by the difficulty of reaching the area and lack of interest from local warlords. Over the centuries, slowly and surely, Fallset developed into its current state. Many religions were represented here. Noor, Ain-Ordra, Kehenre to name but three and the original island tower still stood but undisturbed and cursed, its inhabitants likely long dead, but none dared or were interested enough to make the journey. There was no way to access the tower, the bridge crumbled away and the water infested with some kind of aquatic beasts, which further reduced its appeal.
At sometime in its history, Fallset had acquired a guardian. Traffic to and from the city was minor as it became self-sufficient. Followers of Noor desired solitude and non-interference so were happy here. Cultists who followed Ain-Ordra were welcome nowhere else and the worshipers of Kehenre were a mystery. Their supplied guards were Deniers of Kurhu and none could determine whether they were hired or members of the religion. None would ask. Even Ain-Ordra’s people were uncomfortable even thinking about harming a Denier, such was their fearsome reputation. The guardian was enough of a deterrent for anyone that had heard of it, but many had not. And even amongst those who had heard of it, seen it and experienced it, there was a mortal loathing of traveling to Fallset.
Runild was supremely indifferent to the guardian. It didn’t seem deadly and admittedly it was terrifying but then again, the Necropolis of Ain-Ordra was terrifying, as was the Faceless One. Fear made her angry and determined. It did not make her want to flee.
She rounded an outcropping, on foot, she despised horses, and stopped suddenly. There it was. Her face twisted with disgust almost instinctively.
Runild was an extremely attractive female, on the outside. Her hair was a rich brown color, the same hue as her large round eyes. Her complexion pale and skin, soft and warm. She had a generously curved figure and wore clothes that accentuated her figure. Tight black leggings and a short blouse. She wasn’t a lunatic so wore a heavy cloak while traveling in the mountains, though she was able to open it up to reveal her shape to any men that approached her. She knew this was a mistake and it was something she should not do, but she found the attitude of men repulsive. How they thought she cared if they found her attractive, how they thought it was acceptable to talk to her though she was about her own business. She would normally brush away any attention but repeated attempts to dissuade her
from her current task would be met with an unhappy result for the would-be Lothario. Her favored ploy was to encourage some privacy and then distract the hapless idiot with her heaving bosom and then kick his balls into next week. If they just took their medicine she’d leave them to it, but some uttered threats and called her vile names. Those she left with one or more broken fingers to remind them of their place. She had an excellent memory and often amused herself by recalling the shocked and confused looks on their ugly fat faces. The Dark Elf was the best, he looked so hurt. Betrayed too. Hilarious.
She looked up into the sky. This was one battle even her considerable wiles would help her with.
There, floating, and it was difficult to say how high as the dimensions of the guardian were in some doubt, was an enormous thing, its nature unknown and its motivations a mystery. Translucent it was, shimmering softly in the air, the main of its body a constantly shifting, uneven, concave dome. Trailing from within it were numerous, dozens at least, tentacles, ranging in color from light blue to white. They flailed and wiggled like the intestines of an eviscerated goat and they made Runild feel sick.
It was rumored that if you were aggressive towards the guardian it would swoop down and engulf you in its revolting mass, slowly killing you over days, whilst you lay helpless in its grip. Runild, whilst normally extremely aggressive, felt that she could do without such a death and projected thoughts of friendliness and peace towards the hovering mass. There were also other stories, where it would drive men mad, for no reason, their bodies being found days, if not weeks, later, just lying on the path. Looks of horror and anguish burned into their dead visages.
Her mind was flooded with images. A dark place, dozens of creatures similar to the guardian, floating serenely past. Strange creatures, some of them like fishes, some like grotesque monsters from the Noorian holy book. Her nausea was increasing with every second. She forced herself to stay calm and to ride at a relaxed pace. She entered the Kehan and the images faded away.
