Blood Betrayal Page 22

  All of these improvements allowed Cor and his company to leave Fort Haldon first thing in the morning and reach the other end before nightfall. With the sun low in the sky and at their backs to cast long shadows many times their height upon the smooth, hardened ground, they approached the black wall and its perpetually open gate, perpetually open as it had been dismantled in the years immediately following Nadav’s fall.

  Though the circumstances that brought him here were entirely different, as he was running instead of questing, his mind idly wondered if perhaps he was still on that mission that had brought him through this very gate just a few short years ago. The events of the last several weeks somehow didn’t even seem real in his own memory, as if they were a bad dream now fading into blissful forgetfulness. Perhaps it was merely wishful thinking. Menak’s form, hobbling towards them on his false leg, his robe swaying slightly as he approached, did nothing to dispel the illusion. Only the glance over his shoulder at the recently totally silent Thyss lifted the veil from his mind.

  He turned back to the approaching Menak, who came with a grim smile and searching eyes, and sudden rage erupted within Cor’s intestines. He made to dismount, and once the Loszian was close enough, Cor leapt from horse, propelling himself directly into the sorcerer. They went down in heap of silk, polished black steel, arms and legs. Cor’s maneuver was not without satisfaction as something crunched under his weight, and Menak let loose a howl.

  “Gods! You have broken my hand,” Menak declared from somewhere underneath blood red silk that had somehow completely enveloped both of them.

  “I’ll do worse than that before this is over,” Cor retorted, having finally disengaged himself enough to find that he was firmly astride the Loszian, kneeling on Menak’s chest. He yanked at the silks to expose the Loszian’s hairless, elongated head and face.

  “Lord Dahken, let us -,” Menak began.

  “Why didn’t you do something?!” Cor erupted, barely recognizing that he had, in fact, drawn Soulmourn to hover the sword’s point mere inches from the Loszian’s throat. “Anything! How could you just sit there and let this happen?!”

  “What would you have me do, Lord Dahken?” Menak queried calmly, despite the obvious pain that shown on his face. “No one in that room could have stopped your hell spawn son. Everyone in that room could not have stopped him. They tried, and they are all dead, all except one. And how did she fare against him? Did her great strength, her gifts from Hykan protect her?”

  “Don’t speak of it,” Cor growled through clenched teeth. He balled up the front of Menak’s robe in his free hand and gave it a hard tug, yanking the Loszian’s head from the ground even closer to Soulmourn’s deadly tip. “I should have killed you those years ago.”

  “Perhaps, but I have remained King Rederick’s loyal servant for all of those years,” Menak replied coolly. His consistent calm in almost any situation had served him well for perhaps a hundred years, but now it served to only frustrate Cor.

  “Until someone more powerful came along,” Cor stated bluntly.

  “Even then. I serve the king still, even in his death.”

  “How dare you say that?” Cor asked with a sneer of his upper lip, but he felt his resolve waning, Soulmourn growing heavier by the moment.

  Menak recognized the opportunity and explained, “Western way of life has been bizarre and alien to me for my entire life, something to be said of being Loszian for so many decades, I think. Regardless, despite requiring some… adaptation to your values, I had always found King Rederick to be a fair and even handed man. I mourn his death in my own way.

  “Your son thinks I have returned to my lands to prepare the lords and the people for his coming, his rule. It is true in a sense, but I have no love for him. My service to King Rederick, to you, was far better spent somehow rallying Aquis against Cor’El than dying uselessly opposing him in that hall. Perhaps I am still an opportunistic creature in that way.”

  “The least you could’ve done was saved Thyss, brought her here.”

  Menak’s eyes dropped down, avoiding Cor’s face for a moment before he replied, “I am sorry, Lord Dahken. I could not reach her, I could not escape your son’s gaze. By the time he released me, he was already… enjoying her company.”

  Unbidden, a groan arose from Cor’s throat. Though he and Thyss had never spoken directly of it, he of course knew what Cor’El had done to her, to the boy’s own mother. Even still, Cor had pushed it out of his mind, tamped it down in his gut to deal with the never ending tasks that were always at hand. But hearing Menak speak so directly of it, even as he tried to soften it, brought all of that back up with the vile burning of bile. His groan morphed into a raging growl, a furious storm aimed at the only person unfortunate enough to be before him at that moment. Soulmourn pulled back, and the Loszian turned his head and closed his eyes in preparation for the deadly blow that was most surely about to land.

  And then the moment passed. The uselessness, the futility of murdering the hapless Loszian sweeping over him, Cor lost all desire and need to inflict pain and death. He stood, removing his weight from Menak’s torso and screamed once to the heavens, flinging Soulmourn in a wide arc somewhere off to his right to some surprised shouts. He gripped his black half helm, the bug like trapping that had served him for so long, reared back and threw it as far away as he could manage, to the astonished gaze of Menak and others. Cor slumped his shoulders and fell backward onto his ass, stirring up a new cloud of dry, summer dust. He stared dejectedly, forlornly into an empty space directly in front of him.

  Menak pushed himself up onto his elbows, his one hand cradled against his body. It was twisted oddly, and two of the spindly fingers were bent in improper directions. Most Westerners found the overall look of a Loszian, especially the fingers to be rather disturbing anyway, to say nothing of bones broken into even more unnatural shapes. Cor idly reached out one hand and placed it on Menak’s, bringing a grimace from the necromancer. With a glow of white light that seemed to come from Cor’s hand itself, and a popping of bones as they righted themselves, Menak’s pain disappeared, and Cor withdrew his hand back to his lap where he now sat cross legged in the dirt.

  “I’m sorry for that,” he nearly mumbled. “You knew I was coming somehow.”

  “A reasonable expectation,” Menak replied. “I had no explicit knowledge of it, but for some reason, your destiny has always been inexorably linked with the place you know as Fort Haldon and the eastern lands beyond. I knew you would make your way here, just as I know that you are the only person in all of Rumedia capable of defeating him. I must admit that I have no idea how you will accomplish such a feat.”

  Cor climbed to his feet and rather pointlessly patted himself down in an attempt to brush the dust and dirt from his armored frame. Accepting the futility of it, he lowered a hand to the still fallen form of Menak who accepted it gratefully. The Loszian stood and inspected his silk robes, towering nearly a foot taller than Cor, who was certainly taller than most Westerners.

  “I am afraid my attire is somewhat damaged,” Menak observed. He flopped his arms uselessly to his sides and asked, “What will you do now?”

  “Can you accommodate us for one night?”

  “Of course, Lord Dahken.”

  Cor, “Then that’s it. Allow us one good night’s rest, and we’ll be on our way.”

  Menak, “Where to?”

  Cor, “I’m not going to say. I have a plan, but there’s only a few of us who know what it is.”

  Menak, “That is wise. Eventually, your son will come looking for you, and frankly, I am somewhat surprised he has not already found you. Regardless, should he be… insistent, I do not want to be the one who betrays you.”

  Cor rose early the next morning, just before sunrise, to wander Menak’s holdfast silently by himself. He had spent more time thinking in the last few weeks than perhaps his entire life, but he found himself mostly running in circles, coming back to the same solution with which he had started. No
matter how he considered the problem, the answer seemed to be the same, and he could not suffer Cor’El to live. He had seen grown men, older men, completely break down their hardened facades and weep at the loss of a son, and now he personally intended to take his own son’s life.

  Menak had been surprisingly accommodating, actually giving up his own bed, in fact vacating the entire apartment to Thyss and Cor, placing himself in one of the tiny suites that had once served as officer quarters when there was a sizable Loszian garrison here. Thyss had fallen asleep almost as soon as her body settled in the enormous bed, sinking into it luxuriously, but Cor, either for the bed’s softness or all of that which weighed upon him, took quite some time to find the wondrous oblivion. When he rose again in the morning, he was fairly certain that he had little more than a few hours of sleep. His leaving did not disturb Thyss in the slightest.

  He left his black armor, sword belt and weapons behind, opting instead for a black wool tunic and canvas breeches that Menak had so generously provided. They fit perfectly, and Cor wondered if the man had somehow conjured them up or had them waiting all this time just in case. Cor found it curious that he liked the clothing so well, as they seemed to match an affectation that everyone thought he had simply based on his armor. He hadn’t chosen the armor, of course; it had chosen him, nearly demanding its recovery from Noth’s tomb. Maybe everyone just thought he looked better in black; it did nearly match his hair with an interesting contrast against the gray of Dahken skin.

  Menak’s holdfast – a useless term, really, as it implied the military nature which purpose the settlement no longer served – already bustled with activity. Fires grew tall, cooking meat or warming pots to feed the handful of soldiers that still served. Farmers, or more likely their children or hands, from around the area delivered produce such as eggs and milk. The soul warming scent of freshly baked bread hung in the air, and somewhere in the background, sounded the lonely clanging of a single blacksmith at work. Dozens of buildings, hastily erected to house thousands of Loszian soldiers just before an invasion over ten years ago, had been converted to other uses such as shops, indoor markets and even a temple to Garod. The place was no longer a holdfast, a fort, but rather a small city, and Cor wondered how he had missed all of the changes.

  He wandered into a line of common soldiers, each who received an identical portion of sausage and bread and two barely cooked eggs with running yolks, all placed on a stoneware plate. They endeavored to pay no mind to Cor, despite all of the stories turned legends that had been passed around. They all knew who he was and what he had supposedly done, but none except the cooks seemed to show it. Even they only did so with a little extra food. As Cor began his short trek back to Menak’s room, he spied a second line of soldiers, each one with an empty plate. He grimaced as they dipped the plate in a foul looking bucket of water and used a filthy rag to dry it off before placing it back in the stack for those who had not yet eaten.

  Some things had not changed at all. The two guards posted outside Menak’s double doors saluted Cor as he passed them with his plate of food. They were from Menak’s personal guard, something that the Loszian had felt the need to maintain even with no threat of war, and they were clearly of mixed Loszian-Western stock, being somewhat tall with slightly elongated limbs, fingers and joints. Menak maintained the same single, giant room he’d always had. A huge circular table of mahogany sat in the middle, a map of the entire western continent displayed upon it, an alchemy table stood in the back left corner with its various vials and implements, and Menak’s giant plush bed in the back right.

  Cor noted the smallest motion from the bed as he entered, Thyss no doubt finally stirring into wakefulness, and he slid a high backed, mahogany chair away from table as he placed his plate down with a quiet clink. As he sat to eat, he hoped that Keth and the rest of the Dahken were finally up and moving; the urge to keep moving east quite suddenly becoming paramount and unignorable. The more he considered lingering here in Menak's microcosm of a city, the more he felt it meant only certain death for all of them.

  An unexpected sound, like that of someone retching, dispelled his drifting thoughts, bringing him back to the giant room and his breakfast.

  “What is that horrible smell?” Thyss groaned from the bed. She sat up and threw her legs over the side, leaning forward until the balls of her feet touched the floor.

  “Uhhmmmm,” was all he managed to say.

  “It’s terrible. What in the Gods’ names are you eating?” she venomously asked, but before he could answer, another retch nearly lifted her right off the bed.

  She lurched forward suddenly, vomiting her stomach’s precious little contents directly onto Menak’s floor. Cor almost leapt from his chair to go to her, but she cut him off with a finger that pointed directly at his plate of food. Quickly, he picked it up and almost ran to the door. Opening it, he unceremoniously shoved it into the hands of one of Menak’s guards who took it with an unasked question, completely bewildered.

  He closed the door again and approached Thyss slowly, who still sat on the edge of the bed, a strong arm out to either side gripping the edge of the mattress itself. Cor’s eyes did not linger on the small pool of vomit, its contents or the fact that it had splashed up onto her feet and lower legs. He carefully avoided it to sit next to her, gently moving her left arm to allow it. He wrapped his right arm around her shoulders. After a few minutes, she reciprocated, her own arm snaking around his lower back as she lay her head on his shoulder. So they sat unmoving for the Gods knew how long, Cor trying very hard to forget the last time Thyss had such a reaction to the smell of food in the morning, until Dahken Keth politely requested entry.

  “Lord Dahken, I apologize,” he said as he entered slowly, his practiced calm firmly in place. All who knew Keth well also knew that nothing escaped his observation, though often his sense of decorum would keep him from commenting. “The Dahken have been ready for some time, now. We await only you.”

  Cor lowered his face a bit, closing his eyes in a strange mix of resolve and reservation. When he opened them again, he leaned slightly away from Thyss, and she lifted her head from his shoulder. They shared a long moment, gazing into each other’s eyes, and Cor did not miss the welling of tears that she somehow held back. She blinked once and nodded assent.

  “You’re the strongest person I know,” he whispered to her, kissing her once on the forehead. To Keth, he said, “We’ll be about in just a few minutes. Have our horses ready.”

  “They already are,” Keth replied, and the turned about to leave. Cor couldn’t help but smile at his friend’s constant efficiency.

  Mere minutes later, Cor mounted his black armored warhorse, his own weapons and armor left behind near Menak’s bed, a detail that no one with him missed. Some even whispered about it, but he paid it no mind. Even Keth said nothing, though it seemed to put him into a state of brooding. Menak approached as quickly as he could manage, his peg, or whatever device that kept him upright, thunking in the dirt beneath his robe.

  “I’m sorry about the mess,” Cor apologized, taking the Loszian’s arm.

  “It is nothing,” Menak replied with a pointed nod at Thyss behind the Dahken and to his left. “I am afraid you have greater challenges to face than cleaning up such spew. May I suggest you ride south from here?”

  “We’re -,” Cor started.

  “Head south,” Menak interrupted. “When your son does come here, I want no knowledge of your plans.”

  “How do you know I’m not headed south?”

  “I do not, of course, but either way, it will not help Cor’El any,” Menak reasoned. “Lord Dahken, why leave your armor and sword here?”

  “Steel won’t serve me in what’s to come,” Cor answered, looking toward the sun which was only about an hour over the horizon.

  “I should expect you will return for them, one day.”

  “Someone will,” Cor replied. As they rode south away from Menak, he endeavored not to dwell on the inherent
fatalism of his words, which was not terribly difficult with the forlorn wailing of Soulmourn and Ebonwing filling his ears.

  Cor’El

  The young emperor realized within hours of Zheng leaving the mistake in destroying the entire city at the admiral’s behest. He now had no one to talk to, nowhere to sleep and no one to bring him food when he desired it. He couldn’t help but feel pride at the death and destruction he’d wrought, but once the admiral left him on the hilltop at the abandoned farm, the full loneliness of his status bore down upon him. He couldn’t feel the blood of a single living person for miles; they were all either dead or had fled.

  Cor’El stayed at the farmstead for a couple of days and found the existence not completely unacceptable. The bedding inside certainly offered no such comfort as his own bed in Byrverus, that no longer existed, but it was clean and served its purpose. He found salted meats hanging in a shed nearby and cheeses aging in a small cellar. Of course, water wasn’t a problem; when he needed it, he simply made it appear quite literally from thin air.

  Every morning, he woke thinking of his mother, and he continued thinking of her until he finally fell asleep at night. Several times each day, sometimes dozens of times, he reached his blood out across the miles of Aquis, each time hoping to feel his mother somewhere out there. He longed to touch her skin, smell her golden hair and feel her body underneath his. Cor’El endeavored not to dwell on it for long, lest he’d fall into a melancholy from which he could not find relief, a most difficult task as he found absolutely no sign of her anywhere.