The King of the Fallen

by David Dalglish

  “I’d say ‘never change,’ Har, but you’ve actually changed a lot since we first met.” She squeezed his hand.

  “For the better, I hope?”

  She stood on her tip-toes so she might kiss his lips. When she finally pulled back, she stared up with those walnut-colored eyes of hers that were, in Harruq’s modest opinion, the most beautiful sight in all creation.

  “I wouldn’t still be with you if it wasn’t.” She flicked a hand behind her back, opening up a blue portal into the forest air. “Are you ready to go home?”

  “Home,” he said, and gave a crooked smile. “Gods, yes, I’m ready.”

  Epilogue

  Young Mathis knelt behind the crate, his hands over his nose to block the stink of fish from the surrounding docks. He peered around the crate’s edge, trying to catch sight of the enormous trade ship that harbored several docks over. The entire city of Angkar was abuzz with the news, so much that Mathis had to see if he could spot the newcomers.

  “Whatcha’ doin’?”

  Mathis jumped as if caught with his hand down his pants. He angrily spun to face the newcomer, then calmed upon seeing it was only a rather pretty girl a few years older than him. Her hair was dirty blond and cut short at the ears, and she wore dark gray trousers and a pretty blue shirt of a style that Mathis didn’t quite recognize. Her eyes were such a deep brown that they almost faded into the black of her pupils.

  “Didn’t you hear?” he said, choking down his initial frustration and hoping she wouldn’t notice how he’d been staring. “Boats from Angelport arrived, the first in years!”

  The girl knelt beside him, her shoulder brushing his as she peered around the barrel. He couldn’t decide if she were teasing him or not, and that made him feel all the more awkward.

  “Is that so?” she asked. “What’s so special about Angelport?”

  “Are you stupid?” he asked. Mathis didn’t know much in his nine years of life, but he sure knew more than this older girl. “No one has sailed here from Angelport because the orcs have been holding Angelport under siege for like...ever. It’s the only place that’s somehow survived in the east.”

  “That sure sounds impressive,” the girl said. “Do you know how they do it?”

  “I heard it’s with dark magic.”

  “Dark magic?” she asked incredulously.

  “Yeah, dark magic. How else do you think they lived so long as they have? They sacrifice their babies, that’s what my friend Willa says.”

  Willa was one year Mathis’s junior, and had never been outside the walls of Angkar, but his father was a sailor and that made the claim seem trustworthy enough to him. This strange girl, however, was far from convinced.

  “No, I don’t think that’s it,” she said. “It’s a lot simpler than that. A lot of hard fighting, and a lot of dead soldiers who deserved better. Now shush. Look. There they are.”

  Mathis knew men and women had disembarked from the giant boat all throughout the day, but he assumed something was special about this group. A squad of four men armed with swords escorted the man and woman down the gangplank. They were distant, so Mathis could see only a bit of them, but what he noticed immediately was how the young man’s fancy blue coat ended at the elbow for his right arm.

  “That’s Nathaniel Gemcroft,” he said, proud of his knowledge. He’d picked the name up from various conversations he’d been eavesdropping on all morning. “He used to be rich, and like, super rich, but now he isn’t anymore. I bet he’s come here to beg for money. Rich people don’t like it when they’re not rich anymore.”

  “You’re right about that,” the girl said. The way she stared at the distant couple made Mathis feel uncomfortable. This girl, she only seemed maybe two years old than him, three at most. Yet her focus reminded him of an adult. Too calm. Too sad. “But do you know of the woman with him?”

  Her clothes were expensive, that much he could tell. Her dress was a vibrant purple mixed with some sort of white silk wrap. Most her face was hidden underneath a wide-brimmed white hat meant to block out the sun.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But I bet she’s important.”

  “Oh, very important. Don’t you know? I thought you were smart and knew everything.”

  His neck flushed. So she was making fun of him.

  “Stop being mean,” he said with a frown. “I didn’t do nothing to you.”

  The girl dipped her head in a bow that was strangely formal.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I’ll make it up to you, how about that? I know that woman. Her name is Zusa Gemcroft. Have you heard of her?”

  The name was less common among the rumors, but not unknown.

  “Um, a family friend, I think,” he said. “Someone real important to Alyssa Gemcroft before she died.”

  The girl slowly nodded, and yet again it felt like she was suddenly sizing Mathis up.

  “Close, but not quite. Zusa was her lover, Mathis, and her appointed godmother for Nathaniel.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked, her matter-of-fact statement making him blush. Just who was this girl? At first he thought her mocking him, or at the least just having fun, but there was an aura about her that was distinctly dark and serious. It triggered his instinct to run away, even as her beauty drew him in. Their eyes met, and he again realized he was staring. He quickly looked to the ground, hoping she wouldn’t notice. Only then did he see the twin pair of daggers hanging comfortably from her belt.

  “There you are,” said a new voice.

  Mathis looked up, and he nearly shit his britches. The woman named Zusa, she was there, right there, along with her escort of soldiers. Nathaniel was by her side, and he looked even more like a young prince up close, what with his fancy clothes and ornate rapier strapped to his thigh.

  “You shouldn’t be running off on your own,” Nathaniel said. “You’ll make us worry.”

  “Make you worry,” the girl said, grinning. “I think my mother would call it ‘good practice’.”

  “I’d still prefer some warning before you vanish into a foreign city,” Zusa said. She glanced Mathis’s way, and one of her dark eyebrows crooked upward. “Have you made a friend?”

  Mathis immediately wanted to deny even knowing her, but the girl just smiled sweetly and put her hand on his sleeveless shoulder. Her fingers felt like fire to his skin.

  “Just a boy with ears listening everywhere he shouldn’t be,” she said, and apparently that was good enough for Zusa.

  One of the soldiers quietly whispered something to Nathaniel, who nodded when the man finished.

  “I thought so,” he said, turning to Zusa. “Our home is ready, but not without incident. It seems the guilds here are already making sure we feel...welcome.”

  The smile that crossed Zusa’s face was colder than the ocean in the deep of winter.

  “To be expected,” she said, and turned to the girl beside Mathis. “Come home before dark. I’d like us both to have at least one worry-free night of sleep before you resume your training.”

  The squad left the docks for the city proper of Angkar. Mathis watched them go, his mind struggling to piece together everything that just happened. Home? This girl with him, did she…did she live with the Gemcrofts?

  “I should be going,” she said, and she blew Mathis a kiss. “I’ll see you around.”

  “But, um, where will you be staying?” he asked.

  “My mother bought us a mansion,” she said. “I’m sure you’ve heard, what with all that eavesdropping you’ve been doing. Come knocking. Maybe we can play sometime.”

  Mansion? Come knocking? What was this absolute nonsense? Mathis’s father was a fisherman. He shared a home with two other families, for they could afford no better. The idea of playing in a mansion, and enjoying oneself among that level of wealth, was so beyond his understanding it frightened him with the mere attempt to imagine it.

  “Wait,” he called. His feet weighed a
thousand stone. His tongue was lead in his mouth. “Who...um, what’s your name? You never introduced yourself!”

  She gave him a sweet smile eerily similar to her mother’s, and it was equally cold.

  “Erin,” she said.

  “Erin Gemcroft?” he asked. Did that mean she was related to Nathaniel? An unheard-of sister?

  “No, not Gemcroft,” she said. Her hands fell to the daggers at her sides as she calmly walked into the crowd, and she called out over her shoulder, “Erin Felhorn.”

  A Note from the Author

  Five years. It’s been five years since I wrote one of these end notes for a Half-Orc novel. I don’t know how to truly convey the difficulty in returning to a world after such a long gap (though hopefully you didn’t notice that while reading it, or I performed my job poorly). I’m a lot better about taking notes and outlining storylines now, but it’s a fairly recent change for me. For this book, I had nothing but what lingered in my head for where I ‘thought’ the story was going. So when I came back, finally ready to get this story put to paper, I decided to toss everything out the window. I re-read the Prison of Angels and King of the Vile, and decided to let the story go where it wanted to go.

  And it so very much did not go where I originally intended it to go all those years ago.

  Before I ramble more, I do want to thank everyone who has patiently—or even semi-patiently—waited for me to get back to this series. I may joke about “when’s the next Half-Orcs” on Twitter or Facebook, but I assure you, I do understand how blessed I am to have so many eager to return to this world I created and the characters who inhabit it. I’ve written a lot of different series at this point, what with the Half-Orcs, Shadowdance, the Paladins, and Breaking World. I’ve also steadily branched out beyond my world of Dezrel (the Seraphim Trilogy, and now recently the Keepers Trilogy). But the Half-Orcs has always been special. It’s dear to me in a way none of the others are, because the characters themselves are closer to me than any that populate my other set of books are, and perhaps will be for the rest of my life.

  If you’ll permit me a moment to demonstrate, be it in a fairly grim manner.

  Before I tell this story, let me assure you Alyssa is fine and healthy. Got that? No panicking, ok? But two years ago, my two-year-old daughter Alyssa snuck outside into the backyard. A plastic truck of hers was floating in the pool, and she tried to grab it. She fell in. We don’t know how long. What I do know is my wife was in the kitchen, I heard her scream, and I ran from the living room to the backyard.

  There I saw my baby girl floating face-down in the pool. I screamed. I jumped in and lifted her out of the water. What you read in this novel, in that memory of Harruq, at this point I don’t know which is based on Cost of Betrayal, and which was my own life. Her eyes were open and glassy. Her lips were blue. She wasn’t breathing. While my wife called 911, I performed mouth-to-mouth while standing knee-deep in water, all while convinced I was wasting my time. She wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t breathing. She wouldn’t start breathing, not now, not ever. I still, to this day, remember my frantic pleading, to her, to God, to anyone listening, not to take my precious baby away. I could recite it word for word, if I wished, but I don’t. Not even here. Never again.

  While I sobbed and held Alyssa to my chest, quite literally a heartbeat after I decided to abandon continuing mouth-to-mouth, she took a breath.

  As I said, she’s fine now. Healthy, no permanent damage whatsoever (the same can’t be said for the psyches of her parents, though…). Every single second of that incident is permanently burned into my memory. And readers, something sticks out. In that moment, that godawful horrendous span of a minute that is the worst of my entire life, I remember the first thought I had when I saw her floating in the pool.

  Just like Aullienna.

  I don’t know how to explain how fucking ridiculous it is to think something like that, in a frozen moment of horror so awful it didn’t even seem real. But Harruq is me. There’s no separating that, not if I want to be honest with myself. Not with how raw and charged this whole series is, and how young I was at the time of writing those early Half-Orc novels. To say they’re real, even if only to me, doesn’t quite convey how personal and dear those stories and characters are. So as you finish this novel, I hope you understand that no decision was made carelessly or without emotion.

  Younger me enjoyed killing characters with a vicious glee. That’ll make the readers cry. That’ll shock them and show how fearless I am! That ain’t me, not anymore, and certainly not with this Half-Orc series that has grown so personal. Hell, one of the earliest stories I ever wrote was in high school, featuring Lathaar meeting Mira. If you go by that metric, I have known Lathaar for over eighteen years. Yet no matter how precious, how dear, I knew it was time to say goodbye to a lot of these characters, and I did it in ways that I hope honored them, or at the very least, broke a few hearts.

  Rereading HO6 and HO7 years later had me asking questions. They are the questions some of the characters themselves voiced. Reasons for decisions, questions over the limitations of the gods, what the purpose of Karak, Ashhur, and Celestia even serve for Dezrel. Some I had seeded years and years ago, such as with the fall of the angels when Azariah proudly proclaims he will conquer Dezrel with Ashhur’s grace not a day after setting foot upon the land. Some, though, particularly with Jessilynn, came unplanned. Unwilling. I have done my best to honor those as well, and let someone like Darius speak the needed truth when necessary.

  So I guess now we reach the end, and the arrival of a storyline that’s been lingering since…hell, 2015? What happened to Zusa/Alyssa/Haern’s Kid is easily the most common question I get. I plan on answering that, in HO9. I make no promises when, not after dropping the ball so thoroughly between HO7 and HO8. I hope to write it soon, but that is all I feel confident in saying anymore. Soon. Eventually. I have one last novel in store. One last part of Dezrel that I need to reckon with, and it’s the legacy of the Watcher.

  That’s the new title, by the way. The Legacy of the Watcher.

  See you then, dear readers.

  David Dalglish

  August 3rd, 2020