by Damien Lake
It was an astoundingly apt portrayal of the truth.
She hurried through the inclining passages, noticing the increase in activity since her departure. Green robes swarmed in greater numbers than before, but unlike before many were trimmed in red. Tension pervaded the ancient cavern network. She had no time to investigate since her orders demanded she report immediately upon her return.
Those orders were superceded when she entered the central cavern containing the temple on the far end. Without warning, a piercing shriek split the air, ear shattering in its volume. The pure crystal tone vibrated her bones…or at least she thought it did.
It was the alarm. An intruder had breached the defenses. Instructions were clear on what to do in such an event. Everyone immediately raced to confront the threat. The tone pinpointed the breach in the eastern tunnels.
Battle sounds echoed through the passages. They grew louder the closer Secunda raced. The woven mats disappeared underfoot when her running brought her into tunnels used less regularly, left undeveloped by the faithful. Though the tunnel floor remained relatively smooth, the walls and ceiling resumed their irregular stone shapes.
Shouts and the crackling of spells mixed with furious commands. She came to the entrance of a large cavern with robed figures filling the central floor. Around them, the walls supported numerous natural stone shields with fifteen-foot draperies hanging in pleated stone curtains. Flowstone dwarfing the men poured down the walls in frozen waterfalls of white and rusty-red. Delicate haystraws hung suspended overhead in a forest of several thousand stone needles.
This cavern also had many side-caves. Most opened far up on the walls, unsuitable for daily use. The intruder must have found a way in through one.
Mages in their red-trimmed robes yelled and cast spells, each holding a torch they’d had the foresight to grab while they ran into this unlit portion of the catacombs. She stayed inside the passageway and evaluated the situation. Archbishop Burch of the Red Robes directed another attack by calling for fire spells. Under his command, twenty mages unleashed their spells as one. Secunda located the target by the massive fire spell’s light a split moment before the attack found its mark.
High on the wall, in a smaller passage that emptied into thin air, stood a man. To judge from the bodies lying motionless on the cavern floor, distance did not hamper his offensive capability. As the fiery mass born of the combined spells streaked toward him, he stood firm in the opening, raising an arm clad in a red far deeper than the bloody trim on the mages’ robes. Indeed, he seemed clad in no other color. From his hair to his boots, he walked as a crimson shade.
The fire exploded in massive, billowing clouds. Glowing red mushrooms of flame laced with black lightning burst across the cavern’s upper reaches. An earth-shattering roar louder than the alarm shook the ground. Secunda was blown off her feet to the tunnel floor. A hurricane of burning wind howled through the passageway, nearly blistering her skin. She scrambled back to her feet. Had the Red Robes destroyed themselves in the blast?
Smoke clouded the cavern. Fragments of burning stone arced from the wall, trailing darker smoke streams behind them. Many fell on the Red Robes who’d been flattened by the concussion wave. They screamed when glowing rock burned their flesh. Others bent to help the wounded.
Through the ringing in her ears she heard Archbishop Burch still shouting and, as the smoke thinned by ventilating through the higher caves, she saw why. Incredibly, the intruder remained in his tunnel, unhurt, with nary a thread of his red garb torn. The massive blast had barely mussed his hair, though the dangling cave formations around his tunnel’s exit had shattered. He held his arm still outstretched, his palm forward. Smoke drifted from his fingers. Not so much as a scorch mark marred his glove.
Several acolytes bearing weapons ran into the cavern from different tunnels. Archbishop Burch shrieked to be heard over the noise. “The cave below him! Get in there! Find a way up! Find a way up!” They rushed forward. Secunda dashed into the cavern to aid the Red Robes who had not yet regained their feet. The nearest had been blasted down atop several sharp stone points, the stone breaking when he collapsed among them, injuring him further.
When the last acolyte entered the lower cave, new sounds of fighting erupted. Two fled, pursued by something hurtling from within. It was the head, left arm and tattered remains of an acid-green robe, severed diagonally from shoulder to the waist.
Secunda gaped at the meat thumping wetly to the stone floor. Something occupied the lower tunnel. It must posses otherworldly strength to have shredded a trained acolyte in the blink of an eye.
Burch frantically attempted to reorganize his mages when Cardinal Xenos arrived, accompanied by the rest of the Red Robes. They crowded the cavern as cardinal and intruder locked eyes.
The cardinal did not wait for the Red Robes to gather their strength, even though a combined attack would surely put an end to the intruder as well as the cavern’s entire eastern end. Instead he raised one hand to display his god-granted power before his followers.
An archbishop in the Red Robes herself, Secunda felt his power building. She grabbed the wounded man off the floor, tugging him over broken stone toward her passage with all the speed she could manage. When Cardinal Xenos released his spell, the entire cavern bucked and filled with blinding light.
Stone again tumbled from the roof. Several acolytes screamed in terror. When the ground stopped shaking, she looked at the wall where the intruder had perched. The hanging tunnels were there no longer; the wall had become a molten mass of slow, sliding molasses. Stone columns melted like candles. All who could move save the cardinal fled the choking smoke and gas.
Xenos noticed Secunda lying on the floor with the wounded Red Robe. He walked to her side. His calm expression masked the seething anger boiling in his eyes. “When did you return?”
She shook her head. It did nothing to clear the ringing. “A moment before all this. I heard the alarm.”
He nodded once and shortly demanded, “Follow me. Leave him for the others to look after.”
Cardinal Xenos walked placidly into the passage. After grabbing a passing Red Robe and transferring responsibility for the wounded man to her, Secunda quickly followed him through a series of passages to the personal quarters he occupied whenever in the catacombs.
She had been in them before, yet their strangeness struck her anew. They seemed to have been brought whole from the central palace. Carpets, wood paneling, bookshelves, desks, cabinets, even a fireplace. One would never know he stood in an underground cave when inside these chambers.
He sat in a large, overstuffed chair facing the hearth, offering her no invitation to sit as well. She stood slightly behind him, to one side.
“You failed.”
“Yes, your eminence.” Sweat formed on her brow, as it had not during the recent situation.
“Tell me the details.”
“Sixteen fell. Only two were human.”
“Such losses for a village of savages with no concept of the true use of their power?” The dim light shrouded his angular face, the fire reflecting in his narrow eyes making him look feral.
“Many of the defenders excelled in combat skills.”
“To damage your forces? They must have been skilled indeed.”
“Within hours of striking, the conquest was completed.”
The eyes narrowed further. “A successful conquest you claim?” A pause to allow consideration of her words, before, “Then tell me why the object of your mission still lies fallow in the forest of a foreign land.”
She reported in a monotone. “The wards around the reservoir were many generations old. The descendents have been maintaining them and adding their own, but the recent shields did not compare with the original casting. The two sorcerers, the wizard and the Red Robes you assigned to me combined their skill with my own. We were unable to breach after peeling away the surface layers. A thorough examination after we were rebuffed revealed it to be of sufficient strengt
h to withstand us all.”
“What was the give?”
“At the peek of our working, I’d estimate the resistance to still be over half. If it had been more, we might have collapsed the shield under continuous workings.”
“What of the shielding expert I sent with you?”
“He was one of the two who fell. Yet even with him, I doubt we could have triumphed. I suggest that only a full team of adepts would have a chance against such advanced shield energies.”
He sat in silence for long moments, causing her to wonder if she had overstepped. The sweat ran into her eyes. She dared not move. “Continue.”
“It was obvious we lacked the skill to break the wards on the reservoir. The holdings of the forest settlement were smashed and I deemed it safe from any outsiders that might discover it by chance.”
He continued gazing into the flames. Secunda could feel his displeasure growing. She rushed to demonstrate her planning, hoping to prove that any incompetence that had clouded the mission had not been hers.
“I made the sorcerers tag all the equipment before we attacked. They released the bonds before we left to ensure no evidence of our identities remained. Anything left behind was destroyed. We withdrew to the ship and returned.”
“To return in failure. Have you failed me completely, or were you able to carry out your secondary orders?” His displeasure had not abated in the least.
“We fulfilled our duty,” she assured him. “The king’s emissaries and their guards were all killed but for two. The two sorcerers and I altered their memories and stole a boat from a small village. I made sure they found their way to a hostel closing for the night and that they spoke to the owner. They told their story while I listened from outside. When they served their purpose, I broke their life energies so they died at his feet. He believes their death was from their wounds and is racing to the capitol at this moment to pass their information to the king.”
“Return to the court then. Wait for the story to break. I will give you a cover memory in case you are ever questioned in connection with this.”
Secunda doubted she would be alive to answer questions if Cardinal Xenos ever caught wind of impending inquiries. She forced those thoughts away. “I’m ready, your eminence.”
“Good.” Xenos raised a hand and suddenly the power was there, as easily as summoning a servant. Experiencing his god-power never failed to fill her with equal parts religious awe and excited fear.
Incorporeal fingers flipped through her mind, collecting every memory related to the incursion into the Rovasii Forest. Once gathered like a scribe’s notes, they were sunk deep below farthest reaches of her consciousness. A new set of notes were laid in their place. In moments, the process reached completion.
Though she could still remember what had happened, it would never pass her lips without permission from Xenos. Her questioners could interrogate her under the harshest truth spells or drugs or torture about her time during the last several months. All she could reveal would be the new fiction growing in her recollection.
A retreat to far away estates due to sudden illness. An altercation between the local tax officials and Brovian cattle merchants while she lived there. A series of storms blockading her and the estate servants in the manor for eightdays on end. The petty thief captured and hung from the nearby town walls.
And far more as well. The incredible level of detailed information within her new memories made Secunda’s legs wobble. It had been done with such casual ease! Her own workings in the minds of the emissary guards had been much less sophisticated and based on the actual events of their torture. Only the identity of their tormentors and a few other memories dealing with conversations, locations and times had needed to be altered. Implanting those simple changes within their minds had required assistance from two others.
If for any reason she ever doubted Xenos’ power, she need only recall this event.
“Go.”
“Yes, your eminence.” Secunda needed no urging to leave. Failing the cardinal usually resulted in severe punishments, at times ending with the priest or acolyte on the temple’s altar during the next service. When she reached the door a perverse urge made her turn back to ask a question, despite the risk involved in annoying Cardinal Xenos when he was already so perturbed.
“Who was that man in red?” Her mind screamed at her to open the door and leave his presence.
Xenos glanced up from his chair, face calm as ever though his eyes had not yet settled. He considered her before replying. “A pest. He has been hounding me, and will not escape next time. Now leave me.”
The last came in a low whisper. She fled into the organic stone catacombs before its quiet menace.
Chapter 13
After the first day’s marching, Marik’s body fell back into the rhythm of the road. He carried heavier equipment than the last time he had journeyed and often wondered how long he would have lasted had the winter’s exertions not increased his endurance and muscle.
The entire Ninth Squad strung across the road in no true organization. Line and file were unimportant within the band. Anyone suggesting they form up would likely have been stoned.
“My, the weather is warming up at last,” Dietrik said cheerily from beside him. “We finally won’t have to chip our mail apart in the mornings. I’m sure the man who invented it never considered having to wear it in the winter. You could freeze to death!”
“Now we can boil in our own sweat while the links blister our skin. Is that any better?”
“You have an excessively negative outlook on life. The heat is still months off yet.”
“Depends on what part of the kingdom you happen to be standing in.”
“That would only be a problem for consideration if we happened to be traveling northwest rather than south.”
“Walking in mail’s no picnic wherever you’re going. And where we’re going is straight to the one part of the kingdom suffering from drought and heat!” He adjusted his new helm. It covered the back and sides of his head while leaving the crown and face open. The chin strap was not adjusted quite right yet and he needed to fix it as soon as they stopped.
They were off to their first contract as members of the Crimson Kings. If they had expected an admission ceremony they would have been disappointed. Sergeant Fraser simply walked into their bunk area one afternoon and announced, “At least no one in here is getting bounced!”
He sent them with the Ninth’s other former D Classes to the records office for upgrading to C Class fighters. A clerk had made them fingerprint about a thousand documents, handed them each one of the small metal tags embossed with a red crown that all the full band members carried, and that had been it.
Shortly thereafter, Fraser announced the Ninth had received its marching orders and the contract’s location. “Two days until we set out! Be ready and packed with everything you need! Orientation is before we walk.”
Marik had decided against spending coin to purchase any equipment for himself from Sennet. Instead, he returned to the armory for a helm and a good pair of leather gloves that would provide a firm grip on the hilt without interfering with the others uses of his hands.
Dietrik chose a similar helm from the same chest, but declined further equipment. Instead, he spent the next day trying to convince Sennet to sell him the rapier set.
The weapons master’s feelings were stubborn on the issue. Loaning it to a band member was one thing. Selling it, and at the ridiculous price Dietrik proposed, was quite another. Marik enjoyed listening to the verbal battle between the two since neither budged an inch, both believing only they could fully appreciate the lethal work of art.
The rapier had never been intended for the caravan to Thoenar in the first place and keeping it in the band sat high on Sennet’s priority list. Dietrik’s assertions on the pointlessness of having a blade sit in the armory for years on end with no users fell on deaf ears.
It finally ended with Sennet’s decision to keep an
eye on Dietrik to see how he fared with it. Offers for a demonstration right there and then were short lived due to Sennet’s belief that anyone could look pretty with a sword outside a fight. He would watch to see if Dietrik used it the way it should be used, and cared for it the way it should be cared for.
When the sun broke on the morning they were to depart, Fraser and the other three sergeants called the men together on the Marching Grounds. Lieutenant Earnell stepped forth in his travel leathers to shout a brief description of their contract.
“It’s very simple,” he stated once the last man fixed his attention on the squad leader. His voice sounded aged, though lacked any nuance of weakness. “A small river flows through the lands of Barons Fielo and Dornory. Both water most of their fields from this river and both have suffered droughts for the last several years. Fielo’s to the north, and decided to dam the river and create a reservoir in a shallow network of canyons. Dornory, to the south, is our client. He needs the dam destroyed so the water reaches his fields. Fielo has his forces guarding it, numbering around four hundred men. We’ll join with Dornory’s three hundred, break the dam, and that will be that. Once it’s down, the contract’s over.”
The entire squad had been committed to the contract due to Dornory’s strong desire that the water flow again as soon as possible. This also accounted for their early departure, with an eightday and a half remaining before spring’s official first day. The Ninth deployed first of all the squads from Kingshome this year.
Their baronies were about twelve days away on foot to the southwest if they could maintain a steady pace on the roads. The journey might require a full two eightdays if they needed to skirt around Fielo’s lands to reach Dornory’s.
Dietrik spoke. “You’re in a surly mood today! I would have thought you’d be cheerful owing to our acceptance as band members.”
