There were men to see to and mysteries to solve; he didn’t have time to feel sorry for himself or to wish Chander had been a better mate. One who wasn’t afraid to commit and used those fears to lash out at him. Shoving that aside, Alaric scooped up the map the D’Vaire sentinels had drawn and headed out of his office. It didn’t take him long to wind his way to the starred area on his paper.
At first, he couldn’t see anything unusual, but then he saw the slightest ripple in the stones. He stepped back as far as he could and with his back pressed against the opposite wall, he observed the almost imperceptible wave. There was definitely something strange there. He walked toward it and pressed his palm to one dark block. It was softer than it should be. He pushed on it with his hand and it compressed. There wasn’t enough light to see what lay behind the barrier but he wasn’t deterred. Alaric continued to shove aside the obstruction and as he did, he saw it covered up a room.
It wasn’t like the other ones in the compound. There was no caged assassin. Instead, it appeared to be some kind of magical device. Alaric moved faster to investigate and before long, he could walk right up to it. The object was crystalline, and he could see a giant gray ball on one side and on the other a growing life. Sitting right in front of him was the machine which bound a new necromancer to a sentinel. This was the very thing that enslaved new sentinels the minute they were resurrected and tied existing men to new sorcerers.
Alaric’s mind whirled. His instincts were crying out for him to destroy it. He thought about the consequences. It wouldn’t do anything to break the existing bonds between his people and the ones they answered to, but it would prevent any new ones from being created. That would mean there would be no more sentinels resurrected. With no way to procreate, their numbers would never grow.
What did it matter that sentinels could be risen from the dead if they were meant only to live in a prison enslaved by heartless necromancers who cared nothing for them? With a roar, Alaric swept the damn thing off its pedestal and watched it fall to the floor. It shattered and dark light burst all around him. The gray ball evaporated into smoke, and all that remained of the device was slivers of crystal.
His grin was sardonic. It might take eighteen years before the next new necromancer tried to summon their sentinel and comprehended what he’d done, but he knew his people were finally on a road to freedom. It was a heady feeling and though he’d not been looking for this—had not even known it existed in such a tangible form—he was glad his clever men had found that rippled stone wall.
Buoyed by success, Alaric left the splintered pieces of the device lying on the ground like broken glass and sauntered out to see what else he could discover in the compound. He had the room numbers of the missing men memorized and finding them was his top priority. Following the map, he easily reached its end. If Gedeon’s prediction was correct, the assigned space for Eduard should be around here somewhere.
He scanned the walls with unblinking eyes, looking for more ripples and let out a shout when he saw one. Eagerly, he shoved his hand into the block. He collapsed three more before he saw a cell bar. Picking up his already frantic pace, he thrust aside everything in his path.
“Eduard?” he called out into the dark space.
“I am Eduard,” a hollow voice said. Alaric rammed the entire wall aside and was greeted by a cell hidden for centuries. The room was dusty and standing at attention was a sentinel dressed in gray with his daggers glowing at his sides. The clothes were baggy; Eduard was nothing more than a bone white skeleton. As Lich Sentinel, Alaric had been gifted with the ability to sense the bond between his men and their necromancers. Eduard had no such connection, and Alaric guessed his room had disappeared when his necromancer had died. As a sentinel with no humanity to speak of, Eduard hadn’t been reassigned.
“I’m Alaric,” he replied as he ripped open the door to Eduard’s cage. “Come with me.”
Eduard stepped out without a word and Alaric led him down to his office. Next to it, Alaric had created a bedroom for himself. He grabbed a piece of parchment and scribbled down a few words creating another one next to it for Eduard. This man would never be caged again.
“This is your new space,” Alaric announced as soon as the compound responded to his command.
Eduard’s skull bobbed down in the traditional sentinel nod. “Thank you, Alaric.”
“Do you remember your last necromancer?” Alaric asked, knowing the man didn’t have one assigned. Perhaps that’s why he’d been lost to time, the machine had never tied him to a new one once he became a skeleton.
“I remember my name. Little else.”
“Do you wish to have your memories, Eduard?” Alaric asked.
“If I have lived for more than sitting in a room, I wish to know of it.”
Alaric hesitated for no more than a second before returning to his office, with Eduard still on his heels. In brisk strokes of his pen, he ordered the compound to stop draining memory. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it earlier. There was a great deal he didn’t want to forget including the callous and cruel way Chander had treated him. He lifted the parchment and as it turned to smoke the entire building shuddered violently. Alaric and Eduard were forced to brace themselves on the desk. He smiled when he discovered it had worked. There was a freeness to his mind, and he knew the tugging of his thoughts had ceased.
“Come, Eduard, we have more of your brethren to find,” Alaric said. There were four more men missing, and he was damned if he’d let them languish behind stone walls any longer.
Chapter 44
“Chand, it’s good to see you,” Conley said as Chander walked into the office of the Reverent Knights.
“I hope you’re both doing well.”
“Better than you I imagine—your eyes are bloodshot,” Drystan observed. Since Alaric’s betrayal had come to light and Chander’s demon had broken free, he’d gone back to his books with the same dedication he had before he’d become ill. He rarely bothered to eat and slept only when his body demanded it. And still, his mind tortured him with that disgusting picture of Alaric with another man.
“Are you surprised?” Chander asked acidly.
“No, I can’t say I am although I should be. I don’t know why Alaric is allowing you to abuse yourself. You’ve got bags under all that redness,” Drystan remarked.
“He’s the reason I’m here actually, I need to have separation papers drawn up.”
“Is this a fucking joke?” Drystan asked. Chander looked at him but realized he was addressing his silent sentinels.
“No, we think he’s insane,” Baxter replied with a side-eyed glance at Chander.
“Come on, Alaric is crazy about you,” Conley argued. “If you’ve had a fight, you’ll work it out. Let’s not be hasty about legally separating you.”
“We didn’t have a fight,” Chander roared as he slammed his hand down on Drystan’s desk. “I want separation papers.”
“Fine,” Drystan groused though he looked far from happy about it. “I’ll assign a Juris Knight and they’ll be in touch. Anything else I can do for you Arch Lich?”
“I didn’t mean to yell,” Chander stated as he straightened up. “The last week hasn’t been an easy one and I want it to be over.”
“Okay, we’ll get it worked out,” Conley said in a gentle voice.
“Thank you.”
“We’re here if you need to talk,” Drystan added.
“Thanks.” Chander left their office and headed back to his own. It was a short walk and normally it would be spent chatting with the men behind him, but Baxter and Benton were angry with him. He understood their hurt, but he just couldn’t tell them about Alaric. It was too devastating. Chander didn’t even want to think about it, let alone discuss it. He wished only for closure and he hoped that would allow him to put this horrible chapter of his life behind him.
“Arch Lich,” Sigimund said as soon as Chander walked into the office.
Ignoring him, he asked Everg
reen for any messages. His assistant handed them over stone-faced. Another person in his life who refused to speak to him.
“Chander,” Sigimund called out when Chander strode past him.
“What?”
“We have several important matters to discuss. You’re avoiding the elder council.”
“Oh, you mean like you did to me when I was in the hospital and recovering from a heart attack that could have killed me?” Chander asked.
“We chose not to interfere with your healing process.”
“Bullshit, you were hoping I would drop dead so you could have the Order of Necromancia back in your greedy hands.”
“I don’t have to stand for this.”
“That’s right, you can leave any time you want,” Chander said. “I promise you that you won’t be missed.”
“Someday you’re going to regret that flippant attitude of yours.”
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Chander replied.
“You simply cannot continue to keep treating us with such contempt because things have failed between you and your mate.”
“You have no right to discuss my matebond,” Chander snapped. “You may have engineered things to steal my power, but you aren’t in charge of me.”
“Fate was obviously mistaken when she chose you to rule over the necromancers,” Sigimund countered.
“What’s the matter Sigimund? Still pissed it took you nearly five hundred years to get enough votes to get the title for yourself?” Chander asked.
“I did a far better job than you’ve ever done.”
“Right, because I care about your opinion.”
“I’m sure you have duties to attend to. Don’t let me keep you.”
“Literally everything I have to do today is more important than this conversation,” Chander retorted as he slammed his office door.
“I hate him,” he announced to his sentinels. Not surprisingly, they remained quiet. Chander yanked off his crown and tossed off his cloak. He had work to do and he was quickly discovering all people did was sink into him with hurtful claws. If he could find a way to avoid them altogether, he would go for it in an instant.
* * *
Alaric jotted down a few words onto a piece of parchment and heard stones grinding over each other in the distance. In the part of the compound that was being called Alaric’s wing by his group of dedicated sentinels, he’d just created a conference room so they could talk. He headed for it with six men on his heels. Four skeletons and the D’Vaire sentinels.
“Grab a seat,” he ordered as soon as they arrived. When they were settled, he gave a nod to Gavrael.
“We checked the entire area of this map,” Gavrael said as he put a piece of paper down on the table. “Nothing strange.”
Brynnius, Eduard, and Cassius reported the exact same thing.
“I found the section where Drexley’s room number should be, but I found no anomalies,” Ducarius stated.
“Is there a gap between the room before and the one after?” Alaric asked. They’d found all four skeletons behind walls; why couldn’t they find the other missing sentinel?
“Not that I could see,” Ducarius replied. “I would suggest we all investigate. I have been locked away for well beyond my memory. I don’t know how good my senses are.”
“I have trained with you these past few days,” Cassius responded. “Your skills have not atrophied.”
“Or you are as slow as me,” Ducarius countered.
“I’ve trained with all of you,” Alaric said. “Not one of you is inferior.”
“I love this new conference room,” Gedeon announced. “But I want to go see if we can find Drexley.”
“Let’s go,” Alaric ordered. They walked out and past all the new rooms he’d created to house the skeletons. They’d become incredible assets. Like Gavrael and Gedeon, they spent hours aiding Alaric. They hunted for answers to sentinel mysteries and visited the others to break up their monotony. Alaric knew he would never again be wandering this place alone—he had these men to assist him.
Using Ducarius’s map, they got to the area in question. It seemed normal enough. Then he heard Brynnius’s surprisingly gentle voice say, “I think there is something here.” He was just beyond the area Ducarius had been diagramming.
“Nicely done Brynn,” he said. “Let’s get to work.” They pushed aside stone and once they saw bars, worked faster.
“How is this possible?” he heard Gavrael ask.
Alaric looked into the now revealed room and knew why he’d uttered the question. The room was empty. It had only a cot and dust.
“Where the hell is he?” Gedeon demanded.
“I don’t know,” Alaric replied.
“How can a sentinel be lost inside the compound?” Cassius challenged.
“What if he’s not?” Brynnius asked. “What if he is with his necromancer?”
“I suppose he could be,” Alaric said. There was no way to know for sure since he still had no memory of Drexley’s time here. “When I can recall that time, perhaps we will solve this mystery.”
“What is that?” Cassius asked. Alaric looked around and saw he was at the end of the hall.
“What is what?” Ducarius asked as they made their way over to where he stood. Cassius was all but standing in the corner.
“Don’t you see it?” he demanded.
Alaric stared but he didn’t see anything.
“There’s a stone here with an A scratched into it,” Cassius said as he turned around to face them.
Walking forward, Alaric took up the spot Cassius had vacated. In a stone at eye level there was a very faint A. It was so small he had no idea how the other sentinel had found it. He slapped his hand onto it, expecting it to be spongy like the other wavy walls. It wasn’t, and seconds later they all jumped backward when the two walls began to move toward them.
“What the fuck?” Gedeon yelled over the sound of the stones scraping over each other.
Dust flew into the air and Alaric waved it away. Once the noise stopped, they all stood staring into a dark abyss for several seconds.
“Shall we?” Alaric asked as he strode forward. He saw a darkened hallway and so he whispered a word to illuminate it. The stones were different here than the rest of the compound. They were black instead of gray and looked ancient.
“This is some Scooby Doo kind of shit,” Gedeon said as they walked down the seemingly endless corridor. For endless minutes, they marched until Alaric saw a door.
“Is that a door?” Cassius asked.
“Yes.” Alaric picked up the pace. He got to it and saw it was thick wood with only a tiny barred window near the top. It was too high for him to see, so he grabbed the handle of it to open it. It didn’t budge. He tried again but nothing.
“Paper?” Alaric asked.
Gavrael handed him a piece of it along with a pen.
Open this door. Alaric wrote on it against the wall then he lifted it and it evaporated into dark smoke. He heard the creaking of wood and then the door slowly opened.
He heard gasps before he saw what the others did. Huddled in a corner was a skeleton. Unlike the others, he wore no clothes, and Alaric could see no weapons on his hips. And his bones were as obsidian as the stone room he was caged in.
“Sentinel, do you have a name?” Alaric asked.
The blackened skeleton got to his feet. He was short compared to the others, but he used the nod they all used to greet one another. “Albrecht.” His voice was the deepest Alaric had ever heard and there was a smoky quality to it.
“Albrecht, it’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Alaric,” he replied before introducing the others. He got another sheet of paper from Gavrael and then handed Albrecht a uniform with boots.
“Your daggers, Albrecht, where are they?” Alaric asked.
“Daggers?”
This man didn’t even remember he had weapons. How long had he been here? Then it hit Alaric. His name began with an A just as his did. H
e wondered what the hell it meant. He held out his palm and Gavrael, who was apparently an endless supply of parchment, handed him another sheet. A puff of dark smoke and he gave Albrecht two daggers after casting the spell to etch his name into the blades.
“We’ll train you,” Alaric promised.
“He’ll need a room,” Cassius remarked.
“I am out of paper,” Gavrael stated.
“Follow us, Albrecht,” Alaric said. All eight of them headed back to his office and within short order, Albrecht was settled in his newer, much cozier room. At least this one had a damn bed; the skeletal sentinel had nothing in his old room besides himself. It had also been half the size of the other cells. They’d set out to find Drexley and instead, they’d acquired another mystery. It was unfortunate—it could be centuries before they all had their memories intact and could shed any further light on what they did know. That didn’t mean Alaric was willing to throw in the towel and give up on searching through every inch of this place.
They were nearly through all the papers he’d acquired in his tenure as Lich Sentinel and nothing new had surfaced. Perhaps it was time to switch focus and put their heads together to see how they could improve the quality of life around this giant pile of stones. He’d need feedback from the others but first, he’d give his newest skeleton addition a few days to settle in. As for Alaric, he’d continue his visits to the others and keep his mind off the necromancers, including the one who had broken his heart.
Chapter 45
Seven days later, Alaric was sitting in his conference room while his skeleton crew took their seats. Gavrael and Gedeon showed up in the doorway a minute or so later.
“Alaric,” Gavrael said. “The Emperor asked me to deliver this.”
“Thanks, Gavrael.” It was a black envelope decorated with a gold dragon. Inside was a thick card in the same hue, though there was a patch of white inside.
Arch Lich-mate Alaric Daray,
The Council of Sorcery and Shifters is prepared to vote on your petition. We would like to invite you to attend a session one week from tomorrow. There are requests for a few follow-up questions. We look forward to seeing you again.
Rise of the Lich Sentinel Page 31
