Out of the Grave: A Dark Fantasy (The Shedim Rebellion Book 2) (8 page)

Ironwall sat in the middle of three mountain passes and sprawled across three valleys. Near the eastern gates, Klay found what remained of the Soul of Shinar. The holy order had once numbered over five thousand knights, but now only a hundred remained. People had taken to calling them the Hundred. They had pitched tents on a terrace as their new chapter house. Dozens of men squared off in duels using wooden swords. Unlike the Gadaran champions who enjoyed gambling, the knights did not bet on their friends.

Klay spotted Lior, the elder brother, a bull of a man with short-cropped blond hair, monitoring the matches. His size made him appear older than he was. Klay hesitated to approach; he was known as the Butcher’s friend, and Lior had avoided him since Tyrus defeated the princeling in a duel. Lahar, the younger brother, was more reasonable. Klay saw him and waved. As soon as Lahar recognized him, he called to his brother.

Lior asked, “What news from the front?”

“Little news, I’m afraid.”

“Then why are you here?”

“A request from the king. They pledged to restore you to your father’s throne and liberate Shinar, but they ask you to take the new runes.”

“You want us to etch that blasphemy into our flesh?”

“I don’t care what you do.” Klay raised open hands, asking for peace. “The king wants stronger champions.”

Lahar placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder. He had a calming effect but was more strategic than his brother. “So, liberating our home is contingent upon taking runes?”

“The runes are freely given if you volunteer for the etchings.” The brothers both talked at once, and Klay spoke over them. “The king remembers your father and all the runes he had; that is all.”

“Father never used Roshan runes,” Lior said. “You tell them to take their filth back to the Nine Hells.”

Lior shouted at his men to continue training and left. Klay waited beside Lahar. If King Samos wanted these boys to take runes, he should speak to them himself.

Lahar said, “This race of runes seems a poor decision.”

“Everyone is waiting to see where Azmon strikes next.”

“So they let Azmon decide the next battle.”

“He has the larger force, and there are rumors of rebellion on Sornum. The Roshan Empire might collapse under its own weight.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Wishful thinking.”

“How many have taken the Butcher’s runes?”

“Scores of champions. Once Dura perfects a technique, she passes it on to her students and the king’s etchers.”

“And how many have died from her experiments?”

Klay frowned. Runes were such unforgiving things, cursing as often as they blessed. “Dozens, but it still makes the nobles nervous. The mercenary companies are growing in strength.”

“Ah, now I understand.”

Klay didn’t understand and feared his confusion showed.

“If my brother and I take more runes, like our father, it proves the nobles are still special. But none of the Gadaran nobles want to risk their own necks. Better to gamble on our pedigree.”

“I had not heard it put like that.”

“It’s implied.” Lahar crossed his arms. “The Soul of Shinar used to be five thousand lances. Each knight had at least five runes. Now we are so few. I’m not sure if we can risk the losses.”

“The mercenary companies have a dozen men with twelve runes. Five approach twenty.”

“Truly? Those weren’t stories?”

“I’ve seen them, milord.”

A generation ago, such men would be famous heroes, but now they were common. Klay hoped Lahar understood the implications. Of the two brothers, Lahar was more reasonable. If he led the knights, the politics of the league would simplify. Lior was too much like his father, a cavalryman obsessed with grand chargers and ultimatums. Lael’s strategy had worked fine when Shinar dictated terms to everyone else, but after Rosh toppled the kingdom, everything changed.

“Can you convince your brother to undergo the etching?”

“If they weren’t the Butcher’s runes, maybe. You weren’t there when our father fell. You don’t understand.”

Lahar told the story of the Fall of Shinar. The Roshan had laid siege for months, smashing the aqueducts. The city starved, and its nobles, with their private armies, turned on each other. The ballistae, sorcerers, and archers kept the bone beasts at bay until one day when thirty of the beasts breached the southern wall. The Soul of Shinar waited on the other side to defend. Lahar had watched the Butcher of Rosh beat King Lael into the ground. He did not offer an honorable defeat, only humiliation. The Butcher was a force of nature, and King Lael could not compete. As the princeling spoke, his voice grew hoarse.

“I watched, but I could not help. None of us could. The Butcher dragged him from the field while we were slaughtered by beasts.”

Klay didn’t know what to say. The unease reminded him of a funeral. He lowered his eyes as though mourning.

“Later that day, the Roshan stormed King’s Rest, and Shinar fell.”

“How did you get out?”

“I dragged Lior away. He refused to abandon the city, but I forced him to guide Dura and her students through the tunnels. He wanted to die fighting. I convinced him to fight another day.”

“How?”

“The truth. Azmon wanted the Shinari runes. Dura kept them, and the hundred of us protected our legacy.”

Emperor Azmon Pathros, Prince of the Dawn, the Eternal Youth, Conqueror of the Five Nations, and Supreme Ruler of the Roshan Empire, hated wooden stairs. In the forward camp, he climbed the tallest watchtower, a scaffolding of wooden beams leading to a box of sharpened logs. Thousands of soldiers had used the wooden stairs over the last year, and they needed to be replaced. The center of each dipped. To make things worse, Azmon wore his white robes and had to hitch them up to avoid tripping.

Despite his sixty years, Azmon appeared a boyish twenty. He had a baby face, with golden curls and slender shoulders. As a young man, he had used sorcery to conquer old age, but now he craved a more distinguished look, wrinkled and worn like the emperors of old. The Prince of the Dawn had grown tired of looking like a prince.

Two archers greeted him. “Your Excellency.”

“Any movement in the woods?”

“None today.”

“How many flyers are out?”

“Twelve.”

Black flyers scouted the Shinari Plains, drifting on calm winds. From a distance, they might be mistaken for bats, but the silhouettes were wrong. They had long necks, serpent-like tails, and a bulge near their shoulders. If they flew in closer, he would see the sorcerers riding them.

From the watchtower, he had a better view of the maneuvers. Across the plains, thousands of infantrymen, archers, and cavalry marched in square formations, kicking up large clouds of yellow dust. Among the men were lumbering beasts whose glowing eyes penetrated the dust. A year ago, they had lost two thousand men against the Ashen Elves, and the woods presented a new challenge. They had to fight at close quarters but struggled with tight formations because the beasts stepped on men and terrified horses.

Shouts and trumpets blared from the plains. The army ground to a halt while bone lords shouted. Azmon watched, curious and bored at the same time. When he had created the bone beasts, he never envisioned them marching beside men. They had begun as walking siege engines. Soldiers carried an injured man away, and the drills continued. Azmon lost track of time until he spotted Elmar, his new master clerk, waving at him.

“As you were.”

“Excellency.”

At the base of the tower, Elmar greeted him. He was an old man with a bare scalp and wrinkles from constant worry. Azmon envied his distinguished look but did not want to lose his hair.

“Excellency, we have news from Sornum. The last of the Demon Tribes retreat. Rassan Hadoram has saved Rosh and pacified the Holoni lands.”

“How old is the message?”

“About six weeks.”

“It crossed the ocean by ship?”

“It did, Excellency.”

The empire had expanded too quickly, leaving rebellions in its wake, but the message had taken so long to arrive that it became meaningless. Another rebellion could have begun and ended in the interim. He walked toward his tent. Elmar followed a few paces behind, reporting on other parts of the empire, supplies, and recruitments. They had lost a year pacifying conquered lands.

“How did Rassan defeat the Demon Tribes?”

“His message offered few details, but the messenger told a story of smaller beasts, smarter beasts, Your Excellency.”

Azmon paused and stood straighter. “How small?”

“A little taller than a man.”

“And they defeated the Marsh Fen Orcs?”

“I assume so, Your Excellency. There aren’t many details.”

Azmon continued to his tent. The smaller beasts he had built lacked the intelligence to fight armed men. The larger ones used brute force, but if Rassan had found a way around that limitation, Azmon needed to know. Why had he kept it secret? Azmon suspected another plot. Rassan would build his own army, on Sornum, to overthrow House Pathros.

“Send a flyer for Rassan. I want him brought to me, immediately.”

They entered the large command pavilion at the center of the camp. Lamps offered dim light compared to the noonday sun. Hanging walls sectioned off the tent. The main room had tables and shelves arranged on a rug-covered floor: the illusion of home smelled of old parchment and dust. One shelf held many hourglasses marking weeks, days, and minutes until Azmon could attempt another rite. The falling sand marked many failures as he consolidated his empire.

Elmar dragged in a bleating goat.

“Leave me.”

The staff filed out, and Azmon turned to the goat, studying its musculature: a decent offering. He withdrew a silk bag of sand from his robes, knelt, and used fistfuls to draw the Runes of Dusk and Dawn.

Azmon finished and surveyed his work. He steeled himself for the next part, which, despite years of practice, still unnerved him. Closing his eyes, he inhaled and visualized a gate rune that burned like an orb of lava. Part of his mind entered the gate, traveled beyond his body, and sought access to the Nine Hells. Time slowed. A familiar tug pulled at his soul—a clawing hand, dragging him toward damnation. Azmon brushed it aside, and power infused him. The room chilled, and he opened his eyes to tunnel vision. The goat trembled. The unholy rite bothered Azmon as well.

He profaned the language of God.

He spoke a word of power, and the sand swirled together into lines like wire. He calmed the goat, running one hand down its flank while the other drew a knife and slit its throat. The animal screamed once, but another word of power silenced the noise. Runes drank the spilled blood.

“Mulciber, hear my call.”

Azmon invoked the Father of Lies as the rite commanded, but he prayed the shedim did not notice. A goat rather than a human sacrifice helped avoid their attention. His mind traveled to Pandemonium, a place of shadows, flames, and ghosts. In person he would see more, but the link offered glimpses of the Nine Hells. He searched for his childhood friend, Tyrus of Kelnor, and had killed a herd of goats on the task because searching without a body was like finding a teardrop in an ocean. A year had passed since scouts saw Tyrus and Lilith crash. They found Lilith’s body but not Tyrus’s.

Prolonged contact with the Nine Hells caused sharp pains behind his eyes. Azmon searched a little while longer and severed contact. The goat lay on the runes, dry, sunken in. After he released the sorcery, he felt unclean, and his chest ached. His skin crawled as though bugs covered him.

“Elmar.” A tent flap opened to a blinding flash of sunlight. “Burn this thing. Don’t let anyone cook it. And prepare a bath.”

“Of course, Excellency.”

Azmon tore at his robes and flung them away. He needed to take a break from the rites; with too many of them each day, the lingering effects grew worse. The smell of sulfur filled his nose. A thought had gnawed at him for months. If Tyrus had sacrificed himself for Marah, his soul might not be in the Nine Hells. The Seven Heavens might have blessed him.

He heard a wonderful sound: three or four clerks pouring buckets of hot water into his bathtub. He shed the rest of his clothes and went to bathe. As the warm water washed away the slithering sensation, he worried about the shedim. He had not told the demons of his lost daughter.

One of two cities had her, either the elves in Telessar or Dura in Ironwall, and maybe they had Tyrus’s corpse as well. They would want to study the runes. He lowered himself farther into the steaming water until his nose was at the surface. Heat penetrated tense muscles. Should he ask the shedim to confirm his suspicions? What price would he pay for such a favor?

Azmon’s bath chilled around him; gooseflesh spread across his arms. His hair matted to his head, and cold water trickled down his neck. He scowled at the largest hourglass as the time approached for another rite.

Elmar entered. “The lords are prepared, Your Excellency.”

The witching hour neared, a superstition for illiterate farmers, but he had tried everything else. He grasped at old wives’ tales while losing the respect of his nobles. They gossiped about his failures, his obsession. His scowl deepened. Something about the new rite eluded him.