Sighing with resignation, Malrich set his pack on his shoulder and checked the edge of his own blade. “Lead on, Emethius. I will follow you as close to that wretched tower as my nerves will take me.”
Malrich hid behind an outcrop of rock a hundred paces from the tower. Emethius bid him farewell and with a boldness that Malrich did not possess, he walked out across the open expanse and approached the tower. If the Cul inside the tower noticed him, they made no sign.
Reaching the front gate, Emethius knelt and prayed to the gods in a loud and clear voice. “Oh, gods of Calaban, hear my prayer! Make my body an extension of your grace. Bless these arrows so that their path will be swift and true. Please, gods, make me an agent of your mercy. Hear my prayer, gods, and give me the strength to do what must be done.” He rose back to his feet, crossing his throat and heart in the gesture of the faithful.
Malrich wanted to look away, to not see what was going to happen next, but he felt a responsibility to bear witness.
Emethius cupped his hands around his mouth and called up to the black tower. “Soldiers of the Dunie, hear me. I am Emethius of the Merridia. I haven’t the strength in arms to save you or to redress this wrong, but I have the power to end your torment.”
Chains rattled and lamenting voices drifted down from above. Emethius set about his dreadful task with grim determination. He fired his bow seven times, and seven times his arrow found the center of his target’s chest. Each of the Dunie passed from this world without a cry. Had Malrich been a man of faith, he would have sworn the winged gods of Calaban had flown down and carried the arrows themselves, so true was Emethius’s aim. The chains that held the victims in place ceased their incessant chime. The moaning cries of anguish were replaced by the howl of the eastern wind.
“Mercy,” whispered Malrich.
With the task done, Emethius dropped the yew bow to the ground, regarding it like a venomous snake. He was shaking from head to foot, and Malrich was certain Emethius was going to collapse. Instead, Emethius drew his sword and approached the tower’s gate.
“Don’t do it!” managed Malrich.
But Emethius wasn’t listening. Like a man possessed, he reared back and brought his sword full force into the face of the tower’s iron gate. It rang like the gong of a bell.
“No!” pleaded Malrich. “The deed is done, Emethius. Walk away! You’ll summon our doom!”
Again Emethius struck the gate. The shrill sound of reverberating metal rent the air. He screamed into the morning sky. “I am Emethius, a captain of the High Lord’s Second Legion. I demand this gate be unbarred!”
“Stop being a fool,” hissed Malrich from his hiding spot. “Let’s get away from here while we still can.”
Emethius slammed on the gate with the butt end of his sword. “Shadow spawn have no right to enter the realm of the living. Open this gate and face me.” Emethius kept at it undeterred, striking the gate and repeating his challenge. When his voice grew hoarse, he cupped his hands about his mouth and called up to the lowest balcony. “Are you Cul such cowards that you need always to hide in the Shadow? Can you only find comfort in the dark? Come, walk into the light and see the face of your enemy.”
By this point in time, Malrich assumed Emethius’s challenge would go unanswered. But then there was a low creak and a clang, and the balcony door swung wide.
“The gods protect us,” muttered Malrich, the prayer involuntarily passing from his lips. He frantically drew his sword and held it at the ready, wondering what he should do. His fingers were shaking so badly he could hardly grip his sword.
A low cackle wafted down from the open door, sounding somewhere between a laugh and a roar. A grotesque figure appeared at the balcony’s railing, haggard, with rangy limbs and a squat torso. Tattered cloth the color of rust tightly enshrouded the figure’s bony frame. No flesh was exposed, not even the eyes. Over this, the Cul wore the breastplate of a Dunie soldier. Cryptic letters were painted on the blemished armor with dried blood.
Somehow, Emethius was undeterred by the terrifying sight. He pointed his sword with menace and called out a challenge. “See me well, scourge of the West, and heed my warning,” hissed Emethius, his voice wavering only ever so slightly. “Your kind will see an end before my days are through. Remember my name and my words. You will own neither the night nor the day, and all your kin will know what it’s like to be hunted. Not even in the darkest depths of the earth will you find refuge. I am Emethius Lunen, and I will avenge the fallen.”
The Cul turned its head, and although its eyes were concealed behind a shroud, Malrich sensed they were set directly upon Emethius. Neither flinched, and at first it seemed this contest of will might go on forever. But then Emethius began to tremble, and although it was barely perceptible to the eye, it was enough. The Cul nodded, a slow, menacing, triumphant nod, and then turned, walking away from the balcony’s railing and out of sight.
Emethius spit at the departing figure and turned his back on the tower. He managed only a few steps before he stumbled, his knees buckling, as one over encumbered. Malrich’s sense of duty overpowered his fear and he rushed forward, catching Emethius’s fall.
Emethius was shaking so hard he could hardly hold his sword. Malrich collected Emethius’s blade from his shaking hand and returned it to its sheath, then he led Emethius away from the blighted tower.
“I may have made a mistake,” Emethius admitted, his voice hardly audible.
Malrich didn’t know how to reply. The Cul were no longer the demons of nightmares; he had now seen them in the flesh. The sinister image was difficult to shake. Malrich struggled to hold it together, knowing that Emethius needed him now more than ever. He took the lead without further hesitation, guiding Emethius away from the Tower of Interlead with all the speed he could muster.
Emethius walked quietly beside him, passing over the land with a short shuffling gait. His skin was pale and his brow furrowed. For the rest of the morning he did not say another word.
The sun passed its apex.
The path was different than the one they had traversed the day before. Atimir’s grand road ended at Interleads, and they now traveled along a meandering trail that cut north beneath the face of mountain cliffs. The land was dead, and neither the call of birds nor the chirp of insects was heard. The trees had given way to a low thorny brush that hung desperately to the rock face.
“It’s like the land knows,” whispered Emethius, finally breaking his silence. “It recognizes the evil that lives within its borders.”
“That’s what we saw, was it not?” said Malrich. “I heard a rumor once that the Cul wrapped themselves in the clothes of their victims because they had no shape themselves. I thought it was a joke, but now I’m not so sure. They’re the Shadow embodied. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“You needn’t use other words,” answered Emethius.
“I spent a long time thinking about the poor souls lashed to that tower last night,” said Malrich. “Throughout the ages, people have done vile things to serve as a warning to those who might cross them, yet the Cul know the Dunie will not be returning to Interleads anytime soon. Those poor Dunie soldiers weren’t hung from the face of that tower as a warning. They were placed there because it gave the Cul some depraved pleasure.”
“It’s as if the Cul are afflicted with the Blackheart,” said Emethius.
Malrich thought of his wife, a woman he had loved with all his heart. Then he considered the shell that now remained and the unspeakable sin she had committed once she became afflicted with the Blackheart. She had more in common with the Cul than he would like to admit.
“I shouldn’t have challenged them,” said Emethius solemnly. “They will not let my actions go without retaliation. I fear now more than ever that we will have to face the Cul before this is through. Yet if they can undo an entire Dunie legion, what challenge can we present?”
“No, don’t doubt your choice,” said Malrich, realizing that he meant it. “The
Cul had to be challenged, they had to be reminded that day ever follows night, or so the saying goes, and that the sun is always shining on the far side of darkness. The Cul are not immortal — the blood surrounding the Dunie fortifications would attest to that. They should fear us as much as we fear them, for we walk in the light.”
Emethius seemed to take some comfort in that thought. “What can bleed can be killed,” said Emethius. A hint of self-assurance reentered his voice. “And what lives in the shadow can be driven into the light.” Emethius stopped in the middle of the path and drew his sword, pointing it east toward the monolith of Calaban, which stood hundreds of leagues beyond the horizon. “I vow that before my days are through my sword will be flush with the blood of the Cul.”
“A worthy vow,” said Malrich. “Now, let’s hurry from here, otherwise you might be making good on that promise before the night is through.”
• • •
After a long and arduous day of ascending switchbacks and skirting along paths that were not much wider than Malrich’s shoulders, the shadows began to lengthen across the trail. Night was fast approaching and they needed to find cover fast.
“Not a lot of options on where to hide for the night,” said Malrich, reporting the obvious. They were hiking along a narrow path that skirted the edge of a deep canyon; they had two options — press on and risk being caught in the open after dusk or climb down the cliff face and risk falling.
“There’s a ledge,” said Emethius, pointing out a sliver of rock that jutted from the cliff face some twenty fathoms beneath the trail. The spot would be nearly invisible in the darkness of the night, but it would be a harrowing climb.
The deep-throated cackle of a Cul sealed their decision.
With searching fingers and toes, they found cracks and crevices in the cliff face and carefully lowered themselves down. The ledge was even smaller than it appeared from above; there was scarcely enough room for them both.
With his feet dangling over the edge, Malrich pulled out a hunk of cheese the Dunie garrison master had been generous enough to part with. “It would be best if we got some food in our stomachs before the Cul begin their hunt. We’ll have to stay as stiff as stones tonight if we hope to go unnoticed.” He offered a slice to Emethius. Emethius shook his head — his attention was set elsewhere.
In the dying embers of the sun, Malrich spied Emethius using his dagger to score fresh lines into the vambrace he wore on his left forearm.
“You don’t need to do that, Emethius.”
Emethius kept at his grim memorial. “All I’ve ever wanted was to help people, Mal. My mother, Prince Meriatis, those Dunie. What other purpose does a man have, than to leave the world a better place? But the older I get, the more damage I seem to have done in this world.”
“Hash marks on a piece of armor don’t tell the full story,” said Malrich. “They are a blunt reminder, nothing more. They do not reveal the nuance of each decision. They say nothing about justice, or morality, or compassion. They are simply a line.”
“Was it just for me to kill my own father?” asked Emethius, pointing to the first line.
“There’s no blame for that. He was sick with the Blackheart.”
“He was sick,” Emethius agreed, but there was something about the way he said those words that Malrich found unsettling.
The story of Lithius Lunen’s demise was well known amongst the Henna Lu community. There was an entire industry of dwarven men and women authorized by the Court of Bariil to send victims of the Blackheart into the netherworld, headsmen for the poor, alchemists for those willing to spend a bit of gold. Emethius had taken the responsibility onto himself. Few would have made the same choice.
“My father always was an abusive drunken sot,” said Emethius, still looking down at his vambrace. “But things only got worse after I went away for school. Without me there to take the brunt of it, my father took his rage out on my mother. She still bears the scars of his final assault. I did what needed to be done. I thought I was saving her, but I might have ruined her instead.”
Emethius held up his vambrace, revealing the ten grooves etched into the hard leather. “Each represents a choice I can never take back. Each represents a chain of consequences that are now beyond my control.” He pointed out each hash mark in turn. “My father, Perin, and Quintus, plus these seven helpless Dunie at Interleads.”
“Death can be a mercy.”
“What I did at Interleads was mercy,” Emethius agreed. “And the deaths of Perin and Quintus were ill chance. My father’s execution was a perverse form of justice, or so some might say.” He sighed, looking genuinely exhausted. “If I can save Meriatis there will be one less soul weighing on my conscience. Honestly, if I have to add one more line to this tally it just might break me. I think I’d rather die.” Emethius’s hands were trembling.
Malrich held Emethius’s hands until the tremors subsided, then he pulled a blanket over his friend’s frame. “Get some sleep, Emethius. I’ll take the first watch.”
Emethius was soon asleep. Malrich kept at the watch for the better part of the night, lost in his own thoughts. Every soldier carried with them a number. Some men were lucky, and were held in the reserve, thus avoiding the thick of battle and the necessity to kill. Others fired arrows and could distance themselves from the harm they inflicted upon their enemies. As a cavalry man, Malrich had always been in the thick of things; each broken lance and hewing stroke remained seared in his memory. Eight was the number Malrich knew for certain. He had grievously injured several more, but he did not know if the men lived or died. During the war a stiff drink had been sufficient to crush any semblance of guilt. But what did he feel now?
Nothing, he finally surmised. I feel nothing at all. How could he ever hope to be a good man if he didn’t feel guilty over taking someone else’s life? He looked at Emethius, who was grimacing in his sleep. We’re opposite sides of the same coin, thought Malrich.
The sun dipped below the horizon and the Cul took to the mountain pass. A fire raged on the far side of the valley, and drums tolled away to the north. Throughout the night, Malrich could hear the pad of feet running up and down the trail, and around midnight, a great procession of torch bearers, several hundred in number, marched toward Interleads, crying and cackling as they went. Malrich trembled as he watched them go, the sight reminding him of a fire wyrm weaving its way through the mountain.
• • •
The sun broke the eastern horizon and the cackling ceased. Shivering against the morning frost, Emethius and Malrich clambered back to the path and resumed their journey north. The trail took them deeper and deeper into the valley. The snow-capped peaks were now behind them.
We’ve passed the high point of the mountain, Malrich realized, eyeing the peaks that now soared to their backs. They would soon come to the Stygian Mines, and beyond that, the Great Northern Ador.
It was midday when they arrived to the southern entrance of the mine complex. The Dawning Gate loomed before them, blocking the path. It was one of two massive gates that guarded access to the valley. Moored into the rock face of two adjacent cliffs, the bronze gate rose fifty feet into the air. It was studded with hundreds of sconces, and the spent wax of countless candles cascaded down its face like a frozen waterfall.
Malrich looked upon the gate in awe. “It must have glowed like a wall of flames at night.”
“Aye,” said Emethius. “Until the light was extinguished and the Shadow took it. Look here.”
The indomitable Dawning Gate, built to guard the last bastion of civilization in the west, stood ajar. Blood painted the ground at its base, but there were neither bodies nor discarded blades to show any other sign of struggle. Malrich shuddered as he considered what the Cul might have done with the dead. They passed through the narrow opening and entered the mine.
The Stygian Mines encompassed a wide bowl-shaped valley. Black holes riddled the cliff face and valley floor, giving Malrich the impression they had just entered
a mole colony. Some of the chasms were small, barely large enough to allow a single person to crawl through at a time, while others were massive; a dozen men marching abreast could enter and still have room. Large mounds of earth, built from the discarded detritus of the mines, lay all about the valley. The road wove through them, branching off like the threads of a spiderweb. Atop the largest hill lay the scorched remains of the mining town. They gave the ruined settlement a wide berth and veered west.
Emethius and Malrich ducked and weaved as they went, trying to pass through the mines without notice. The entire encampment had been fouled by mud and stagnant pools of water. Malrich guessed the waterworks had been undammed by the Cul, and they soon found themselves trudging through ankle deep mud. So much for not leaving a trail for our pursuers to follow.
They had walked halfway through the compound when a cry rent the air. Malrich froze midstride, the cry ripping through his nerves like a razor blade. He spun about, trying to pinpoint the origin of the sound. In the silence of the deserted mine the cry was ear-splitting, although in reality it was probably no louder than a whimper.
Emethius shot up his finger, signaling for silence. He motioned for Malrich to duck down. Crouched low in the midst of the mire they waited and listened.
“I see you,” moaned the voice.
Malrich threw his hands over his mouth, silencing an audible gasp.
“They’re gone now, all of them. Quickly, come and help.” There was a clank of chains. “To your right, to your right, look!”
Thirty paces to their right was a patchwork of small holes from which rose a reeking vapor. There was no way to tell where the victim’s voice was coming from.
Fractured Throne Box Set 1 Page 32
