Errand of Mercy (2 page)

Garkim picked up his machete and, with one movement, cut his prisoner’s throat.

The victim’s struggles quickly ceased. Garkim let go of the man’s head and sat back on the floor, his right hand splashed with dripping warmth. All his energy had left him. His breath came in gasps. He tried to stand up, but nausea got to him and he fell, vomiting. His head was pounding. A sergeant helped him outside. Garkim was sick and sat, his head buried in his arms. He did not see the blanket-draped things from the one-room house that the rest of his soldiers dragged out into the street. The troops laid the blood-soaked bundles before the astonished eyes of the neighborhood tarok, who hung back from the stony-faced soldiers and what they brought into the morning light. Garkim merely sat in the street beside the wall of his childhood home, trembling as from a fever.

“My lord,” said the sergeant later. “All is ready.”

Garkim coughed, then slowly got to his feet. It was already dawn. His soldiers had finished cleaning out the house. A large pile of blanket-covered debris and a row of limp, ragged bodies occupied the center of the street.

Lord Garkim looked down at his uniform. He was as filthy and bloody as the bodies in the street. It did not matter. Nothing like that mattered to him most days now.

He nodded to the sergeant, who stepped back and faced the frightened crowd. “Citizens of the Imperial Reaches of Doegan!” the sergeant shouted in Maran. “Listen to the words of Lord Garkim!” He said “DOH kun” as some of the Mar did, instead of “DOH eh gen” with a hard g, as did the Ffolk. He then turned and nodded to Garkim, who was ready.

“These people you see dead before you were your neighbors!” Garkim cried in Maran, both arms raised the way Mar tribal elders did at clan meetings. “Look at them! Look at their faces! They lived among you, spoke with you, shared food with you! Now look at them! You ask yourself, why did we do this? Why did we kill them?”

He swiftly strode over to one of the blankets covering things pulled from the one-room house. He seized a corner and whipped the blanket back. He knew what lay beneath it. “See this! Look at what they ate this morning, as they prayed to the monsters that lead their Fallen Temple!”

Women and children looked down and shrieked; some fainted or ran. Grown men choked and drew back, swallowing. Hundreds of dark eyes rimmed with white stared down at the half-eaten meal that lay in the dust of the street. The soldiers glanced at it, then turned away with grim faces. They already knew who it had been.

Garkim flipped the blanket back down. Hundreds of wide eyes looked up at him. “You know me!” he shouted, his voice carrying easily over the crowd. “You remember that I was a boy here! I am one of you! I tell you that this”—his hand swept down to the blanket and the thing it covered on the street—”this is the work of evil, the work of monsters, not the work of my people! It is not your work! You must fight with me against the wickedness of the Fallen Temple! We must throw it down! If you go this way, you will lose your soul! You will not be Mar, nor even human! Be on guard against this evil, and help me destroy it!”

He felt exhaustion settle over him with chains of iron. His headache, ever present in the depths of his consciousness, grew in intensity. He wiped his face with his arm and noticed that his skin stung as if he were sunburned. He’d forgotten already about the fire runes. He waved to the sergeant, who pulled a small bottle from a pouch on his belt, unsealed the stopper, and walked down the row of ragged dead, emptying the contents of the bottle on them. Smoke billowed out where the liquid touched the bodies. Moments later, the dead burst into flames that consumed rags, hair, blood, and flesh alike. The soldiers and tarok stepped back from the pyre as oily black-smoke rose over the street and into the dawn’s bright light, carrying its stench across the awakening city and all within it.

Lord Garkim turned to leave. He stepped on a bit of debris brought out by his soldiers from the den of death. He looked down, then bent to pick it up.

It was the head of a broken hammer.

Garkim nodded and took it with him.

Lord Garkim was bathed and dressed in time to attend the regular midmorning councilors’ meeting at the ministry building, adjacent to the palace. Word of his morning activities had preceded him. The other councilors were eager for any news he bore.

“You say that you and your men entered the house—” said the gray-bearded Lord Erling, Thorass as precise as ever.

“I went in alone,” Lord Garkim corrected. “My men stayed outside to catch those who fled and to locate other escape routes, of which there were two. They later apprehended a man living across the street, another cultist who hid fugitives in his cellar.”

“Did you use that improved form of invisibility on yourself and your men during your approach, the spell I recommended?” Lady Hetharn leaned forward, eyes bright with interest. A rivulet of sweat trickled from the corner of her brightly painted lips and coursed down over the first of her chins.

“Let Lord Garkim finish his story,” said the Council General with a sigh. “We can save technical questions for a bit.”

Lord Garkim cleared his throat. “As I entered, I accidentally triggered the trap-nines on the doorframe, which admitted only other cultists. None of the group were wizards, so they somehow have access to such magic. The protective devices I had on loan from the armory shielded me from the flames, for the most part. Thereafter I was able to drive out some of the cultists and disable the others. The bodies were burned to prevent reanimation. We used a bottle of liko agnar, the liquid fire that Lady Hetharn’s laboratory kindly provided for our department.” He nodded to the lady, who smiled back with unconcealed pride.

“Disable?” Lord Erling said, confused. “You disabled them? I had thought you said you … well, that you—”

“I killed them, yes,” said Lord Garkim readily. “However, because these cultists often animate their dead, it is as if killing them does not really kill them. I sometimes think I am merely disabling them until we can burn the bodies and truly destroy them. Then, and only then, are they dead and gone.”

The short silence was broken by a subdued Lady Hetharn. “I am glad that your family was moved into different quarters last year, so that they were not there when … when those of the Fallen Temple—”

“Yes, and I share your relief, believe me,” Garkim said with feeling. “I am sorry, however, that we could not save our Captain Taergen from the fate visited upon him after he was kidnapped.

My men and I will see to his proper burial tomorrow with full honors in the Field of Heroes. You are all, of course, invited to attend.”

The other lords at the table nodded assent. Some swallowed and looked ill. Others stared in tight-lipped silence at the head of the broken hammer on the tabletop before Lord Garkim. All tried to imagine what sort of people would chop up a man and eat him for their morning meal.

Another sigh escaped from the Council General. “Let us move along,” he said quickly. “We have eight dead cultists, one in custody, and no leaders or clues to their plots. Lady Hetharn advises me that we cannot connect any of them to the killing of the soldier and mail-rider outside Eldrinpar’s walls the other day—yes, Lady Hetharn?”

“That was most likely the work of aerial monsters.” Lady Hetharn spoke quickly and knowl-edgeably, back in her element. “There were no tracks beyond the immediate area, and the prints and claw marks we found suggest that giant eagles or griffons were the cause. They must have been attracted by the scent of the horses. We still need to perform certain divinations to—”

“Lord Garkim.” The voice out of thin air killed all conversation on the spot.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Lord Garkim, sitting back in his chair. He forced himself to relax, or at least to appear so.

“Go into the Vault of the Stone Arch, and prepare to greet those who arrive there. Bring them to the palace and ensure their comfort.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Lord Garkim crisply. After a pause to make sure there were no other commands, he pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “My ladies and lords,” he said to the others, bowing swiftly, then left the Chamber of Councilors, striding down the corridor for the stairs.

He shrugged as he went. The gods only knew who he was supposed to meet at the vault. The mage-king never explained himself, and it was useless to try to read his mind; his thoughts could not be read by anyone. No doubt this was a byproduct of his long use of the bloodforge. Lord Garkim frowned as he descended the steps to the main hall of the ministry building. The people at the vault were doubtless just another “official complaints” delegation from the Free Cities or Edenvale. But why did he have to greet them? Garkim reflected. What was it that the emperor had actually said about this trip? Go into the Vault of the Stone Arch, and—

Garkim stumbled on the stairs, nearly falling in his shock. He saw the truth: Go into the vault, the mage-king had said! No visitor could get into that building without proper authorization, which meant the visitors were … they had to be …

Near panic, Lord Garkim ran down the remaining steps, then raced for the great hall’s doors leading out to the bright morning street. The visitors were coming through the Stone Arch. The gate to Undermountain was opening!

Garkim ran outside, shouting for the startled grooms by the royal stables next to the ministry. A saddled horse was brought for him in just half a minute, though Garkim cursed every second of the delay. He snatched the reins, vaulted into the saddle, and with a shout was off at a gallop. Pedestrians scattered from his path as he bolted through the crowd, urging his mount toward his destination.

The gate in the Stone Arch had not been activated in decades. The visitors were coming from that buried horror of horrors, Undermountain, far to the northwest. Doegan had known little contact with the old lands of the north, but the howling depths of Undermountain, the cavern of horrors, were legendary everywhere.

Still, the mage-king had asked Lord Garkim to greet the visitors and ensure their comfort, which implied they would be friendly. As he rode for the vault, Lord Garkim sincerely hoped this was the case. Anyone coming from Undermountain would be a formidable opponent. To let such a being roam the city freely would be worse than allowing a thousand serpents into one’s bed.

A light breeze from the sea stirred the fronds of the palm trees lining the streets outside the high-domed vault of the Stone Arch. The four guards at the top of the Vault’s granite steps came to attention when they saw a sweating Lord Garkim jump from his horse, leaving it untethered in the street, and race up the steps toward them. The guard sergeant stepped forward uncertainly to challenge him.

“The password is zal tran kor mokV Garkim barked, hurrying past the larger man. “Guard the entry!”

The guards backed off, looking at one another in astonishment. The guard sergeant shouted for two of their fellows down the street to join them, and they took up positions of greater alertness, their weapons drawn and readied for an unknown foe.

Ikavi spat other passwords at the guards at the second doorway, then stood impatiently as the two huge bronze doors there remained closed a little longer. His eyes took in the white pillars, the nervous soldiers, the huge solemn statues to either side of the inner door, the curling paper on the wall with its brief regulations for guarding the vault.

One of the two massive doors creaked as it slowly opened inward. No one was visible on the other side. Ikavi waited, teeth grinding, as the door opened fully. Just beyond the doorway was a huge, squat, doglike statue sitting on its haunches, in a narrow hallway that curved off to the left and right away from Garkim. The stone dog was as thick as a bull and the height of a man, its expressionless eyes looking in Lord Garkim’s direction.

The dog’s stone lips abruptly moved as if they were flesh. “You may pass,” it said, then returned to its state of immobility.

Garkim stepped through the door and heard it slowly shut behind him. He hurried on to the left, toward the final set of doors. “The gate in the Stone Arch is opening!” he shouted.

“The arch gate is opening!” called an invisible guardsman somewhere above. Whispers and a metallic rustling echoed through the curved hall, then—nothing. Magical silence reigned.

Lord Garkim reached the far doors on the inner wall and pulled up short. “Let me pass,” he said, panting from exertion.

The doors vanished. He went through the doorway, then heard a rush of air behind him. The hall through which he had passed was now sealed and trapped with magical stone and iron.

Garkim walked into a vast, bright hall, octagonal in shape, with thick, round pillars reaching along its walls to support the high dome above. Rippling colors reflected from the marble walls, nearly drowned in the sunlike brilliance of the magical light pouring down from the ceiling. Metal nails in Garkim’s boot soles clacked and echoed until he came to a stop and eyed the great chamber. It appeared to be empty except for a lone object standing in the center of the room’s colorful tile-mosaic floor.

Only forty feet away was a dirty gray arch carved from a single slab of rock, covered with glyphs and runes. Garkim had seen this chamber several times before on routine visits. The elaborately etched stone had not changed, nor had the “door” of rainbow light that filled the space beneath the arch. Garkim glanced at the floor, noted his location on the complex mosaic, and stepped back a pace. He allowed himself a deep sigh. He’d apparently made it in time.

The flickering rainbow curtain inside the Stone Arch faded; a ripple of darkness filled the space instead. Lord Garkim flinched. He had never seen a gate in operation. The inside of the gate was now an opaque black surface. His right hand strayed to the hilt of the long sword strapped to is belt, but he forced his hand down to his side. It would be damaging to betray fear with guards watching him from above.

Someone stepped out of the gate into the great domed chamber. It was a man, as large and broad-shouldered as a soldier of the Ffolk, in bright silver plate mail and an open-faced helm that revealed a long mustache, long dark hair, and square face. He entered leading with his bright round shield in his left hand, head down, shoving forward hard as he did so in case anyone tried to block his way. A long-handled warhammer came up in his right hand, ready for an overhand strike. Garkim had never seen armor and weaponry so elaborately engraved and decorated. A great warrior, indeed. The shield, which seemed to glow, had a balance and scales engraved upon it.