

### EXMORTUS

### Book One: Towers of Dawn

### by Todd Maternowski

### Copyright 2011 Todd Maternowski

### Smashwords Edition

### Discover other titles by Todd Maternowski at Smashwords.com:

### Cultic - http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/68616

### Golem - <http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/70540>

Exmortus Book 2: Temples Diabolic \- https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/241250

### Exmortus Book 3: Tombs in Chorus - <https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/463587>

### Additional rants, raves, and other fun time-wasting pursuits are available on the official website: <https://wild-ink.net/>

### This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

### What others are saying about EXMORTUS: TOWERS OF DAWN:

"There are real night terrors in this world and they must be stopped at any cost... the action moves at a fast pace and for this reason Exmortus is an easy read, with the reader experiencing Ash's journey with him and getting that sense of danger and urgency that reflects in his mission."

—Elloise Hopkins

"It's a fresh angle on the traveling story ... the dialogue felt genuine, the characters seemed real."

—Zen Cherry

"The author's fantasy world is a harsh, brutal place where mistakes lead to death and trust is a commodity that's price may prove to be too high... The world is full of history and monuments that are interesting and bring to mind the vast scale and epic nature of Tolkien's works... If you like your fantasy brutal, then this is the book for you."

—Eric Swett

"This is the perfect book for anyone who likes a good adventure story."

—A Bookish Affair

"The characters are well developed, they grow on you, they make you laugh and add a solid amount of depth to an already deeply engaging story... This novel is hard to put down once the story kicks into high gear and never really lets up at any point."

—John Casanova

"Dark fantasy literature with a sense of humor, which is not something you see all that often."

—Keith Riskey

"A compelling and well written novel from a promising new author... For a debut novel, the growth process from start to finish is significant and given the end result, I can't wait to read the next book in the series."

—Matthieu Hausig

"This is a great book for young readers, both male and female or anyone who loves a good book with believable characters."

—Night Owl Reviews

### For Anna

### Prologue

"Star!"

Yount looked up from the serrated blade biting into his wrist. The idiot was on the edge of his cart and pointing at something behind them. From the ground, Yount could not see what was making him so excited.

"Star! Star!"

Yount stared at the blade. Markov held it still, paying no attention to the idiot.

"Are we doing this?"

"Hold on," Yount growled. "What's he saying?"

"No point in delaying. It's gone."

"I'm not delaying anything. What is he looking at?"

Both knights looked up at the front of the wagon. The idiot bounced up and down in his seat, pointing back the way they had came. They followed his gaze and saw the source of the excitement: a brand new star hanging low in the night sky, a brilliant point of light that looked like a hole pierced in night's black veil and held to the sun. Dazzlingly bright, brighter by far than any known star. It hovered directly over the hellhole where they had lost two knights earlier that morning.

"Yount, that... star. I could swear—"

"That it wasn't there before? I know."

"And look where it is."

"Yeah."

Markov opened his mouth but said nothing. Yount stroked the sandy bristles of his mustache with his good hand. After thirty-eight years in service to Exmortus Abbey, he had been in countless failed missions. But never anything this catastrophic. _Never anything supernaturally catastrophic. What have we done?_

Markov looked back at Yount and placed the blade back over the old knight's elbow. "We'd better make this quick."

Yount looked down at his left arm. The wound from that morning had already taken the hand and wrist. Tendrils of grey, diseased flesh snaked up his forearm, spouting tiny droplets of blood over his lap while he rode. The coarse blonde hair that covered his forearms had fallen off. He tried balling his left hand into a fist, but could not. He had no control over the limb. Yount placed his lucky rag into his mouth and bit down hard. The unwelcome _clop clop clop_ of a heavy horse came up behind him just as he gave Markov the signal to start sawing.

"Aha, Yountie! What did I tell you? Do you see it too?"

Yount chewed the rag in his mouth and stared at the stone-grey, pulsing thing that had been his left hand when he had woken up that morning. Markov, seeing Yount's eyes, drew back the blade.

"Yountie! Ah, ignore me if you will. But you can't deny _that_ ," blurted the Abbot, gesturing at the new star. "A sign from Torain Himself!"

Markov lifted his head and fixed his glassy blue eyes on the Abbot. "It could just be a planet, or a shooting star. We don't know."

The Abbot gargled in his throat. "Oh, come now. Look where it is! There! Right over the hole."

Yount's still-intact right hand tensed into a fist. The Abbot saw this and ignored it. "A blessing from Torain. Dale, Stratov, come here!"

The other two knights quietly muttered to each other as they rode over. Yount felt shriveled and weak, crouched on the ground, surrounded by the three towering warhorses.

"Knights of Torain! Today has been a day scribes will record in the history tomes of a thousand years from now. Scholars will debate over it. Bards will sing of it." The Abbot cleared his throat, then continued. "We've sacrificed much today. This morning we lost two good —two great knights. Brock was a mountain of a man, a giant in service of Torain, a peerless warrior who cannot be replaced. Fyodor was a tender guardian to his brothers, and a lioness defending her cubs to his enemies. _Our_ enemies."

The Abbot shifted his bulk in his custom saddle. They had ridden hard that day and his backside was irritating him. "But nothing worth gaining can be had without sacrifice. Sacrifice is the fire that burns out our impurities." The Abbot saw the flash of anger crossing the knights' faces, and decided to take his speech in a different direction. "Know this. The blessed disciples of Torain have won a great victory today. The hard part is over. We've acquired the artifact. We are returning home. And now, Torain Himself has sent this, this shining beacon of hope, to help protect us, to guide our way across cursed ground."

The Abbot looked at Yount, who was muttering something under his breath. The old priest drew in a lungful of air for one final push and some dust irritants flew into his throat. He coughed, and felt he had lost his momentum. He gestured once more to the star with his right hand as the fingers of his left traced the outline of the object in his pocket. "The Light of Torain will protect us. We will not be harmed on our journey back." He had hoped to have whipped the knights into a holy frenzy by now, but other than Dale, who was staring at him and scratching his bulbous nose, the other knights did not seem to be paying him any attention.

Slightly deflated, the Abbot turned to Yount. "Take care of that soon, Yountie. Everyone else, let's ride, onward to Exmortus with the star of Torain at our backs!" The Abbot's heavy destrier wheeled and bolted ahead. Dale and Stratov bent over and whispered words of encouragement to Yount before turning to follow the Abbot. The idiot driving the wagon soon departed, leaving Yount and Markov alone, crouching like rats in the dirt.

Yount took out the rag out of his mouth. "Alright, old friend, let's do this." He placed the rag back, closed his eyes tightly and braced himself.

Markov removed the rag and gently placed a cold metal object into Yount's right hand. "Here, drink this first."

Yount sipped from the flask, feeling the liquid fire trickle down his throat and spread its fingers into his empty stomach. The two men stared at each other, then at the strange new star. Yount looked back. Markov's eyes were tightly closed, his lips pursed and his head bowed. He was hardly breathing.

"What's wrong?"

"Yount..." Markov paused, a worried look flashing across his gentle face. For one of the most renowned warriors in all of Loross, Markov cut a disarmingly benign appearance. The man had fought and killed many score men and things that were less-than-men, yet never lost his gentle demeanor and soft, perpetually worried voice to the ravages of blood and battle.

And then he heard it, too. Faintly, no louder than the turning of a page in a library, as quiet as a scroll catching fire in another room. The sound of phantom laughter softly floated over the scorched plains of the Demon Wastes. They listened in silence, fascination and fear seeping into the cracks of their steely armor. Yount looked to Markov, who raised his eyes, first to Yount, then to the star.

Yount looked to Markov, closed his eyes, and nodded.

~~~~

Yount adjusted his crotch. His right leg had taken a heavy blow above the knee down in the hole and was in dire need of healing. Two weeks earlier, he had stripped down to his bare skin to look at the damage. The lean, hairy leg looked as if someone had spilled an entire inkwell down it. That was two weeks ago. He didn't want to picture what it looked like now.

A few days of rest had not helped his injuries heal. He had fallen behind the company three nights prior, deliberately disobeying the Abbot's direct commands. Drawing his sword and threatening the fat priest's neck. It was mostly for show —he would never have intentionally hurt the man— but he needed to fall back. He loved his men, and could see no other way. For thirty-eight years, he had treated every soldier as a brother, an equal. And they had loved him for it. He had loved each of them, too.

Markov knew what he was doing and why. He didn't need to tell him.

His sword, the one the blacksmith had named The Red Rage, almost turned the situation into a bloodbath. It was a fine weapon, but when wielded in anger it gave him a strange sensation, a slight _heat_ that made the hairs on his forearm stand on end and the blood in his veins rush to his skin. The sword had brought him nothing but bad luck since the day he acquired it. Like any warrior old enough to be battling his own sons, he had hoped to never again draw it for the rest of his life. _Small chance of that, with the path I have chosen_.

As he held it up to the Abbot's throat, he had felt a change come over him. His good arm surged with an unexpected burst of brute strength, and he nearly followed through on his empty threat to cut the fat priest's head off. The look of abject terror on the Abbot's face seemed to fill his head with bloodthirst and rage. Had he not spurred Bessus and bolted off when he did, he would have slit the Abbot's throat. Opened up his windpipe with a single satisfying stroke. He had pictured it in his dreams for decades.

Yount stared straight at the oncoming ball of light in the distance, the bright orb haloed by the constant swirls of dust that had been choking his throat for three days. He wanted his old weapon, the Rain Blade —snapped at the hilt against a pack of northern dog-men years ago. He had wielded Rain for nearly two decades. Heavier, yes, couldn't hold an edge, yes, and, sometimes, prone to a little rust. The others gave him hell for it, every word of it true. But Rain _never_ gave him pause. Not once. He could trust that weapon. Some days, Yount wished that his arm had snapped along with the Rain Blade.

He fingered Red Rage's hilt and felt the prickling heat shoot up his arm, through his neck and into his skull. It gave him a headache, as if the inside of his skull were simmering in a pan of oil. The fiery sensation trickled to his good arm, then to his legs as he shifted in his seat, but never to his missing left hand. Never past the elbow.

The star was getting nearer. Yount tugged on the point of his spear, to check it's make. Solid as stone. Sharp enough to shave.

"We'll see if this matters," Yount half-chuckled to himself, his toothy smile poking through his bristling blonde mustache. That light, or star, or angel —only the Abbot was sure of what he was seeing, and Yount thought he was full of it— had followed them for four weeks of riding. Only at night, never during the day, and unmistakeably low in the horizon. _Too low for a star_.

The priest repeated himself endlessly. _It's_ _a sign, it's Torain's blessing, it's an angel of Torain sent to protect us_. It did seem to bring some luck. They had not run into any trouble on the endless flat expanse of the Demon Wastes, nor on the twice-dead rocky badlands of the Kingdom of Shells. Down half their original number, the company could not afford another lethal encounter with forces they could not understand.

The Wastes were a blasted hellscape, but on the way to the hole they had been teeming with life. Snakes, beetles, frogs, rodents large and small. Once, they passed a nest of vipers sunning themselves on a flat rock and the Abbot mentioned that the Mere of Repose and the Kraken Mere had once jointly covered the Wastes, forming a great sea in the dawn of history. Dale had asked if the sea would have been deep enough for massive sea creatures and if so, whether the colossal ghosts of these behemoths still swam in the waterless skies above. The knights had all laughed. The Abbot didn't crack a smile. Yount had looked to the sky then, to the same bare patch of celestial ink where the new star now moved, straining his eyes to imagine what it would look like to ride along the floor of the ocean, titanic leviathans gliding silently through the dark waters above. He remembered finding the idea equal parts amusing and horrifying.

But when Dale had pointed out that they had not seen so much as a desert rat in the four weeks since leaving the hole, Yount made his decision.

Any detached amusement was dead now, hacked in half and dragged to its grisly death by the dark things they had glimpsed in the hole. The old knight looked at the bandaged stump on his left arm, and sighed.

As the ball of light came closer, Yount smiled in the darkness. He _had_ pulled it off. He was here, concealed by mud and twigs and rain, while his men were no more than a few day's ride from the safety of the Abbey gates. He had no desire to challenge the star, but he had to get close enough to see what it was. Bessus was used to this forest —Yount was confident he could outrun the light and warn the others, perhaps even spot a weakness in the star's defenses, provided it had anything resembling armor or anatomy. Yount was confident that the full military might of the Abbey would stand up to any foe, supernatural or otherwise. Torain had seen them through far greater assaults over the past twenty centuries.

And if it were hostile, if it overwhelmed him, he was ready for that too. He had been ready for that for a long time. A _long_ time.

Bessus' ears pricked up. The star was getting close now, less than a mile away. The soft, barely perceptible whispers that had tickled his ears for weeks were getting louder. Yount began the Chant of the Paladins under his breath to drown out the spectral noises, his sacred mumbling getting louder with each passing minute.

As the noise increased, so too the volume of his chanting until he was using his booming commander's voice. The white light from the star was now too bright to look at directly. Yount estimated that it would pass by his vantage point within a few minutes. He involuntarily tried clenching his left fist, and felt a slight vertigo when he remembered it was no longer there.

That's when both the distant cacophonies of the wind and his own chanting were drowned out by barking.

Hounds had discovered his scent. Bessus started, and his caved-in right leg greave roughly scraped against the chain mail underneath. The dogs began baying. The sound froze in the grizzled veteran's heart and filled his veins with icicles of cold iron.

Bessus responded with a frightened snort. Baying turned to deep, guttural snarling, a quarter-mile away or less.

Yount quickly wheeled around and headed toward the main road. His horse would outrun the dogs easily once on unbroken ground. As he rode he spotted a dozen or more hounds of immense size, almost as large as Bessus herself, bearing down at incredible speed over the roots and entangled twigs of the forest floor. He spurred her on, the hounds now in full pursuit.

Yount glanced behind him to his right and thought he saw the hounds' eyes glowing like orange embers in a dying fire. _Have_ _they been following us from the Wastes? Or from the Hole itself?_

When he reached the road Bessus came to a dead stop. The star was flying towards them at incredible speed, swooping down hundreds of feet to their level in a span of a few breaths. Yount had no chance to outrun this enemy. He turned to the east. The muscles in the back of his neck stiffened and his feet pressed down hard in the stirrups as he palmed the shaft of his lance. Dust particles kicked up all around him, the wind whipping them into tiny sheets of swirling black chaos. The once-faint hints of phantom whispers he and Markov first heard so long ago howled and ripped through the air above and around him, battering his ears like an arctic wave against a shipwreck.

The closest of the hounds, a great brown-black beast with tiny bright orange eyes, bounded toward him. Yount hurled his spear and struck it cleanly, below the shoulder and through the neck. It let out a high-pitched whimper, then tumbled into the dirt, collecting pine cones and twigs in its matted black fur. Within seconds it rolled harmlessly to Bessus' front hooves, it's large, five-fingered claw twitching on the rocky ground, a hoarse wheeze struggling to escape both its fanged mouth and the spear-wound.

The old knight drew his sword and braced himself in the saddle. He squinted his eyes. The bright white thing flying towards him was no proper star, but a winged creature holding a massive greatsword, a blazing weapon as radiant as the being itself. _Good_. _I can handle any enemy wielding a sword_.

The white star came at him. He turned Bessus to the left and raised Red Rage high above his head. The long, thin shadows of the blades of grass around him strained and clawed along the ground away from the approaching star. As it came within earshot he filled his lungs with cold autumn air and dust and held both in his lungs for an instant before letting his baritone sweep over the closing gap of road between him and the star-being.

"By the power of Torain, as the 47th Champion of the Clo—"

Yount's battle cry was cut short by the tip of a massive white-light greatsword that passed through his breastplate as if it were made of smoke. The length of the colossal blade glided effortlessly through Yount's midsection in one continuous motion, interrupted only when the hilt of the blade and the being's huge hand slammed into the warrior's torso, ripping the old knight in two. A moment later and it was all over. The thing flew away without pausing as it sped towards the gates of Exmortus Abbey.

Yount opened his eyes and saw Bessus standing there looking back at him, his own legs still firm in her stirrups. He could not hear the hounds anymore, nor could he command Bessus to run. _I need.. warn.. others.. all._.

He could not feel his arms, his body, his neck, the hairs of his mustache. The only sound now was a repetitive wet _thump thump thump_ that got louder and louder. Bessus slowly disappeared, fading into the dark.

Nothing was left now. Just darkness.

### Part One

### Chapter 1 – Exmortus Abbey

Ash watched in wonder as the new star, so low in the horizon, was swallowed by the rays of dawn. He had followed the new star all night, studying with increasing curiosity how it remained in a single spot while the rest of the celestia gradually made their way across the night sky. He noted its unusually low place in the heavens, just south of the Dream Draccus constellation, and the way it flickered rather than twinkled.

But all of that paled in comparison to the strange excitement Ash felt when he saw —when he thought he saw— the star crash to the earth like a vengeful meteor, only to rise just as fast to its proper position low in the horizon. That was several hours ago, and it had not happened since.

Ash had learned how to read the stars from his sea-faring father. He had given him precious little else: Ash's raven-black hair and violet eyes stood out from his father and five older brothers, all sun-blonde with piercing light blue eyes. The only thing that saved his mother from uncomfortable court gossip was Ash's striking resemblance to his grandfather, a war hero who had been granted a title of nobility for his bravery on a longship that had sunk in a battle he had lost. People talked of his late grandfather in hushed tones —they said that from birth it was obvious his grandfather, the seventh son of a lowly squid fisherman, was destined to be a great hero— and while Ash was now grown to the legendary captain's towering six-and-a-half-foot height, his lean, lanky, awkward frame was nothing like the thick slab of hairy-chested muscle his grandfather had been. Ash's twentieth name-day was approaching; by that time, his grandfather had already made a name for himself boarding enemy warships with a sword in his teeth and a crew of bearded warriors at his back.

His mother had been disappointed in him from the moment he emerged from her womb. She had wanted a girl.

Ash shuffled uncomfortably on the battlement. He rarely thought of his family anymore. They had never attempted to contact him. In all fairness, he had not tried to contact them either; it would be another two years and eight months before he would earn his entry into the Champions of the Chalice, his entry to knighthood. He promised himself he would send a letter then.

Ash tossed a small stone over the wall, losing sight of it before it hit the freshly-tilled wheat field below. One of the peasants had initially spotted the star eight or nine hours earlier, and Ash had joined in the rush from the mess hall to the top of the Snow Tower with everyone else to see it. Who could blame us? Nothing interesting has happened here since Yount and the Abbot left. Ash enjoyed his solitary nights up on the battlements, but with three-fourths of the Abbey on the roof, he had been shoulder-to-shoulder with people he normally avoided as they craned their necks and clucked their tongues at the new heavenly visitor. Everyone had a theory. A star. A comet. A sign from Torain. An angel. Fortunately for Ash, once everyone had argued their theory loud enough the roof emptied almost as quickly as it had swelled. He had contemplated many of his own theories in the lonely hours since, but had decided on nothing. Perhaps tomorrow night the true nature of the star will show itself. Become less of a mystery.

As the sky brightened, Ash's nighttime vigil came to a close. The mysterious new star faded into morning, and it was time to head downstairs to get some sleep before facing another dull, dismal day. With the Abbot and nearly all of the knights off on their secret mission out east, the past two months had been utterly intolerable. Basic discipline had disappeared, the training yard abandoned. Ash had been living like an oak leaf in a lazy wind, with no daily regimen to look forward to. Two months ago, Ash would never have dreamed of staying up all night atop the Snow Tower just to watch a tiny speck of light; now he was looking forward to doing it again. The Abbot will straighten this place out when he gets back.

Ash hopped off the battlement, pried open the heavy wooden trapdoor and shuffled down the winding staircase to the courtyard below. With most of the Abbey's knights gone, his assigned duties in the north stables could be done in less than an hour and a half —they only had three geldings and a pair of donkeys that belonged to a traveling merchant who had suffered a heart attack after dining with the monks months ago. Ash kept the stables spotlessly clean, the horses fed and watered, but it wasn't enough. Yesterday at dinner Ash had begged Zirev, the prior, for some additional work. Zirev had rolled his eyes and told him to clean out the old, abandoned bathhouse, took a rusty iron key off his belt and handed it to Ash. That's one building I've never been inside. I'll have to investigate it after lunch.

As he walked to the warm bunk waiting for him in the dormitory, Ash passed by Vard, Kris and some of the other trainees on their way out to their jobs in the brewery. With most of the farm work done by the peasants that lived around the Abbey, the brewery was one of the few places that offered any sort of stable, regular day-to-day manual labor. Zirev had offered him work there but Ash had declined, refusing to work with the 'yardlings,' as he called them. Few of the yardlings took their training seriously, and none of them save for Simon, the newest trainee, was his equal in their history and theology lessons. Ash had never gotten along with any of them —they were always making fun of his height, his eyes, his parents. There had been more split lips and bloodied noses than polite greetings between them.

Kris, the oldest and boldest of the yardlings, attempted to nonchalantly shove Ash's shoulder as they passed but Ash deftly swung his torso around to avoid the blow. So stupid. So predictable. Kris mumbled something to the Zanon brothers that made them laugh. Ash ignored them and went on his way. He had learned long ago to pick his battles. The Abbot had made sure of that.

When Ash arrived at his cell in the barracks —a small but comfy room, designed for two to four occupants— he chose the top bunk and scampered up. There were no windows in this room, which was just fine by him. He laid his head on the pillow, pulled up his bed sheet and within seconds was asleep.

Ash did not sleep well. He did not dream, but his sleep was filled with an unending chorus of distant, ghostly whispers. He woke up often and strained his ears to listen for them, but as soon as sleep overtook him the faint whispering returned. Stopping up his ears with the ends of the pillow didn't help. Filling the crack at the bottom of the room's door with his bed sheet had no effect either, other than leaving him slightly chilly. Trying the lower bunk only served to kick up enormous quantities of dust, which stuck to the inside of his throat and made him thirsty. After several hours of this, Ash reluctantly got up to go bother Smerdis.

With Yount and Markov gone, Smerdis was the eldest knight in the Abbey and in charge of Exmortus' military operations, including training. Unfortunately the old knight was not fond of training the yardlings, and after one ten-minute session of watching the yardlings wail on each other with blunted weapons Smerdis had proclaimed that he needed a day or two to design far-reaching, long-term improvements in the training curriculum. Ash had been hopeful at first —after all, Yount had said that a quarter-century ago Smerdis had been quite a soldier— but when the time came for the second training session, Smerdis was nowhere to be found. Ash caught up with him at dinner that evening. Smerdis excused himself and apologized, then promised to show up the next afternoon with a fresh perspective on improving their marital abilities.

That session came and went as well, without Smerdis. Ash was infuriated. The other yardlings laughed at him and went out the nearby South Gate to chase down animals in the surrounding forests. Ash dutifully showed up at noon the next day, and the next —the yardlings never showed up again, preferring to spend their training time loitering at the brewery. Before long Ash stopped showing up too. Occasionally he would pester Smerdis for training, almost as a game, just to see what excuses the fat knight would use next.

Ash walked up a flight of stone steps, down a well-lit hallway in the barracks and up two more flights up steps before he go to Smerdis' room. He knocked, once, twice, and waited.

No response. Perfect.

Ash went outside into the courtyard and saw Telly, a monastery hand, drawing water from the barracks' well.

"Brother, have you seen Smerdis? He was supposed to train us this afternoon," Ash said, trying his best to sound ignorant.

"No, Ashley, I haven't seen him since prayers this morning. You might want to ask Brother Gregg, after afternoon mass."

"Thank you Telly, I will do that." Like hell I will.

Ash walked across the courtyard to the chapel, entered and kneeled. It was far too early for afternoon mass, but he could wait. He had nothing but time.

"Ash, the Prior requests to see you in his quarters. Now."

Ash did not move. He had been deep in prayer, almost a trance, asking Torain to please bring the Abbot, Yount, Markov and the other knights back safely. Nothing irritated him more than being interrupted while praying. Zirev can wait another thirty minutes.

Ash clasped his hands together tightly, closed his eyes and bowed toward the marble statue of Torain that towered over him. The statue was beyond ancient, chipped and cracked in several places. Zirev had told him that the statue was even older than Exmortus itself, and that the Abbey was built around the statue thousands of years ago. When Ash had asked the Abbot about that, the old priest had smiled and told him that the Abbey had run into a bit of monetary luck recently, and he would be restoring the statue in gold leaf, as is proper for any revered icon of The Lord.

Ash didn't think that was necessary. The weathered marble gave it a sort of majestic sadness that he had come to admire.

"C'mon, Ash," the boy continued. "Don't get me in trouble."

Ash stood up slowly. He towered over the boy. Ash had seen him around —another peasant, he supposed. He didn't know the boy's name, but had remarked to himself a few days ago on how similar he had looked at that age. Short-clipped dark hair; long, dangling limbs more fit for a willow tree than a young man; and a loping, clumsy way of walking that Ash still was not entirely comfortable with. Other than the eyes —the boy's were a dull, flat brown that made him look like a beached fish— Ash saw a little bit of himself reflected in the poor sap.

But only a little bit. Ash's knees popped and cracked as he stood up. He was still a young man by most standards, but sometimes it felt like he had inherited his grandfather's ancient knees. The elders in the Abbey had told him that he was blessed with near-supernatural health —particularly when compared to the other trainees, some of whom came down with illnesses every other week— but his knees were his weak spot. Kneeling gave his weary knees comfort. This interruption had better be worth it.

Ash had gone to Zirev at least once a day asking for news of the Abbot's expedition. And at least once a day the prior told him that he knew nothing. He also 'knew nothing' when they had spent months planning the expedition, and then 'knew nothing' about why they had to take half the Abbey's soldiers. Still, Zirev usually didn't call Ash into his office unless he had important news, new duties, or some new racy joke he had come up with ten minutes earlier. Ash braced for the worst.

The actual office of the Prior was located in the far north of the Abbey, on the northwestern corner of the Moon Cloister. A decade ago, Zirev had stirred a controversy when he relocated his office to the mostly-unused guest housing in the far south of the Abbey. Physically, it was the single farthest point in the entire Abbey from the Abbot's lodgings. As he walked up, he noticed two fine destriers in the guest stables —not his responsibility, as his duties were exclusive to the northern merchant's stables— and made a mental note to ask the prior about any wealthy new guests.

The door to the prior's office was always closed but never locked. Ash gave it a stiff tug, and let himself in.

"Ah! Come in, Ashley, I need to ask you a favor."

Ash respectfully bowed to the prior as he entered the familiar room. The tiny, cramped office contained nothing more than Zirev's desk, a stool, a single wooden bench reserved for the rare visitor, and a jumble of wicker baskets in one corner that housed nearly a dozen cats. Ash gagged a little at the noxious scent of cat fur and ammonia.

Zirev, a small-shouldered, bespectacled, fair-haired man in his late thirties —though he looked considerably younger than that when he was in a good mood— silently nodded to Ash to sit down.

"Ashley, I..," Zirev hesitated.

_That's a bad sign_. _When he searches for the right words like that, he's got some agenda._

"I.. I trust you've, ah..," the prior stumbled, "Ah.. let me explain, you see, it's the Abbot's expedition, which is.. well, it's.. we've heard, well, we've heard word that they're nearly here."

Zirev paused again for a few awkward seconds, his wide eyes straining to convey something that his tongue could not.

"That's excellent news, Father," Ash said curtly. I should be overjoyed. Should be. "I trust they returned safely?"

"Most of them, yes."

"Most of them?"

Zirev paused, adjusting his sleeves. "A pair of traveling merchants reported that they spied four riders and a wagon. That's all I know."

Four riders. Four.

"Was Yount one of them?"

"I don't know that."

"What else do you know?"

"You know everything I do."

"Except why they left in the first place."

"Well, yes, except that. And a few other things. But on this one, you've got to trust me. Four riders."

Ash looked up at the window behind Zirev. It had a small terrace that jutted out over the southeastern walls, the tallest and strongest section of wall in the Abbey. Isn't that a potential weakness in our defenses? Why do I even care?

Zirev stroked an orange tabby while he waited for Ash to respond, then continued. "I just sent Telly with three horses from the stables to go meet them. The two merchants said they're maybe a day's ride away, two days at the most if their horses are still half-alive," Zirev shuffled some papers on his desk.

Ash sat in silence. Four riders.

"But that's not the only reason I asked you here today. I need a favor from you."

"... What?"

"I need you to catch a boar."

Ash started. "Are you serious?"

"Yes. As you know, we're a bit short on swords right now, and the hunters haven't been by in well over a week. Smerdis said he would do it, but... "

"You want me to go hunting?"

"Yes. Brother Glenn and I thought it wise to celebrate the return of the expedition with a feast. As it so happens, some of the beet farmers on the western side of the Abbey have been complaining about a large pig making a mess of things. I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone, and thought you might be interested," Zirev smirked for the first time all day, "...provided you aren't too busy with the bathhouse."

"No. No! Not too busy, not too busy at all." Ash brightened to the idea. None of the other yardlings could be trusted with this much responsibility. "Do I get a weapon, armor, horse?"

"Of course! Whatever you need is at your disposal." Zirev quickly scribbled out an order on a small note. "Take this to Klaus down at the smithy, and get yourself fitted. Whatever steel you feel you need."

Ash's knees started bouncing up and down, despite his best efforts to appear calm. One of Zirev's strays sensed his excitement and nuzzled his head against Ash's calf. He had never been given permission to use real weapons before. In the yard, everything was blunted to prevent serious injury, although even a blunted bit of steel could give you deep bruises that lasted for days. "And a horse?"

"I sent three with Telly."

Just the two donkeys, then. No thank you. "A bow?"

"Are you trained in the bow?"

"Not yet."

"Then no."

"Worth a shot," Ash grinned. "Will anyone be coming with me?"

"Of course. The two beet farmers will accompany you. They seem to know the details of this thing far better than I do. And of course, I should send another one of the trainees with you. Kurt, maybe?"

Ash winced. Zirev's eyes lit up in sarcastic glee. "No? What about Vard? Kris?"

Ash hated them all. Part of him wanted one of them to come along, if only so Ash could see what happens when an idiot is skewered to death on a tusk. "Can I choose?"

"Of course."

Ash ran down the list of yardlings. Some, like Kris, were more than decent with a piece of steel in their hands. But if I'm in charge, I need soldiers who won't club me in the back of the neck at a critical moment, or run craven when they hear the squeal of a wild pig. Ash pondered, then came to a decision.

"I pick Simon."

"The library boy?" Zirev chuckled. "The scholar? He seems nice enough... but for a pig hunt?"

"If it's my mission, then I get to pick. And he'll do what I tell him to do, I think."

"Fair enough. He's yours. I'll send for him directly."

Ash felt grateful to the prior for giving him something important to do, but he couldn't stop thinking of the Abbot's expedition. "If you find out anything more... can you tell me?"

Zirev stopped smiling, and looked past Ash's melancholic, violet eyes, straight into the back of his skull. "You have my word, Ashley."

The two stood staring at each other, both thinking of things far beyond the spare confines of the room. Zirev exhaled, then broke the silence. "So, it's settled, then. Meet me at the crack of dawn over by the sheep's gate, behind the granary on the west wall. You should go to the armorer first, preferably as soon as possible."

"I won't let you down." Ash felt a welling of emotion catch in his throat. He swallowed it down with a gulp.

"I know, that's why I selected you. Oh, and one more thing —if you see a couple of well-dressed men in the waiting room, could you send them in? Don't mention anything about the Abbot, or the knights, or anything at all about this expedition mess, really. In fact, if they ask about the Abbot, just say they're here, but indisposed. That they've always been here. Don't mention the mission at all. Could you do that for me?"

"Of course." Ash turned and left.

Just as Zirev had predicted, there were two impeccably dressed visitors standing in the lobby, admiring a four hundred year old sculpture of an aspect of Torain made by the Abbey's legendary artist Father Damion. One of the men wore a bright cherry-red cloak and sported a perfectly-coiffed goatee, while the other was dressed in the most garish outfit Ash had ever seen, with a rich, gem-lined sable fur coat, luxurious trappings and earrings sporting sapphires the size of grapes. I think I know whose destriers are in our guest stables. He motioned for them to come in, left them at Zirev's office and crossed the cloister to the training yard.

Inside, the yard was silent; even the loud noises of the brewery were muffled in the training area. The only sound was the faint sound of leaves rustling as a steady gust of wind blew down into the top of the massive, ancient oak tree that filled the western portion of the yard. Ash passed by the eons-old fresco on the eastern wall that he had often wondered about —four old men in colorless robes holding a bowl, a mirror, a sword and a small plant— and let himself into the training armory.

It had been nearly three weeks since he'd been inside, and was pleasantly surprised to find his weapon of choice —a sleek, blunted steel practice sword that he secretly named the Oakblade— was still hanging from the peg where he had left it. Ash spent a few minutes dragging out a wooden practice dummy into the yard, then proceeded to work out some of the morning's frustrations on it.

Hold on. I came here for a reason. To prepare for a battle. With a pig. Ash considered the dummy for a moment, before dragging out another one, putting the first one on its side in the dirt and positioning the second on top of it. Ash then spent a few minutes looking for some sort of burlap sack or blanket to cover his practice pig, but couldn't find anything to his liking and so began to land blows on the prone dummies in earnest for several minutes, pretending the outstretched arms were three-foot-long tusks, nimbly avoiding them as he rained down blow after blow on the beast's foolishly-exposed head.

After a few minutes of this, Ash heard someone snicker behind him.

"Ay, lads, lookit little Ashley! Beatin' up on his poor defenseless mum and dad for fockin and leavin' 'im!"

Ash turned. It was Kris. Of course. Both the Zanon brothers were behind him, giggling.

"Ay, not that I can blame–oof!" Ash's fist sank deep into Kris' stomach. The brothers, seeing Ash's white face turn reddish purple, stopping laughing and backed away. Kris doubled over in pain, then grabbed Ash's ankle and twisted him awkwardly to the ground.

Ash scampered to his feet but the yardlings were quicker. They had already run out, past the enormous iron Skywight Bell and to the great South Gate, which was propped open. Ash felt a slight twinge in his ankle —that fucker better not have sprained it— and limped after them. By the time he got to the gate the three boys were halfway down the steps and looking around for rocks.

Ash shouldered the massive doors closed behind them, then sat down in the dirt. He considered barring their way back in, but they could always come around to the northern gate, and he knew he would get in trouble for it. From the inside, the fifteen-foot high double doors were barren of all ornamentation, but the outer face of the South Gate was one of the Abbey's most cherished pieces of architecture: in solid, two-inch thick sheets of pure gold, the left door featured the moon, held up by a man's hand. On the right door, the sun. When the doors were closed, they formed the image of a faceless Torain holding up both celestial bodies while standing atop an ocean of stars. Ash wished he could say it was the first thing he had seen when he had arrived at the Abbey a decade ago, but he had come from the bland wooden North Gate, where wagon carts came in to avoid the long staircase.

Ash ran up the causeway to the top of the gatehouse to see if the boys were begging to be let in. Unfortunately, they were still lingering around the middle of the stairs. The Zanons were looking for rocks in the stony cliffs alongside and Kris was taking a piss behind one of the eleven statues of Torain that dotted the 333 steps. Sacrilegious son of a bitch. Once a month, Ash had walked those steps reciting his prayers —there was a small prayer on each of the steps, a small statue of Torain every 33rd step and, every ninth step, one of the 37 Simple Truths that every priest, knight or monk of Torain must live by. That idiot Kris doesn't know even the most basic of Torain's Simple Truths. He just memorized them for our lessons, then forgot them. He's going to be trouble for the Abbey when he attains knighthood.

After watching the yardlings for a while, Ash got restless and headed north to the bathhouse. Using the key Zirev had given him the day before, Ash fiddled with the antique lock for a few minutes before the pins caught and the key turned. The aged pine door was just warped enough to prevent the door from opening, but after a good stiff shove from Ash's shoulder it burst open.

Inside, the air was damp and musty. In the center of the main room was a tiled depression nearly eighty feet across and fifteen feet wide. Ash carefully climbed down into it. It's deepest point was only up to his neck, although there were far shallower places along the rim where the monks and knights of old could relax. Zirev had told him that the bathhouse had not been used in over twenty years —since the last Festival of Despicus— and had not seen regular use in well over a hundred years. The ever-dwindling number of monks in the Abbey had proven insufficient to staff such a labor-intensive luxury. It was far cheaper to have the priests bathe in one of the many streams along the southeastern slopes of Deaf Mountain.

Ash glanced around, taking mental notes of the place. Along the walls were chipped mosaics showing the various bathing rites the residents of the Abbey once practiced. There were small square rooms jutting out from the long eastern wall. Ash found one with a still-intact bench in it, laid down, and instantly fell asleep.

When Ash woke up there was still daylight outside. Good. I probably couldn't have been asleep for more than a few hours at most. Ash rolled off the bench and onto the hard tiled floor, then crawled to the doorway and peeked into the main room. Silence. Nothing. I like this place. The yardlings would never think to look for me here. Ash wondered if Zirev had given him the key to this place as a gift. He knows how much I loathe those bastards. I've got the only key to this place. Needs a few touches here and there. My private little fortress. Ash had not locked the front door, but a quick look outside revealed that no one knew he was there.

Ash walked across the narrow courtyard —quickly, so that any rogue yardlings in the nearby brewery wouldn't know where he had come from— to the smithy, where Klaus the blacksmith was hard at work banging a flat piece of metal with a heavy hammer. The large man had patches of hair in strange places, the result of one too many times catching fire, and was enthusiastic about helping Ash find a weapon and a suit of armor that would fit him.

Ash spent two hours at the armory, comparing weapons and listening to the blacksmith's droning. Klaus' early eagerness to help had quickly turned into a one-sided barrage of useless opinions on monastery gossip and dull church politics. Ash wanted to tune him out but he needed the smith's expertise: despite trying to remember everything that Yount and Markov had taught him, all the swords in the smithy looked basically the same to him. For all of his impressive combat training and tactical learning, he had no idea what made one weapon superior to another. And getting a straight answer from the gossip-mongering blacksmith was next to impossible.

Nevertheless, after two hours Ash had chosen a longsword, a heavy spear, and been fitted out with a suit of Klaus' finest mail over tough, boiled leather. His arms and legs were covered in steel greaves, while his torso was enveloped tightly by a thick steel breastplate. He had a heavy steel helmet that covered everything but his eyes and mouth, and a weighted oak-and-iron rectangular shield to keep between himself and the charging boar. Swinging the surprisingly light blade in his left, Ash felt ready to take on a swarm of ice-breathing dragons. After helping him out of his new armor, Klaus put the suit and weapons in a special locker for Ash to come pick up at dawn tomorrow.

Ash left the armory with his head held high, his long legs taking extra-bold steps across the northern clearing to the stables. With all the horses gone and just the two abandoned donkeys present, Ash raced through his duties in less than half an hour, then ambled south to the library, perhaps his favorite place in the entire Abbey. It was very near dusk now. He felt a small pang of guilt for having missed Brother Gregg's daily afternoon mass —today's homily would be about the evils of gold, for the third time in as many weeks— but his trip to the armory was ultimately of more importance to the Abbey's health and future well-being.

Ash loved the library. As a trainee, he was given free reign to find, handle and read almost any book in the stacks —with the exception of the forbidden volumes locked away in the man-sized bronze cube in the far northeastern corner of the library. Only the Abbot had access to those prohibited tomes. There was only one other person in the library at that time, the youngest of the yardlings, the plump little boy named Simon.

Ash had grown to like Simon, although cautiously. The boy was as silent as an ox, but among the trainees his intelligence and learning already rivaled Ash's own. His marital skills were terrible at best and upon seeing the lad's physical awkwardness Yount had made sure that he was not subject to any more live action drills. Ash often wondered why Simon was even in training for knighthood when it seemed to him that Simon's quiet demeanor and natural penchant for scholarship would make him the perfect candidate for the priesthood. The Abbey had seen precious few petitioners in the ten years since Ash had arrived.

Simon was reading a particularly dense and dusty tome, so engrossed in the text that he didn't even notice Ash until he sat down beside him.

"Evening, Simon."

"Er, yes, evening."

"What is that you're reading there?"

"A book. Er, it's a book that Father Gene recommended. A Chronicle of My Travels Through The Sovereign Lands of Maru-Qat, by the great historian Alphacene. It's really very interesting, if a little out of date."

"Any great battles?" Ash loved military history more than anything else. Oftentimes, he would find Simon reading about distant cultures and their ways of life, but non-military subjects bored him to tears.

"Well, plenty, actually. All nine cities have been at war with each other since the very beginning of recorded history. Maybe longer. But nothing ever seems to change, er, no one has actually successfully conquered any of the nine. At least not when this was written."

Ash suddenly lost interest. "Hmm. Fascinating. I'll be over in the theology section if you find out anything else." Simon grunted in approval and went back to devouring his book.

Ash wandered into the religious section, easily the largest and most well-organized of all the sections of the library, and started poking through the dusty scrolls. Barely half of them were truly legible, and often those were not in any language familiar to him. Of the ones that were, few were dated and even fewer were older than a few hundred years. Still, it was a personal quest of his to find the single oldest scroll in the entire library. Thus far, his record was the Scroll of Triumph, a rather amusingly nonsensical account of how Torain came to Loross from across the sea and drove an army of sky-demons —issuing from the Adversary's dark fortress on the edge of night— into a hellish prison deep below the earth. Simon and Ash had gotten a good laugh out of the archaic writing and fantastic claims. More importantly, the scroll was dated, if accurate, to be 473 years old.

When he had told Zirev, the prior had laughed and said that there were tomes in the library that made that scroll look like a pink-skinned newborn babe. Naturally, he refused to tell me where they were. Ash had feigned disappointment, but he loved the sense of exploration and discovery too much for Zirev's reluctance to really bother him. The library was nearly two thousand years old, after all —there were bound to be a host of secrets hidden in those dusty, crumbling stacks.

After a few hours pouring over illegible and partially-destroyed scrolls, Ash felt the sharp pangs of hunger. Heading to the kitchens for the dinner meal, he had hoped to run into Simon, either in the central reading room or in the mess hall, but the boy was nowhere to be found.

The kitchens were serving boiled beets and cabbage that evening and Ash took a hearty helping, sitting by himself at one of the long wooden tables in the mess. Not long afterward the various denizens of the Abbey started to trickle in: Brother Gregg, shaking the dust off his feet as he came in; Smerdis, carefully avoiding eye contact with Ash as he set down his triple servings of the night's meal; and the yardlings, stinking of the brewery. Every night, each citizen of the Abbey that had taken their vows was given a single tankard of Exmortus Ale —Ash had heard from Zirev that the wealthy merchants and wizards of the west would pay for barrels of the stuff in gold coin— and tonight, the strong hoppy beer was going straight to Ash's head. When he saw Kris, he felt the need to finish what he had started in the training yard. Kris glanced at him, subtly grabbed his own genitalia and made an exaggerated yanking motion —hidden from the eyes of the priests, although it was in full view of Smerdis, who wasn't paying attention to anyone in the room— and made the other yardlings chuckle. That fucking bastard. I'll kill him someday. Me and him are going to fight. Ash took another swig of his ale, imagining various complicated scenarios that would allow him to stick a sharp piece of hot metal into one of Kris' orifices. He bared a toothy grin at his enemy, but Kris had already moved on to his table.

After dinner, Ash had nothing more to do. The horses —and the Abbot's expedition— had not returned yet, and the library was not an easy place to maneuver around in at night. He headed down to the training yard to get some practice in, then realized that he had left the two dummies lying on top of each other in his haste earlier that day. I don't want Yount or Markov to come back and find them... the yardlings would tell, for certain. Still, I can always do it tomorrow...

Ash yawned, a much deeper yawn than he had expected, and swerved to the barracks for a late-night nap. After ten years, he could easily find his way around the trainee's floor in the dark. He found his room without needing to light any lamps —let someone else do it— laid down in one of the lower bunks and traced his fingers in the darkness across a line of graffiti etched into his bed. Dale once told him that the barracks were the newest structure in the complex, replacing the old barracks which were where the brewery now stood. Dale had no idea how old Ash's bunk was, or in what script the graffiti was written —but knowing trainees, it was probably something he wouldn't want to repeat to the Abbot if he wanted to keep out of trouble. Ash smiled faintly, then fell asleep.

Ash woke up with a start. The dreams that were not dreams, the harsh whispering, continued to haunt him as he slept and prevented him from getting any deep sleep. All the same, I've got important work to do. Ash swung his legs off the bed, carefully ducked his head under the top bunk and stood up, stretching. All was quiet outside in the hallway. Ash walked on the balls of his feet through the dark corridors and common room, then outside and across the eastern courtyard to the Snow Tower.

He looked behind him for some time, trying to spot any movement in the dead of night, but saw nothing. He quickly slipped through the heavy door, bounded up the steps and emerged out onto the roof.

Taking his place on the battlement, he saw the new star, a bright, tiny point of white light still low in the horizon. Staring at it for some minutes, Ash felt a slight chill creep up his arms. I must be getting tired. Since last night, it looks like it's... closer.

Ash stretched out on the battlement, and resumed his night-time vigil.

### Chapter 2 – The Boar Hunt

Ash did not remember falling asleep atop the Snow Tower. Nor did he recall waking up, heading down the rail-less winding staircase, opening the heavy oaken door, heading across the north courtyard to the bathhouse, unlocking the door, shouldering it open with a heave, locking it behind him, laying out on his bench in one of the changing rooms and falling asleep once more.

Ash did not remember any of that, but when the sun's rays warmed his face he was laid out on a bench in one of the bathhouse's small changing rooms as the gentle, playful tinkling of the Meadpipes bell in the cloisters sounded that it was the start of a new day. The Meadpipes were a relatively new set of bells, designed to replace the solemn, severe tones of the iron Skywight bell in the south of the Abbey. Ash had heard the Skywight ring just once, when he was a boy —Father Yashov, a dour old priest with black bags under his eyes that gave him a ghoulish appearance on even the sunniest summer day, had passed away at the ripe age of 94. The Skywight seemed especially fitting for that grim occasion.

Ash stretched, the lord of a secret mansion hidden in plain sight in the center of the Abbey. He crept to the door and poked his head out. _No yardlings in sight. Good._ Skipping breakfast, he snuck past the monks' dormitory that abutted against the bathhouse and entered the chapel.

The northern entrance to Exmortus Cathedral was a very different cousin to its more ornate and ceremonial southern entrance. The southern entrance was an exquisitely-carved gold relief of the Third Sacred Scroll, depicting Torain taking fire from the sun and gifting it to mankind. Ash and Simon often wondered at the artist's choice of subject, considering that in the Fifth Sacred Scroll mankind burned the earth to cinders, unable to control the power of the sun. Ash thought that the Seventh Scroll, in which Torain relents and pinches off a host of smaller fires from the stars and gifts it to the first man's surviving children, would have been a better choice.

The northern entrance, closer to the dormitories and cloisters of the monks, was far less glamorous. A simple wooden door with a single rune inscribed on it. The rune was a mystery of the faith; once Ash had been accepted as either a knight or a Brother, the meaning of the inscription would be revealed to him. He and Simon had once spent a week poring over linguistic studies in the library, but could not discover its origin. They did manage to turn up a surprising amount of eye-opening ancient pictographs of human genitalia, however. To Ash's surprise, the oldest scrolls were almost always the most perverted.

Ash quietly entered through the north door, walked up to the Tome of Sanctum and kissed it. Continuing into the chapel itself Ash found a bench and knelt before the weathered statue of Torain, offering a prayer to Him for strength, to fight the boar; for luck, to avoid injuries; and for leadership. _I need this to go well. My first true trial in the Abbey. My first true test. Time to lead my flock._

After a quiet moment in the chapel, Ash got up, bowed once more to the statue and left to get his suit and weapons at the blacksmith's.

Thanks to the blacksmith's penchant for endless chatter and a host of fitting problems that had not come up the previous day, the trip to the armory took far longer than Ash had bargained for. First light had long since come and gone when he finally emerged, clad from head to toe in polished steel. His armor weighed heavy on his lean frame and his shield did not quite fit right on his left arm but other than that, Ash was ready to go to war.

"Ashley! Ho boy! Ash!" Zirev looked ready to burst with laughter. "Where are you going off to, Man of Metal?"

For a moment, Ash was glad that none of the other yardlings were near. "I-I'm so sorry for being late, the armorer took so long, it was just that..."

"Come, come, my boy, never mind all that, we've got work to do. The sheep gate is just a few paces this way. You passed right by it a moment ago. I yelled but you didn't hear me."

Red-faced, Ash removed his helmet and felt a slight gust of cool glacial air on his pounding head. It was strangely refreshing. "I apologize, Prior," he said, steeling himself for the beast outside the gate. "I'm.. I'm ready."

The two walked silently through the unlocked gate, which was hardly taller than a foal. Ash, standing almost a foot taller than the prior, had to bend his frame in two just to squeeze underneath it, a task made doubly difficult by the heavy mail he was supporting. He groaned, and thought he heard Zirev chuckling silently.

"That's them, over there by the fence. Simon's been here all morning. The boy is extraordinarily prompt and polite. I can see why you chose him over the others."

Ash looked toward the three figures. Simon was there, an unassuming boy of fifteen or sixteen with a slight paunch, egg-colored skin and a head of thin brown hair. He had no armor of any kind and carried nothing more than a small iron mace hooked into his ropebelt. Other than the mace, he looked no different than he did poring over ancient religious texts in the library. Ash wondered whether he was in any way prepared for a potentially lethal fight.

But the unassuming young boy was very nearly missed, blending effortlessly into the background behind the other two figures. One was a massive tank of a man wearing a cracked leather vest, a solid brown kilt and knee-high boots, leaning on an oversized scythe. His hair was a filthy blonde, cut unevenly short in the front and sides, with a long greasy waterfall of tangled, matted hair in the back that fell past his neck. His sky-blue eyes were too far apart for his face and seemed to be looking in two different directions. The fuzzy beginnings of a golden-blonde handlebar mustache draped over his gap-toothed mouth. He was chewing on a beet and looking towards Ash as they approached. _Looks d_ _umb as a rock and big as a mountain. This one should be easy to control._

The other was a young boy, with a face and hands as smooth and delicate as a girl's, clad in a whirlwind of unnecessarily bright, garish colors. The skinny kid had a leather vest lined with daggers draped over a bright yellow wool shirt, and was trying to entertain the other two by performing back flips in the mud. When the boy spied Ash and Zirev, he attempted a hands-free cartwheel. An instant later his long, fine black hair was covered in goat shit and mud.

The massive brute spoke as they approached, his words garbled by the beet still half-chewed in his mouth. The great beast looked up into Ash's deep violet eyes and held out his hand. "Name's Steed, friend," he said, his face going grim for an instant. "Glad to meet you."

Ash took the brute's hand and firmly shook it. _Yount said a firm hand is as essential to a strong leader as a sharp eye._ Though the big man stood a good half-foot shorter than Ash, his fists were the largest Ash had ever seen, criss-crossed with the old scars of hundreds of slices, punctures and scrapes. The smaller boy stopped brushing the muck from his hair, darted his head up near Ash's leg and quickly said, "Hi!" in a falsetto voice before resuming his acrobatics. Ash turned to Zirev with a confused look.

"That's Ziggy. Steed's younger brother. Ash, this is your company for the day. Your job is to find that boar and return before nightfall. Otherwise our returning heroes will feast on dried mutton and stale black bread."

"Zirev...." Ash was suddenly having doubts about this hunt. _Should I have chosen Kris or Vard?_ _With three trained soldiers such as myself, it would be a simple matter of finding and killing the pig. But with this group..._

"You have your orders, Ashley Xavier. Steed and Zigmund will be your guides. Use caution when you find it, a simple pig is not worth the life of the Abbot's favorite. You will be a knight of Torain soon, a Champion of the Chalice. You've practiced plenty: now go out there and put your training and your abilities to good use. Watch the sharp ends of that blade, there. Good day, gentlemen."

Ash watched in silence as Zirev turned and hurried off to the courtyard.

"Your name is Xavier?" Steed was grinning. " _Ashley_ ?"

"From the proud House of Xavier, Lords of Boarsky in the Land of Bannor. Sixth Son of Ashbaron Xavier, current Ward of the Water in the famous City of Blades."

"No shit?" Steed's eyes smiled. "Well, _Ashley_ , I'm Steed, son of a consumptive whore, and this is my goat's shit-squirt of a brother. We're Farmers of the Beets and Shepherds of the Goats for the abbey. Glad to meet you."

Ash grunted. "Pleased to make your acquaintance. Shall we begin the hunt now?"

Ziggy bounced back to where the two men were standing and started talking rapidly. "The fat bastard was here last night, he burrowed a hole, a big hole through the fence over there. The thing's left an easy trail to follow, but I'd take off all that metal if I were you. You're gonna have to crawl through the hole."

Ash was at the end of his patience. _Why did Zirev send me out with these imbeciles? I shall be spending my entire day babysitting farmers and wallflowers, when I should be among those greeting our knights as they return_. _While I'm elbow-deep in pig blood, Kris will be the first trainee to welcome our masters home._ He sighed. "Where are your arms? I don't want to be carrying back three dead bodies to-day."

Zigmund sprinted towards a sad-looking shack on the edge of the fence and emerged seconds later with a shortbow and quiver. Each of the arrows was painted a different bright color, while the quiver was obviously home-made, roughly sewn together with scraps and patches of discarded leather. "Armed and ready, m'lord."

Simon awkwardly got up from where he was sitting and unhooked the mace from his belt. "Let's get this over with. Ash. Er—sir? Ash-sir?"

"No need to 'sir' me, Simon. Steed, if you need a sword and bow I can make arrangements."

"The bow is a coward's weapon, and swords are for little girls. I'll be bringing the Ugly Stick with me. Let's go."

Ash was getting annoyed. "The _Ugly Stick_?"

"My scythe, Ashy. I call it that because it makes my victims uglier, when I hit them in their fucking face. Even uglier than this sacksniffer right here." Steed pointed at Ziggy, who picked up a rock and threw it at Steed's torso. It hit his chest with a dull _thump_. Steed took the butt end of his scythe and swung it wildly toward Ziggy's face, and nearly connected had the lithe little acrobat not bent backwards and drawn one of the daggers from his vest in one graceful motion. He took a jab at Steed, slicing a two-inch slash across the side of his mammoth thigh.

" _Enough_!" Ash's patience with these morons had run out. "Show me the hole!"

Steed clasped his bleeding thigh. "Which one, the pig's or the place where I pleasured your mother this morning?"

Ash's face went rigid. He paused for a moment, then unbuckled his sheath, letting it drop to the ground. He carefully removed his mailed gloves and helmet. _This has to be fair_. Steed was still grinning stupidly when Ash took two long strides toward him and clocked him with the full fury of his right fist directly under the buffoon's chin. He felt Steed's muscled neck snap back as pain shot across his knuckles.

Steed dropped his scythe and held his chin with both hands for a few long seconds. Then he purposefully fell backward on his right leg and let his freshly-sliced left leg fly up into Ash's unprotected groin. _Grrooooff._ Ziggy and Simon both winced when they saw Ash's pained, purple face.

Ash staggered in a small circle, wracked with spasms of pain darting across his body, helplessly clutching his groin. When his sense of awareness returned a moment later he saw Steed lying on the ground, rubbing dirt into his jaw with both hands.

_Laughing_.

Enraged beyond control, Ash leapt onto the ogre's prone body and started pounding away with his fists.

Steed roared in approval, grabbed Ash in a bearhug and started rolling toward a beet patch. Ziggy rushed over, joyfully kicking both fighters in the face and neck while shouting profanities. The two tussled for a few breaths, until Steed suddenly rolled off and stood up. The unmistakable sound of a large pig carried over the fence. Steed bent down and effortlessly lifted the still-hostile Ash off the ground. He set him on his feet and stuck out his hand. "You're a lot stronger than you look, Ashy. We should beat each other's brains out again sometime. But now's the time for some pig-killin'. Let's move!"

Ash, stunned, stood in the spot where he had just been placed like some little girl's toy doll. Steed and Ziggy were already moving towards a hole in the outer fence thirty yards to the south, having picked their weapons off the ground on the way. Simon glanced guiltily at Ash, turned, and without a word, started jogging to catch up to the beet brothers.

Ash came to, walked to his weapons and picked them up like a bundle of firewood. For perhaps the first time in his life, he felt a strange sense of freedom. He had never lost a fight before. Not a fair fight anyway. He looked at the helmet in the dirt, decided to leave it there, and crawled through the hole in the fence on his hands and knees.

Ash was tired. They had been following the trail of the beast for half a day, and the sun's rays would soon begin to give way to the harsh darkness of early winter. The light snows of the previous week had melted days ago, creating vast pools of frigid mud. Cold mud and grass and tiny, sharp pine needles were in every crevice in his armor, adding even more weight to his already exhausted body. His battle with Steed several hours earlier had left him tired and limp. He tasted a small trace blood in his mouth, his arms felt like they'd been hollowed out and the knuckle on his right fist was raw from where he had connected with Steed's chin. His groin ached with every step.

The two brothers, though, were full of energy. Ziggy was ridiculously giddy; Ash could've believed he was in an especially good mood eight hours ago, but after a full afternoon with this cart-wheeling, tumbling idiot, Ash was convinced the boy was a full-on lunatic.

From the moment Ash emerged on the other side of the hole in the fence the bright-eyed boy had alternated between putting on a performance and dourly sulking. "Look! Ash! Look!" he would beg one minute, firing bright orange, red and green arrows at the fleeing beast. Seconds later, the boy would be dragging his legs behind them, flinging angry scowls at Ash and Simon if they so much as asked him what was wrong.

Ash especially hated the way the boy posed as he drew back his bow —flinging a leg over a rock, or balancing on one foot, or some other spontaneous silliness— and more than once felt like yelling at the waif to settle down. _This one is as dangerous to us as he is to the enemy._ The boar hunt was nothing more than an amusing game to him; failure and disappointment never once crossed the beet farmer's mind.

Steed was hardly more tolerable, leading the hunt through the mountainside's thick undergrowth. Despite his bulky frame the ogre was shockingly fast, even when he was crawling on all fours trying to get through a nasty patch of thorned briar or ankle-deep in mud. Steed had no regard for those slower than he was, however, and many times Ash had to stop, and listen through his labored breathing for Steed's bellowing laughter or the _thrum_ of Ziggy's bow. _These two are fast, but otherwise worse than useless. We'll be lucky if we find our way back to the Abbey empty-handed. The other yardlings will have a field day when they find out why we're eating gruel and boiled potatoes at the welcoming feast._

Despite the rough going, Ash's mind was elsewhere. _Four riders_. Yount and Markov would naturally make it out alive —Zirev, who had traveled widely in his youth, said that two finer knights could not be found anywhere in the Empire. Yount was especially dear to Ash's heart, as the graying warrior had taken him in from a very early age. The two were both taller than anyone else at the Abbey. Both lean, and lanky, and willing to lay down their life for Torain. Ash saw an older version of himself in the old knight, and often suspected the old knight felt the same about him.

Yount was unquestionably loyal to his sworn brothers —Ash would have been too, had any of the other yardlings been worthy his loyalty. _It's definitely easier to love your brothers when they're men like Markov, or Dale, or Fyodor._ The thought that he might someday join their ranks —perhaps, in twenty or thirty years, even _lead_ them— gave him a feeling of sacred strength, a surge of power in his chest and limbs, a grim sense of determination whenever he had to face adversity. _And who knows? Maybe even some of the other yardlings will someday learn what it truly means to be a Champion of the Chalice._

Ash grunted, grimacing in pain as he lifted one leg over a thorn bush, then the other. _But probably not. I may be the last true knight of Exmortus. Provided I don't get killed by a pig today._

At any rate, once Ash had seen the quarry they were hunting he knew they would never kill it. The thing was much larger and faster than he'd imagined, and they had come ill-equipped to deal with such a beast. In his hurry to leave the smithy he had left behind his heavy spear. Ash's sword was practically worthless, as were Ziggy's tiny daggers, which probably couldn't pierce the creature's thick hide. The less said about Simon's mace, the better, although a heavy club could come in useful for a killing blow. And that farming instrument that Steed wielded was a joke. _Wheat doesn't grow tusks and fight back with the ferocity of a thousand barb-tailed devils. It was a mistake to bring these simple farmers along. What was Zirev thinking?_

The pine and sentinel trees were thick on this side of the Abbey, crowding the southeastern slopes of old Deaf Mountain. Ash kept his bearings by frequently reminding himself to look up from the mud and brush, and felt a small sense of relief when their path started sloping gently downhill. He estimated their location using the high walls, and roughly determined that their course had taken them around the slopes to the southern forests around the Abbey.

Simon was not cut out for this. He lagged behind Ash for most of the hunt and Ash stopped often to allow him to catch up. Finding the beet brothers after these pauses was often extremely difficult, although in most cases the boar's trail led the way. Every so often Ash would come across a small patch of blood, although if it was the pig's, or Steed's, he couldn't know.

"Should we leave them now?"

For one fleeting moment Ash was tempted. A quick trip to the armory for four spears and a net would be tremendously beneficial and put some of his doubts to rest. _It would only take two hours, three at the most._ Maybe even a donkey from the stables. _No one would miss it. I doubt half the Abbey even realizes the donkeys are there._ The two brothers would probably not notice their absence. _It's not like we're going to catch the damned thing anyway. Why waste everyone's time?_ He glanced up at the top of the great southern wall of Exmortus Abbey as it poked through the tall pines like a distant black curtain, took a deep breath and put a weary left arm on Simon's shoulder. He could feel Simon shivering from the cold: the boy was not properly dressed for this exercise. A fresh set of cold-weather clothing was just an hour's trek away.

"It can't be far off now. The pig droppings look fresh. Fortunately, we're still within an hour or two of the southern gate, so we should have this—"

Suddenly they heard a blood-curdling roar to the south, followed by the angry squeals of a large pig.

_Steed's hurt_.

Ash drew his longsword, Simon his mace, and they began to run as quickly as their tired legs would let them towards the sounds. They jumped over long-fallen trees, ducked under low-hanging pine branches and splashed through rivulets of icy mud. Steed bellowed again, much louder. In violence, in pain. Ash was regretting his decision in Zirev's office. He was the only one among them who had been instructed in the arts of war. The leader of this mission. The blood of these innocent farmers would be on his hands. The boar was just doing what Torain intended for it do to. He didn't know what was happening or what he was going to do when he found Steed. He steeled his mind and braced for the worst. _I will save this idiot's life. Even if it means carrying his body to the great Southern Gate myself._

Ash's long legs carried him far faster than Simon and as he broke into a small clearing in the pines he heard Steed.

_Laughing_.

"Ah, metal man! What took you so long?"

Ash slowed his sprint to a walk, trying to suck in enough air for his aching sides. Steed was standing over the bloodied carcass of a giant boar, an untamed look on his wide face. He was hacking away at one of the beast's great tusks with a small knife. Three painted arrows were sticking out of the boar's shoulder while a massive red gash split the beast's side from leg to leg. The pig's blood steamed as it poured out of the still-twitching creature and onto the grass. Steed's waist and legs were covered in blood, bile and shit. Ziggy was there too, humming happily, pulling with all his weight on a dagger that was lodged in the boar's ear.

"You missed the fun, Ashy! Here, help me with this fat fucker, would you? Hand over that knife you're holding, this one's too dull."

"What. Are you. Doing?" Ash asked between panting breaths. Ash's body wanted to collapse from fatigue, but he fought the urge. He didn't want the two farmers to see his weakness. _Not here_. "Why did you scream?"

"The knife, your _lordship_."

Ash was too tired to fight. He dropped the sword, then fell to his knees. He wanted to take off every piece of his mud and sweat-caked armor, but he could barely manage to sit down on the stony ground without tipping over. His heart was racing, and small pink dots were swirling around his field of vision. Waves of intense pain wracked his groin.

The boar's hind leg was still twitching but the beast had clearly stopped breathing. _It looks so much smaller now._

Steed stopped his sawing, dropped his dagger on the dark red ground and walked over to Ash, sitting down. "You've got the right idea, Ashy. We've won the day. Time to celebrate!" Steed laid down on his back, stretched his legs, and instantly started snoring.

Simon, huffing, ran up to Steed's blood-soaked body laying motionless on the ground. He made a small whimper as he knelt beside the man, angrily threw his mace on the ground and put his hands on Steed's broad shoulders. Ziggy giggled.

"He's fine, Simon," Ash reassured him, "Not to worry, he's just sleeping it off. Let him rest: we'll need his strength to carry off the corpse. Zigmund, tell me.."

Suddenly the three heard another squeal coming faintly from the bushes, not twenty yards away. Ash groaned as he got up on his sore knees, while Simon snatched up his mace. Ziggy, still grinning, silently drew his bow and nocked a brightly painted pink arrow on the string, soundlessly slipping into the forest like an eel into water. Steed bolted up, grabbed his huge scythe and bounded noisily into the brush.

Ash tried to follow but his knees creaked worse than his armor and the pain in his groin turned his legs into stalks of jelly.

The forest was getting darker as the sun retreated behind Deaf Mountain to the west. Ash's eyesight was keen, but he could not see either of the beet brothers or the second pig. Then, in the span of a half-breath, the bushes moved, a pig squealed and Steed cursed loudly. Ash slowly inched forward, longsword raised high, his shield placed defensively between him and the second beast.

Another squeal, then silence. Ash's sword was ready but his body was not. _My knees will not hold up against a charge from a four hundred pound mass of fear and fury._ He might get one jab at the creature, if it was slow enough, before he would have to fall back. He lowered the bottom lip of his shield nearly to the ground to prevent the pig from goring him from below with its tusks. Simon's mace was held high, but the boy had no armor, no shield, and was panting louder than Ash. _This could be a bloodbath._ Ash squinted his eyes and grimaced as the bush rustled in front of him.

Steed casually walked out of the underbrush, a small piglet underneath his left arm, while his right hand was clamped around the little creature's mouth. Steed gave Ash a wide, boyish smile.

"For later, in case I get lonely. My goats are a homely bunch, and I'm still trying to find a way to fuck a beet. You can hollow out the inside but it's not the same." Ziggy walked up behind him holding another piglet, freshly-slain, pierced through the skull with a dagger.

Ash looked at the foul-smelling, blood-coated oaf, and broke a small grin. _We did it. We really did it. Somehow, we did what needed to be done. Or they did, anyway. These simple peasants._ He envisioned the feast, where the giant roasted beast would greet the few returning warriors with the savory odors they had not experienced in months. _The laughter, the ale, the roast pork, the astonished looks on the faces of the other yardlings..._

"You going to help us, blade boy?" Steed was now tying up his piglet, wrapping the poor little creature's body in coils of coarse rope from a small pack attached to the upper edge of his kilt. He wrapped a few more coils around the thing's snout, drew off a length for the bigger pig and tied the rest around his waist. The bound piglet hung off his belt like a flask, dangling helplessly just above the knee. "Now let's get the big one. His mother, I guess. Find a sturdy branch."

Ash was both relieved and angry at himself for relying so much on these poor farmers. His curiosity required answers.

"How did you kill the boar?"

"How else? It came at us. Surprised us. Looked pretty pissed off to me. Cornered, maybe. Or just tired of running. I jumped to the side when she charged and slit the fat shit open with my Ugg. Zig sent three arrows into her as she tried to make another pass. I jumped on her back and sunk my knife into her skull to finish the job. It stopped moving, but I rammed that thing in there as far as it would go. Felt good, plus, no use getting gored in the ass by a half-dead hog." Steed brushed back the train of greasy blonde hair dangling across his neck, matted with blood, mud and sweat, and continued searching for a strong branch to help carry the boar. His eyes lit on his scythe for an instant, before he shook his head and carried on.

Ash was impressed by the man's lethal skill. "You know, the Abbey needs all the swords it can get. Have you ever.."

"Have I ever wanted to be ordered around by a bunch of dickfondling boyfuckers? No. Zirev tells me he can give me training and learning. I tell Zirev he can go stick his nose in a goat's cunt. I've got plenty of good ones for him to choose from."

Ash didn't like where this conversation was headed. The big man was far cruder than the other yardlings. _But unlike them, he can back up his words_. "But... it's a waste of resources, to have you farming beets and tending goats, when you could become a great warrior in the name of Torain."

Steed lifted his head, stared angrily into Ash's violet eyes and grabbed the top edge of Ash's breastplate with his blood-caked fingers, drawing him close. "The Abbey trains _soldiers_. I'm a _warrior_. _Soldiers_ are dipshits that die when and where craven old fucks tell them to. I'm not getting hacked to pieces to make some wrinkled old taintstain a little richer. A _warrior_ does the killing, a _soldier_ does the dying."

He speaks the foolishness of one who lacks faith in anything besides himself. Barbaric and selfish. How do I get through to him? Make him see the truth of things?

Ash was struggling for the right response when the distant rumble of hooves on flat stone echoed through the forest.

Warhorses!

Along the southern road!

A surge of strength coursed through Ash's arms and legs. The ache in his groin, the revolting stench of the dead boar, the weight of his armor, all fell off him like a wet tunic dropping to a tiled floor.

"They've come back! They've returned!"

### Chapter 3 – White Devil

Ash could see the star clearly through the lens, low in the horizon. It made him uneasy.

"What is it?"

"The Abbot says it's a sign from Torain Himself. A blessing that guided them back from their mission."

"But what do _you_ think it is?"

"I don't know," Zirev shrugged. "I really don't know. About thirty years ago, when I was a small child, a blue comet appeared in the sky for an entire week. Bright blue, like a sapphire. My father said it would bring great riches to the realm. My uncle said it was a portent for war. The local priest claimed it was an avenging angel, coming down from Torain's Throne of Mist to punish the wicked and reward the just."

"So which was it?"

"I don't know. Nothing? I don't remember anything particularly important happening that year. I was just a boy, of course. A few minor incidents, maybe. Definitely nothing out of the ordinary for a bustling metropolis like Helios."

"How close is it?"

"Hard to tell. Three, four days?"

Ash looked through the scope again. The new star was unnerving, but he felt a certain comforting wisdom in the prior's words. _Is it an angel of Torain coming to bless us? To grant us wisdom? To destroy us?_

"Here. I'm done with it. It's clearly moving, but I can't see much else out of this thing. Not with all the dust in here." Ash handed the lenscope back to Zirev, who gently placed it back on the shelf.

Ash had called on a small favor the prior owed him to allow him up in the Abbey's rarely-used observatory. Zirev had the keys to every door in the Abbey, he claimed, save one. "Only the Empress herself has the key to _that_ ," Zirev had said a few years back, half-jokingly. Ash had asked him where this mysterious door was but Zirev abruptly changed the subject. The secret door had often been on the back of Ash's mind when he was younger, and he spent several long nights crawling on his belly in the labyrinthine tunnels and crypts deep below the library trying to find it.

He guessed the Abbot probably had the keys as well, but no one had been allowed to disturb the man since he got back.

"Markov says the star followed them here, and is coming straight for us. If it truly is one of Torain's angels, I hope I'm not around when it gets here." Zirev chuckled to himself, forcing a grin. "Are we done?"

Ash nodded. The two walked down the narrow, winding stair to the library's upper stacks.

"Any word on those beet farmers?"

Zirev stole a quick side-glance at him. "Haven't talked to them. I let the two brothers keep the piglets, and half of the boar for their troubles. Neither the Abbot nor the knights have been in much of a mood for food lately."

Neither had Ash. The great feast had been canceled on their return and there had been a heavy air over the entire Abbey ever since. Although he would never admit it to anyone, Ash felt a certain electricity, a thickness to the air that weighed heavily on his shoulders and singed his nerves.

He grabbed Zirev's thin shoulder and twisted him around. "Prior, I need to know. I need to know what happened out there."

Zirev stared at him blankly for a moment, then sighed. "I wish I could tell you. To be perfectly honest, the Abbot has not told any of us, and I've never been on great speaking terms with any of the knights, save Yount. And there's still no word of him."

Ash had spoken to Markov only briefly, but the dour old warrior had been uncharacteristically curt. "Torain save him," was all he could get out of the old knight. Dale and Stratov had retreated to their quarters and had not been seen since, except for a single short visit to the armory for Dale. Brock, Bukov, Zhukanov and Fyodor had fallen. Depending on who you asked, Yount had either apparently hung back to scout the star or had threatened the Abbot's life and deserted. Either way, he had not returned. Ash was worried: he loved both men dearly, the Abbot and the elder knight, and hated being left in the dark. _Something important has happened, something critical, and I need to know what it was. I need to be ready_.

"When you find out, will you tell me then?"

Zirev smiled beneath his spectacles. "Depends on what I find out. There are some secrets in Exmortus you were never meant to know."

Ash bristled. He hated these mystical-sounding jousts that Zirev was so fond of. _I need a direct answer, asshole_. He left Zirev in the stair without another word, and returned to his quarters in the barracks.

Walking across the courtyard in the starlight, Ash felt a strong tingling sensation raise the hairs on his arms and neck. _The winter chill is coming early this year._

Simon was in the common area reading a huge tome. He didn't notice Ash's arrival.

"What is that there you're reading?"

Simon softly grunted as he lifted the huge tome's cover. "It's supposed to be a history book. But it's not written in chronological order."

Ash feigned interest. Anything to take his mind off of Yount, off this catastrophic expedition. "Yeah? Why is that?"

"It's quite confusing. I can't decide if the anonymous author did it this way on purpose. Or if he was merely an incompetent scribe. Or mad."

"Maybe he was copying someone else's poorly written tripe."

"Hmm? No, I don't think so."

Ash was restless. He was usually fond of long discussions on books and arcane lore but tonight he couldn't keep his hands still. He thought about going to his room to work on his swordplay with his wooden practice weapon, alone. He could practice in the bathhouses away from prying eyes, but was feeling too lazy to walk across the Abbey at that moment. "Well, tell me if you find anything interesting."

"I most assuredly will."

Ash left the common area and went to his quarters. His room was small, originally built for four soldiers, but the Abbey was no longer the premier destination for ambitious young warrior-priests that it had been centuries earlier. Zirev once said that long ago, the Abbey was the staging point for the Empress' huge armies. Eight hundred years of peace changed that. _Just as a hundred thousand footsteps can turn the proudest block of granite into a sad, sagging shadow of its former glory._

Ash laid down on his bedding and unfurled an old yellowed map Simon had found in the stacks, kicking up dust. _More dust than usual_. It showed the surrounding areas as they were one hundred and fifty years ago, when the Abbey was more relevant to the Empire's political affairs than it was now. He looked down the vast expanse of the Forests of Eversor and casually glanced at the line of destroyed fortresses bordering the Kingdom of Shells. Zirev had told him that those castles once served an ancient empire of warrior-kings in their campaigns against abominable monsters. Zirev had laughed when he said this. _Zirev says a lot of things. A lot of horseshit._

Ash put the map away and decided to rest his head on the pillow, just for a moment, to calm his mind, his nerves. He had not had a good night's sleep in over a week, his eyes red and veiny from too many vigils atop the Snow Tower. He closed his eyes, the familiar sound of distant phantom whispers filling his ears, and pulled up his sheet in a vain anticipation of pleasant, undisturbed dreams. A tiny flurry of dust particles tickled the hairs in his nose as he drifted into...

_boom_. Ash sat up in pitch-black darkness. He waved his hand in front of his face, but could not tell if his eyes were open. _boom_. Something was shaking. _Have I been asleep? For how long?_ He turned over onto his side and pulled the sheet up to his neck. _boom_. Ash stifled a cough, his mouth as dry and hot as an oven. _Whoever's making that noise, just, please. G_ _ive it a rest_. He closed his eyes tightly, trying to recall the dream that had melted away before he could recall it. _boom._ Ash wiped the sleep from his eyelids and stood up. Someone outside was screaming in a high-pitched voice. _I must still be dreaming. There are no females in the Abbey_. He grabbed the rail of his bunk, to check its solidity. _boom_. The walls shook. The small breadknife he kept on his worktable fell to the floor with a sharp _clang_. Ash rolled off his bunk and groped in the dark for the door.

He found the handle and swung it wide open. The force of his strength surprised him. There was no light in the hallway. Nor in the common area beyond. Ash picked up the dagger from the floor and felt his way down the walls of the hallway. _boom_. The thundering sound was louder out here. The dull thud shook the dust from the stone masonry. Ash felt an unlit torch on the wall and took it out of its nook. He walked down the hallway holding the wall, until his hands could feel nothing but cool, dry air.

"Simon?"

He waited. _boom._ Mortar dust fell on his neck and trickled down his shirt.

"Anyone?"

No response.

He knew there were tables, benches, pots and pans in this room. An entire obstacle course for Ash to navigate through. Easy enough when there's light, but right now – _boom_.

What the hell is that sound? How long have I been asleep?

Ash walked forward, tripped over an unknown object and fell flat on his face. His hands brushed a hard object. He picked it up. A tankard. The ground underneath it still wet with ale. _Who was drinking in the common area_? _That's against the rules_. Ash crawled on all fours to where he knew the door to be. He pushed it open and saw a small amount of light down the corridor into the yard.

_boom_. Ash heard a high whistling sound, then a flash of brilliant white light exploded into the corridor. The passage was filled with broad daylight for one terrible instant. He saw a pair of legs lying in the doorway. The light disappeared as quickly as it came, so Ash sprinted down the corridor towards the blocked doorway. The high-pitched, inhuman screaming was getting louder. Crossing under the low arch of the door, he knelt at the prone figure at his feet.

It was Kris. Half his face was oily black, as if someone had scraped the skin off and had found nothing but tar underneath. The boy was not breathing. _I was going to kill this asshole. I was going to—_

_BOOM._ An object whistled through the air just above Ash's head and landed on the roof of the stables. _The two horses!_ The wooden building burst into bright orange flames in an instant, shining an angry orange haze onto Kris' deformed face. Ash noticed figures running across the yard, but did not hear the destriers neighing in fear. _They must be dead already. What the hell is going on?_ He saw Brother Gregg running toward the Snow Keep dragging a large log. Ash ran to him, grabbed the log and heaved it over his shoulder.

"ASH! Take this to the top of the tower! Run, quickly. Run! RUN!!"

Ash obeyed without a word. He ran as fast as his burden would allow toward a wide crack in the base of the Snow Keep where the heavy iron door had once been. A flash of white light moved rapidly in the air above him on the other side of the high eastern wall. The high-pitched screaming drove cold needles of pain through his eardrums, sharply rising and falling with a chaotic irregularity. Ash also heard a loud sucking sound coming from across the wall, a revolting sound repeated over and over. He could hear the unnerving screams of men above him. Something large scraped against the outer walls of the tower.

Where is Simon?

He reached the opening, climbed through the gap and started bounding up the stairs, two or three steps at a time. His left shoulder ached. He knew where he was taking this beam —to the old ballista atop the roof.

He moved quickly. From the highest vantage point in the Abbey, Ash would see what was on the other side of that wall, making that shrill wailing and those sickening sucking sounds. _A dragon, perhaps? Idiot. Idiot! This is real. Not a bedtime fable._ The screaming was slightly muffled by the thick stone walls, but that's when the ringing in his ears became painfully noticeable. _boom_. A loose brick fell on the winding staircase behind him. He was glad he was wasting no time getting up the staircase.

Ash reached the door to the tower's roof and kicked it open. He saw Markov, Dale and one of the Zanon brothers furiously trying to load the ballista. Markov and Dale were in full battle regalia, heavy plate armor emblazoned with the Three Trees symbol of the Abbey. Kurt, another yardling, was leaning over the battlements, clumsily shooting below him with a bow. Ash squinted his eyes. _The light is especially strong up here..._

Suddenly two of the battlements ten feet to his right flew into the air, arcing over Ash's head and plummeting to the yard below. In an instant, all of the loud booming noises, shouts and screams disappeared completely and Ash was surrounded by deep, leaden silence, as if he had awoken alone in a well at the center of the earth. Ash dropped his log on the stone floor and grabbed his ears.

A brilliant white glow was coming over the gap where the battlements had been. The others stopped what they were doing and simply watched. Except for Markov. The elder knight yelled something to the others that Ash could not hear, drew his sword and took a step back.

A massive, human-shaped being made of pure, pulsing, white-hot light, its naked skin radiating like the surface of a white sun, rose over the far edge of the tower. The being wielded a colossal sword and whip composed of snow-dyed fire. A hot wind slapped him across his face as the being's membranous wings rippled.

Ash could see the thing but could hear nothing. The creature opened its mouth and spoke. Ash's ears, his temple, his eyes were wracked with pain. The stones beneath him rumbled with every word it spoke. Ash stood there, frozen.

Kurt and Dale collapsed to the ground, their fingernails clawing deep into their skulls. The Zanon boy's body stiffened, tiny spots of blood appearing all over his body. Markov dropped the longsword he was holding and clutched his chest, furiously clawing at his steel breastplate. His ears spurt a thick black liquid as he fell to his knees. He shouted at Ash, but Ash could not hear his words. Markov put his hand to his face and screamed the word, _f-l-y_ , before he doubled over, a river of dark red blood pouring from his mouth.

The white devil was now staring at Ash with eyes devoid of light. It's mouth moved as if to speak. The stones beneath Ash rumbled again.

_What is it saying_?

Ash's hearing came back in a crash. He was sprinting down the stone steps at a break-neck speed, his ears feeling as if two white-hot steel spikes had pierced clean through them. The sounds of explosions and far-off screaming were still muffled, but audible. Ash leapt down the final half-flight and fell flat on his chest. An intense pain shot through his ribs underneath his right arm.

He did not stop moving. He couldn't. His body was operating without input from his brain. An independent entity acting on its own accord.

He ran out of the tower opening and sprinted across the great clearing in the center of the Abbey. He leapt over anonymous burnt corpses. Probably his friends. He did not stop. He could not stop. The light grew brighter above him, and for a split second he was filled with terror as he saw inhuman shades dancing around his shadow on the ground in front of him. He dared not look up. He ran around the back of the cathedral, across the western courtyard and dove for the cover of the armory. _Empty_. Swept by instinct he grabbed the first sword he could find. His entire body was shaking uncontrollably.

He headed to the southeast wall and peeked out an open window. The great South Gate was destroyed, its intricate gold-plated relief melted into a featureless mass. Dark, horse-sized shapes were pouring through the gap in the rubble.

I am not going to panic.

_I. Will. Not. Die. Today_.

Crawling on his hands and knees Ash darted around the armory and looked to the northern gate. Three huge, black-and-red forms were there. One leapt on a small human-shaped figure. The bright white light on the other side of the high wall was heading to the north gate. The roof of the bathhouse had collapsed, the kitchens and mess hall in flames. The brewery just next to the smithy was untouched, but the nearby fires from the kitchens were snaking their way across the courtyard. _If those fires reach the great vats of alcohol..._

Ash was trapped. His lungs ceased working, his chest constricted. Cold sweat drenched his arms and neck. Backing into the armory, he tripped over a hunting spear Klaus had shown him earlier.

_The sheep's gate. My only chance_.

Ash glanced at the shapes to the south as he made a break for the granary. He did not know if they saw him. He ran across the clearing and behind the granary.

Two figures stood there. Zirev and Simon. _They're safe. They're alive.. Oh my God._ Never in his life had he ever experienced such bliss. Exhausted and pumped full of adrenaline, Ash dashed for the pair at the gate.

Zirev, bleeding from the shoulder, the left side of his hair singed black, saw him first. He handed Ash a small box.

" _Protect this with your life, Ashley. Take it east to the Empress. Do it. NOW_!"

The box was light, about as wide as a handspan. Simon was tucking something under his vest.

"Zirev, you're bleeding! Are you hurt badly?"

Zirev nervously glanced over Ash's shoulder. The reflection in the man's spectacles told him the dark forms had spotted him after all.

"Take this. Here. Read it later. No time. Go. Leave. Now."

Ash's face was soaked, tears streaming down his cheeks.

"What..?"

Zirev slapped Ash across his jawline with surprising strength. A sudden explosion behind Ash turned the prior's spectacles into two impenetrable circles of infernal hellfire.

"Go."

Simon's face was glistening with sweat, his eyes wide with horror. Ash grabbed him by the arm and started running. They trampled a small patch of unpulled beets, got to the hole in the outer fence and dove to the ground. Simon squirmed through first. Ash glanced back. Dark forms were pouring through the sheep-gate, but Zirev was nowhere to be seen. Ash scuttled forward on his arms through the mud.

The dark things behind him snarled. All around him goats screamed like human children. The mud was past his elbows now. He tried kicking his way out, but his feet slipped in the sludge.

I'm stuck.

_Shit_.

I'm dead.

Something grabbed his leg. Ash kicked at it desperately and heard a muffled groan. He kicked again at empty air. A massive hand grabbed him by the neck and lifted his torso from the mud. A deep baritone voice whispered a single word into his ear.

"Move."

### Chapter 4 – Running from the Devil

Halfway up the rocky slope he realized he had left the sword behind, buried to the hilt in pig shit. He breathed through his mouth to block out the scent of feces on his hands and clothes.

_The putrid stench of hog manure won't throw the dark beasts off our scent forever._ Ziggy led the way, shunning the gentle, pine-covered slopes to the southwest in favor of the tough climb to the northwest. Ash was not about to argue, not now. The hard climb steadied his mind, the crisp night air filling his lungs with a cool, refreshing respite from the smoke and stench of death below.

Deaf Mountain was a mere hill compared to the rocky crags of Ash's youth in the north. Using a low-hanging tree limb to lift himself over a jagged-edged boulder, Ash tried to recall bits and pieces of legends, fables and ancient history as they flew in and out of his mind. Anything to help him forget the horror atop the Snow Tower.

After a long while climbing, Ziggy finally come to a stop some yards ahead. The boy had bounded up the steepest part of the slope like a mountain goat, making a point of looking especially exasperated when he had to wait for the rest of them to catch up. Ash suspected he was doing that just to show off. _The little punk seems to enjoy making things harder than they have to be. I'll ditch these idiots once we get over the ridge. They're not coming with me to.. where, exactly?_

Zirev had told him to find the Empress. That meant a long, grueling journey to the heart of the Empire, to the legendary capital city of Helios. The Golden City of Wizardry. The Orphic Bloom. The Throne of Harmony. Ash had studied basic Helion history, geography, and culture, but since leaving the north he had not ventured more than a few miles from the comfort of the Abbey walls. _Once over the ridge, I head west, across the Red Wall and to the coast. Alone._

Ash was gradually getting used to the climb. Over a decade ago he used to race up the sheer cliff faces of Boarsky with his older brothers. _And the krakens take the hindmost._ Years of living on level ground, away from the sea, had made him far more cautious. He climbed faster, the sounds behind him —beneath him, now— getting quieter with each push. He still dared not look back.

The white thing. What is it? A devil? A demon?

_It spoke to me_.

He had escaped, but was sure that if he turned around now and saw it again his heart would burst from his chest. Like Markov.

_Fuck_. _Think of something else_. He tried to erase his mind, fill it with trivialities, with his lessons. Nothing was working. Groping along in the dark, Ash pulled himself up over a small boulder, the faint orange light behind him growing dimmer as he ascended Old Deaf.

"In the name of King Steed," the big man bellowed as he slapped Ash across the face with some foul-smelling mud. "I name thee Sir Shitlips!"

_You idiot, they can hear us._ Ash wiped the mud off with his hand, only then realizing it was more goat dung than soil. _At least I hope it's goat._ He tried wiping the rest off with his tunic, but it was even filthier than his face. "Thanks, asshole. Why don't you shout down to the demon dogs? Some of them might not have heard you the first time."

Steed tapped the edge of his scythe. "Those ass-taints can bring it on. They took my beets. My _fucking beets."_

Simon had caught up. "Can we rest here for a moment? My arms are burning."

Steed ground his teeth as he looked down at the carnage below. "Only for a moment. We're not as far away as I'd like."

Ash closed his eyes, numb to the odors of goat dung on his face. He listened. A strange stillness hung heavy in the air. The explosions had stopped some time ago.

"Abbey's right fucked. My goats, my beets, everything."

Ash thought he saw a flicker of sadness on Steed's wide face. _It's a tough face to read, to be honest, with the eyes so far apart like that_. Ash didn't feel comfortable staring at the brute's face too deeply, and his eyes dropped to the small piglet dangling quietly from the big man's belt. Ash shook his head and sighed.

"You girls ready? The canyon's over those last two ridges." Ziggy was hopping in place and fidgeting with the daggers on his vest.

"Give me a second." Ash's heart was pounding. He could hardly breathe. _I need to do this_. He needed to see what was behind them, what was left of his home, the home he had left behind. He inhaled, then turned around and looked down the hill.

Steed was right. They hadn't gone nearly far enough. They were just over the tops of the Abbey's outer walls, at eye level with the Snow Tower. The top third of it was shattered and wreathed in bright orange flames. Small dark shapes were racing around in the chaos. Some human, some not human. All of the tall buildings save the brewery were on fire. Ash wondered where the Abbot was, where Zirev was. Had they escaped? He couldn't picture a man of the stature and position of the Abbot crawling through a puddle of pig shit.

No, most likely not.

Simon's rosy, flush lips quivered. "Such a loss. Senseless."

Ash remembered his private sanctuary in the bathhouse. The bronze cache of forbidden books in the library. Zirev's cats. His hated enemy Kris. The raw beginnings of teardrops trickled out of his eyes and nose. A faint, childish whimper escaped his tightly-pursed lips. He clenched his teeth together to force the sobs back, and peered down the hillside through a glassy haze of tears.

No trace of the white devil.

Something snapped in the forest below. Ash spit, wiped some tear-dampened muck from his cheeks with his ripped sleeve and stood up. The shadows of the flames danced around the trunks, bushes and boulders like elemental fiends at a blood orgy. He heard the faint sound of a horse neighing somewhere nearby.

"The demon's missing. We have to leave. Now."

The others jumped to attention and started after Ziggy, who was already scampering up the slope.

Another loud _snap_ shot through the forest below them. The wind changed direction, filling Ash's nostrils with smoke. He dared not look back, and focused his mind on following Steed's oversized rear over the rocky mountainside. Simon silently pawed along the slope behind, trying hard not to breathe too loudly. After a few minutes Ash could make out the silhouette of a sheer canyon some distance in front of them.

As they scrambled up a rocky embankment, Steed's leg slipped. The piglet tied around his waist slammed hard into the rock wall. Its angry squeal echoed loudly through the forest. Ash's heart froze. The hairs on his neck stood straight up, his eyes filled with red hatred.

_Fuck. Ing. Moron_. _Given away by a. Fuck. Ing. Pig. I'll kill him. I'll kill him myself_.

For the longest breath of his life, Ash resigned himself to death.

He closed his eyes tightly and inhaled —and, when nothing happened, he opened them and looked down.

Behind him, Simon had lost the color in his face but other than that the forest looked much the same. The large dark shapes were still swarming from building to building, but didn't seem to be coming up the mountain. _Not yet._ Ash wrapped his pink, frozen fingers around the box. The red glow of the inflamed Abbey below suddenly made him nauseous but he clamped his teeth, vomited in his mouth, and resumed climbing. Steed, who had not stopped climbing, farted in the distance.

Twenty seconds later, Ash longed for the smell of smoke and flame.

They covered the last two ridges, descended through the pitch-black canyon and emerged on the southwestern slope of Deaf Mountain. Ash's strength was gone. Putting his left leg in front of his right, then his right in front of his left, was all he could manage.

"There, down there! The road!"

Ziggy pointed to the west with one thin outstretched leg. _Where does he get all this energy?_ The red glow of the fires was behind them now, silhouetting the rocky tops of the ridge like massive charcoals in an angry god's hearthfire.

"Should be the Overtrader Road. Can we stop there for the night?" Simon sounded exhausted. He had rarely spoken that night.

"Roads can be dangerous places. Let's find a nice spot on the other side of it. Just to be safe." Ash's legs were weary, but he felt in his gut that there was no safe distance from the terrors just behind them. Terrors that Zirev or Brother Gregg or Stratov were living and dying through _right now_. _I might have been able to fight. To save one life other than my own. To be able to live with myself for the rest of my days, however short that might be. Or sacrifice my life for the Abbot's_.

But I ran.

"We're not alone," Steed said as he pointed at a tiny orange flicker a half-mile down the slope. "Let's go that way."

"No!" Ash and Simon both responded.

"Why the hell not? Too much salt in your vaginas?" Without waiting for a response, Steed started walking directly down to the distant fire.

"Torain help us," Ash proclaimed loudly. He was spent, covered in mud and shit, bruised and bleeding. More importantly, he was unarmed. Steed and Zigmund had brought weapons and a small supply of food. _Not to mention that goddamned piglet._ He and Simon brought nothing other than the box and the note. He recalled getting stuck in the mud near the fence, and Steed's massive hands lifting him out of the muck. _For all his faults, he did save my life. He may be more animal than man, but I need to show my gratitude for what he did for me out there. He could have left me for dead, just as I left Zirev and the Abbot._

"Thank you, Steed, "Ash said, too loudly. "I know we, perhaps, didn't get off on the best of... well I wouldn't say we were _friends_ exactly, but, you know, you've saved me.. you saved me tonight, and I merely want to acknowledge your.."

"Shut it, cockbreath," Steed snapped. "That shit is ancient history."

Ash shrugged, too tired to offer a response.

As they continued down the hill to level ground, Ash pondered Zirev's words. _The box. The Empress._ He had to take the box to her. _Why? What is so important about this box? Why not bury it in the ground, or destroy it in the flames? And why me?_ He turned to Simon.

"Simon, what do you know of the Empress? Of Helios?"

Simon thought for a second. "She's our sovereign. Has been for two thousand years, so they say. A powerful sorceress, a firm and fair ruler. Helios is the capital of the Empire. The City of a Thousand Towers. The Garden of Wizardry. The Orphic Bloom."

"I'm well aware of all that. We both learned it from Brother Peter's history lessons. Zirev gave me this box, said I was supposed to take it to her."

"I know, I was there."

"Do you know why?"

"No. I was too scared to ask."

They both stumbled clumsily down the slope in silence, following Steed toward the campfire.

"Zirev was born there, you know," blurted Simon. "In Helios. Or lived there for a while, anyway. From the way he described it, it sounds... wonderful."

Ash lowered his voice to a whisper. The fire was getting closer. _Where was Ziggy?_

"So Zirev didn't tell you what this box is? The note?"

"No."

"Tell me about Helios later."

"I think we'll have plenty of time for that soon enough."

They came to a small clearing near the intersection of two roads. The hour between dawn and sunrise had already started breaking over the mountains to their backs, the night sky hinting at turning from black to dusty purple. A small, one-mule trader's wagon stood in the clearing. A hooded figure hunched over the dying remains of a campfire. Steed stopped at the edge of the clearing and eyed the figure closely. Ziggy hid in a low crouch a few yards to his right, slowly drawing an arrow from his homemade quiver. Off in the distance the winds whipped through the crags, creating the eerily familiar sound of young girls softly whispering. Ash wondered if he were asleep.

_Wake up. Fucking wake up_.

Steed whispered, "Looks like it's four against one. Two, if you count those of us who aren't fairie's cunts."

"Yes, but we don't know if.."

Without warning, Steed crashed through the clearing and roared, "Hullo there!!"

A dull pain shot through Ash's forehead, and a swirl of dust particles clouded his dry red eyes. He rubbed his temples, aching from fatigue and lack of sleep. He and Simon scampered behind Steed as the big man advanced toward the hooded figure.

"Ho there, stranger!"

The figure did not move. Wiping the black grime and sweat from his eyes, Ash could see him more clearly now. It was an older man, with a tangled black and white pepper beard framing a warm, wrinkled face. The man was sitting crosslegged in front of the fire, his hands clasped together over his chest, his eyes closed. Steed's shout did not stir him. The four quickly surrounded the man.

"Wake up gramps! I'm Steed! What's your name?" The big man extended his hand to the stranger, waving it just inches from his face. Suddenly the old man snapped out of his trance and smiled, a genuine smile that exploded from his mouth and his expressive brown eyes. He stood up and grasped Steed's hand with his own. The old man's smile felt like a ray of sunlight in spring on Ash's cold, miserable body.

"Steed? Name's Bill, friend. Bill. You boys look like dogshit."

In the light of the approaching dawn Ash could finally see that the other three looked like charred, bleeding escaped convicts. Steed laughed, while Ziggy slung his bow and sat down to warm his hands in the small fire.

Steed spat, then gazed deep into the flames. "I've never looked better. Just escaped the fire down at the Abbey."

The old man raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Exmortus Abbey?"

"Yep."

The old man's smile vanished. Ash felt the pre-dawn cold again. "I was just headed up there. I've got a couple of bolts of fine silk I was planning on unloading there."

Ash glanced at the wagon. The thing looked barely serviceable, the mule even less so. "Silks?"

"Yep. I get them across the Wall, then bring them up here to trade for some of that sweet, thick ale. I can sell that stuff anywhere for a hefty profit. It's leagues better than the cat piss the comes out of Winterberry these days." He spat, then resumed, "What's this about a fire?"

Ash remembered that the rich merchants of the West paid for that ale in gold. "Do you go to Helios?"

The old man gave him a kindly, quizzical look. "Been there once or twice. In another life. Helios is quite a distance from here, son. Why do you ask?"

"We need to go there."

Steed stopped warming his hands and glared at Ash. "What the fuck for?"

_I don't want to discuss this with him. Not here. Not now_. "Zirev told me to."

"Before or after he asked you to polish his cock with your spit?" Steed guffawed at his own joke. Ash was not amused, but he noticed Old Bill was grinning.

"We need to deliver a message. To the Empress."

Bill's eyes ceased smiling. He stared directly at Ash, his warm brown eyes transformed into dark and terrible orbs. Goosebumps covered Ash's arms and neck. "Son.."

"I'd like to write a message with my jizz across her fat tits," the ogre blurted.

Bill completely ignored Steed and spoke in a deep, resonant voice that seemed to echo off the walls of his mouth. "You need to tell me what's going on, son. Maybe I can help."

Ash nervously looked over the old man and his tent. _No sword, no staff, nothing_. "If you've got a sword, I'll gladly accept it. I left mine, and all my new armor, back in the barracks. Otherwise, I appreciate your offer but you're not going to be able to help me."

Bill did not take his eyes off of him, and he started to feel dizzy. The man's voice now grated on Ash's nerves like serrated iron on stone. "I'm going to ask you again. What happened tonight?"

Simon could hold it in no longer. "We were attacked! The Star in the East, it destroyed our Abbey, our home, our.. brothers. Walls. The tower. Everything. Gone." A tiny sniffle escaped from Simon's mouth, and he covered his face with his filthy hands.

Bill walked over to Simon and put a thin arm around his shoulder. His eyes grew warm again, his voice smoothed out. "That makes no sense, son. None at all. But..," Bill peered up at the ridge to the east, "... that would explain the halo of fire over the hills."

Ash looked too. In the dull light of dawn, he could begin to make out a tall plume of black smoke rising a few miles away. The smoke rose above the crest of Deaf Mountain, then spread out to a pool of thick, pitch-black miasma. _Was that above us the whole time we were climbing?_

"Listen, boys. I'll be straight with you. I know who Zirev is. Good man. Could've been a great man. This is terrible news, if true. I'm going to give you what I can spare, although I figure it won't be but a sliver of what you've lost. The road to Helios is a long one, through the Beastwood, onto the White Castle and past the Wall. It won't be easy. But if that star came down..."

Ash interrupted. "It was no star. It was a white demon, with huge wings, a white-hot flaming sword. And a whip. When it spoke, good men died. Strong men. And it brought black beasts with it. Don't you understand?! The Abbey, it's..."

The five men were silent for a minute, staring at the smoke to the east, the chorus of whispers blowing down the hills the only sound. Bill's eyes danced across the lightening sky before he finally broke the calm.

"A white demon with wings. Hmm. I guess I'll take these dang silks north, then. A shame. A damn shame. White demon. Hmm." A worried frown flickered across his face as he turned to Ash. "Take a bolt for yourselves, the small one, still worth something and easier to carry. Head north on the Overtrader Road, then west at the crossroads, for the White Castle on the Wall. As quickly as you can. Travel at night, rest during the day. Stay on the road, and don't wander into the Beastwood for any reason. _Any reason_. Do'ya hear?"

Ash felt grateful to the man. A bolt of silk was not cheap, and might mean the difference between survival and starvation, if they could make it to civilization. He brought himself to his full height and used his deepest, most reassuring voice, his lord's voice, the one he had practiced countless times in his quarters.

"Thank you, Bill. But you need to be careful, more so than we do. Get out of here at once. The white demon can fly. His black beasts can run. Arm yourself with whatever you have at your disposal. We've got a bow and a scythe, poor weapons, but we can escort you as far as we can." He felt he needed to protect this old man, this stranger who had been so kind to them. Steed snickered under his breath.

Bill spat, then kicked a small stone into the fire. "No need for weapons, young man. The world is full of them. Men were designed for taking life. Every part of a man, his fists, his knees, his elbows, his teeth. Designed for death. Most especially, his _mind_. The most lethal weapon of all: the beasts know it, so they only attack us with numbers, in the dark, jumping on us from the trees. They know us better than we know ourselves. The Wall will protect you from the white demon, possibly, but I've found that the safer side is right here. A pack of bears, well.. you can do something about that. A thousand, ten thousand, a million minds? Nothing flying over that Abbey is more terrifying, I can assure you that."

Ash couldn't decide if the old man was being friendly, condescending, or just batshit insane. "Well, we'll watch out, sir. I promise."

" _Don't humor me, boy_. There's a world of pain on the other side of that Wall. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. Don't tell anyone where you're from, don't tell anyone where you're going, and never trust anyone with more money than you."

Steed got up. "I'm tired of this horseshit. Grab the silk, let's go." He walked to the other side of the road. Ziggy followed, looking down at the ground. Simon shook the old man's hand silently before heading off. Old Bill smiled warmly at the boy, then gazed at Ash. _I pity the old man_. _I offered to protect him, but he's too stubborn. Too proud_.

"I apologize for my friend. He wasn't raised to be polite."

"No need, no need. Save your wise words for when you really need them."

"Thank you, sir. I'm begging you. Come with us, please. It's not safe for an old man out here, not anymore. You don't understand what's on the other side of that ridge."

"Oh, I'll be fine, son," Bill chuckled. "But you best be leaving, before your friends get themselves into trouble. Hope to run into you younguns again someday, maybe under better circumstances."

"We will, Bill, we will."

Ash bowed to the man and set off after the others. The fatigue had returned full-force, and he was hit by a wave of guilt as he left the old man behind. _Another innocent I could have helped. The old man sits there, readying himself for certain death. Zirev, Markov, Kris, Bill... the farther I run, the more blood stains my craven fingers._ Ash turned to look once more at the old man, hoping to see him start to break camp, feed his mule and head far away, anywhere, anywhere but there.

The old man saw him, smiled warmly, and waved.

### Chapter 5 – The Beastwood

Ash laid awake, too tired to sleep. They had stopped a ways north on the Overtrader Road, a paved stone path that Simon claimed was older than the first men that came to this world.

_Did_ _the things I saw really happen? Is Exmortus destroyed_?

Sleep would not overtake him. Nightmarish whispers, half-heard words and a hushed sound like the laughter of distant phantoms plagued him the moment he closed his eyes. He looked at Simon, and saw the boy covering his ears, first with the palm of his hands, then with the bottom edge of his shirt. _So I'm not the only one who hears them. That's reassuring._

Steed was snoring so loudly that Ash was sure anyone coming up the road would be able to hear them. Ziggy, who had taken first watch, occasionally gave the ogre a swift kick in the ribs and told him to shut up, to little effect. The big man lay spread-eagle over the rocky dirt, a willow's root jutting into the his lower back. _How does he sleep like that? Isn't he troubled by the things he's seen? His home was destroyed._ Ash had cleared away at least a thousand small pebbles but still could not get comfortable.

Pieces of the sun broke through the branches above and assaulted his tired red eyes. Covering his eyes from the glare with his sleeve, Ash thought about the Abbot, the old man he loved, the old man that had saved his life ten long years ago. His mind turned to Galena. _Beautiful_ _Galena_. Her long red dress, whipped around her waist by the cliff face's powerful gusts of wind. How he had helped her climb up the old petrified troll. The two hours they had spent talking and laughing on the troll's weather-beaten head. Two hours that felt like two minutes. _Her terrible eyes..._

_Screaming. The white light demon. Markov's burst heart. Kris' burnt face_.

A sharp pain shot through Ash's guts, followed by a low, grumbling moan. _Food._ He and Simon had not brought any, but Steed had that annoying little piglet tied to his waist. _Perhaps here, in broad daylight, would be the best time to start a small fire_...

He remembered the box and the note. He had not let go of the box, cradling it under his head when he was trying to fall asleep. Ash looked it over thoroughly for the first time. A simple, unadorned, wooden lockbox with no exterior markings of any kind. It had a solid steel lock, but Zirev had not given him any key. He shook the box. The object inside was hard, possibly metal or stone, bumping against the side of the mahogany case with a muffled _thud_.

_The Empress must have the key_. _Perhaps the 'room' Zirev couldn't get into was this very box_. Ash pondered whether he should strike out alone to Helios. The beet brothers could get on without him. But with no sword, coin, food, shelter or even adequate clothing, Ash needed them more than he cared to admit. Steed had his huge but worthless scythe, and Ziggy was pretty handy with that multicolored bow. _Once we get to the Wall, once we've carried the message that Exmortus was no more to the garrison at the White Castle, I can earn myself a weapon and a horse, and leave the others. Especially Steed._ Ash rubbed his eyes and looked at Simon, still struggling with sleep. _Or I could take Simon. Once over the Wall, we could pass the long hours discussing military history, ancient heroes, theology..._

_The note_. Ash suddenly remembered. _Maybe it'll tell me what's in the box._ He slid the paper out of his pocket and read the freshly-inked words:

Ashley, it's time you knew something about why you're here. You already knew about the events that led to House Xavier sending you into our care ten years ago. But there's something else you don't know about, something that happened far earlier than that.

Your father, Ashbaron Xavier, Warden of the Water, is a man prone to the occasional indiscretion. One such indiscretion led to a problem, less than a month before your own birth, which Exmortus was happy to resolve for him.

Perhaps 'happy' is too strong a word. I was young, and had not yet been Prior for six months. I took a problem off of your father's hands then, in my hope to gain the favor of a noble, if small, house. The problem was a woman of ill repute, and her newborn son.

The woman stayed here at the Abbey less than seven years before disappearing one summer night, but the newborn son and his younger sibling have been secret wards of myself for all the long years since then. When you arrived, I took it as a blessing in disguise. I have been proud to raise the three of you, despite my many duties here in the Abbey and my obvious unworthiness as a father.

I have been keeping this knowledge from both you and him for too long, and for no reason I can justify other than my own baseless fears. Both of your twentieth namedays are almost upon us. It's time you knew.

Take care of Steed. He's your brother. Sorry. - Z

P.S. I've also enclosed some pages regarding your grandfather that you will find most interesting. How much of them is truth, and how much is fable, you may someday find out over the course of your lifetime.

Ash closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. He glanced at the note: there were no other pages. He buried his head in his tunic, muffled a sob, and threw the locked box into the brush.

Ash awoke with a start. His ribs ached with a sharp pain, and as he opened his red-rimmed eyes a hulking black shadow loomed over him. He tried to shout, but a weak simper was all that left his mouth.

"Get up princess, before I spread my morning seed all over your sweet little face."

The pain shot through his ribs again. The sour smell of bare feet filled his nose and the back of his mouth with a damp nausea. Ash slowly opened his eyes and, to his horror, realized that a grime-encrusted big toe was halfway up his nostril.

"I'm up! I'm up!" He knocked Steed's revolting foot away from his face. His entire body was sore from sleeping on rough ground. "Fuck you, asshole, I can get up by myself."

"Let's go. Next time I'll twist those skinny little nips of yours." Steed howled with laughter and started jogging to the road. Ash couldn't think of a response. _My brother. My own brother._

_F_ _rom now on, everything is going to be different._

Simon's eyes were raw and bloodshot. "Where-where are we going?"

"To the Wall," Ash said in his commanding voice. It was time to take charge, to set things straight. Steed stopped, turned around and stared at Ash with a smirk across his wide mouth. Ash braced himself for another fountain of verbal stupidity.

"Are there whores there? My balls are itching for something only a wet vagina can scratch," Steed blurted. "It's high time we got ourselves a little _civilization_. You don't think vaginas really have teeth, do you?" He winked at Ash, then turned back to the road.

"That doesn't even make any —wait, where's Ziggy?"

"Oh, he left an hour ago. Maybe longer. I dunno, I was asleep."

"He was supposed to be our watch!" Ash was fuming, "What the hell is wrong with him?!"

"He just got bored. It happens. Might as well make good use of your time if nothing's going on."

Ash was not amused. "Let's move out. We'll hike all night to get to the Wall, stopping just before dusk to eat."

Steed put his finger to his nose, launching a large ball of snot at the ground near Simon's feet. "Eating what?"

"Well, I mean, isn't that why we —your piglet, right?" As the words left his mouth, Ash was suddenly not so sure about his plan.

"You mean _Boob?!?_ We're not eating Boob," Steed said, caressing the piglet's snout. "Not yet anyways. I'm fattening him up for later."

"Boob?" Ash saw that the piglet was not as scrawny as when they had found him. "What can you possibly be feeding him?"

"Beets and pork, mostly."

The succulent odors and images of food took over Ash's starving stomach. He had not had anything to eat for over a full day now, and his stomach was killing him. Suddenly he felt the bile in the back of his throat.

" _Pork?!_ You're feeding him... his own _mother?"_

"He loves it. More than beets, even. Here, have a slice." Steed reached into his small waist-pack and pulled out a strip of uncooked bacon, handing it gently to Ash. "You seem more like the beet-type, fatboy." He handed a handful of small red beets to Simon, who put them in his mouth instantly. Ash was not so sure he should be eating raw bacon.

"We need to cook this first."

"No time. Eat it, friend, and we'll catch some more game on the way to the Wall. Those are our last rations. I didn't think we'd be out this long."

Ash felt like arguing but the raw flesh smelled delicious. His stomach craved it. He bit into it, trying to chew the tough tissue in his teeth. The taste of dried blood and other juices filled his mouth. Ziggy appeared seemingly out of thin air, tapped on Steed's shoulder and whispered something in his ear. Both brothers looked to the east.

"C'mon, Ashy, we'll eat that on the way. Something's coming." He was peering off to the southeast now, but Ash and Simon could see nothing.

"What do you see?"

Ziggy coughed lightly, then strung his bow. "Probably nothing. Still, it's best we make haste up the road. Could be a goat."

"It's not," Steed blurted.

Ash turned around. A pulsing point of light hovered in the cloudless blue sky over the ridge.

Shit.

Ziggy giggled and darted off the road and into the forest. Steed pulled up his leather shorts, grabbed both Ash and Simon by the elbows and started running.

"Time to get off the road, your lordships."

Both Ash and Steed were jerked back. Simon refused to move.

"Ash, where's your box?"

He pretended not to hear, staring at the ball of light hovering over Deaf Mountain. It swooped down quickly to the area around the crossroads they had left just hours ago. Simon caught him by his sleeve.

"Ash! ASH! Where's the Empress' box?"

"I don't know. Gone."

" _Gone_? Gone where?"

Steed sniffed the air. "Time to go, ladies."

Ash was trembling. "It's not important. We need to go. To hide."

Simon stared into Ash's face, saying nothing. Ash averted his eyes, trying to search out the sky to the south. They were wasting precious time.

"C'mon, forget it. We have to go."

"Not without the box."

"Fuck the box."

Ash flinched as Simon drew his hand back to hit him. He let go of Ash's elbow and headed back to the tree. Ash left Steed and caught up with Simon.

"This is madness. The star is _right there._ Let him have the fucking box!"

"Show me where you put it."

"Simon, we—"

"We have a duty to Zirev. To the Abbey."

"Zirev can go fuck himself."

"What?"

Ash paused. "He.. he just can."

Simon wheeled to face him. Ash felt paralyzed by the fury in the boy's gaze.

He's right. Damn it. He's right.

"Fine. Go follow Steed. I'll go get it."

"No, I'm coming with you. We're taking the box to Helios and that's final."

Ash jogged to the brush. Simon followed, still fuming. Steed yelled something behind them, but he couldn't make it out. Pushing through a patch of thornbrush, Ash found the box and looked to the southern sky.

Where did it go? The crossroads? Did it —Bill?

Clouds of dust appeared on the road to the south. Simon cupped his hand to his ear and tugged on Ash's sleeve. The fury in his eyes was gone.

"The beasts. They're coming."

The four ran west through the gnarled forest of the Beastwood. After they had gone a few hundred yards Ash glanced a look behind him, but could neither see nor hear anything.

"Steed! Are they still behind us?"

Steed stopped dead in his tracks. He placed one hand on Ash's shoulder and used the other to point to a small sliver of road still visible through the tangled trees. Ash saw them. Silent black shapes moving right to left across his field of vision, although the forest prevented him from getting a good look. _I pray we're just as invisible to them._

"Too late. Run."

Steed bolted. Ash and Simon took off after him, looking down at the ground while running so as not to trip over any of the knobby roots or oddly-shaped boulders that pockmarked the forest floor. He heard no sounds behind him. After a minute of running a white mist grazed his face and he looked up. They were headed into a lazy, lingering fog.

Shit.

Ash heard a loud _snap_ behind him. Simon was a following a few feet behind, but it was farther back. Steed was ahead, running at a good speed, ducking under branches and leaping over brush. The light of day was fading fast as they plunged into the thickening fog. Ash was sweating now, trying not to breathe too loudly. The deep, throbbing sound of his heart was a steady drum, pierced by _snaps_ and rustling in the fog-soaked forest closing in around him. Steed ran in front, cutting through the heavy mist like a ship's ram.

With a crash Steed stumbled into a stream crossing their path. Ash was running too fast to avoid him and they both tumbled into the river. Simon followed behind, leaping into the stream where they had both fallen. The stream was not more than four feet deep but the ice in the water froze Ash to the bone. He saw a hand grab Simon's leg and nearly shouted before a massive hand grabbed the back of his neck and forced his head into the chill water.

Ash gasped under the water. He had no air. He struggled with the hand, but his muscles were of no use. Gulps of icewater filled his mouth and nostrils. Two large black shadows flew overhead. His lungs ached. His throat clenched as the freezing liquid poured down his windpipe, into his lungs and stomach.

Ash suddenly saw a single point of blinding light. He could not tell if his eyes were open or closed. The ice was still in his mouth and nose, but he no longer felt the need to breathe. His face was dry, his eyes enveloped by a holy glow. _The Light of Life_. _The Gift of Torain._ His life had not been in vain. The box and the note and the Abbey and Galena and the cliffs and his parents and Steed – they all meant nothing to him now. His soul belonged to Torain. Nothing he had tried, nothing he had accomplished on this earth, now mattered. He was at peace. The light began to recede. _Perhaps now Torain will..._

The icewater in his stomach forced its way up his throat and out his mouth. As his eyes adjusted he saw both Simon and Steed crouching in the water giving him terrible looks. His body was violently shivering, beyond his control, and he felt an agonizing burning sensation where the blood was trickling back to his limbs. He looked up into a tree and saw Ziggy high in the branches, armed with quiver and bow. He too was looking down at Ash with a stern, unforgiving look.

Steed put his mouth to Ash's ear and whispered, "Shut the fuck up."

Ash closed his mouth as best he could, but his stomach was not done yet. Icewater, acid and bile stormed against the inside of his teeth and covered his tongue. A small amount of frigid vomit escaped from his right nostril.

The boys waited in complete silence for what seemed to be days. Finally, quietly, on all fours, they crawled back up to the bank and headed north.

The four padded across the cold mud like wet rats for almost three days, looking over their shoulders to the open sky every few seconds. They stuck as close to the stream as possible, staying in the cover of the miniature ravine and taking small, furtive naps in the muddy hollows and small caves they came across. They lit no fire and ate no food other than wet roots, although refreshing, ice-cold water was in abundance. It was dark now, and although they heard no sounds other than the trickling water and their own labored breathing, Ash was nervous.

_Whatever those dark shapes were, I had not heard them, nor seen them._ At no point on the road or in the forest had Ash been aware of any danger. _Yet both Steed and Ziggy had_. They were both ahead of him now, Ziggy quietly tracking through the mud up front and Steed's ponderous backside flapping just a few feet in front of Ash's face. _Why am I always behind him? That hardly seems fair._

Ash felt foolish, more foolish than he could ever remember. The priests had shamed him on occasion, bringing up his writing errors in front of the other acolytes or chastising him on some of the finer points of holy scripture. This was different. This was an alien world. Reciting the verses of _The Mother of Light_ in the correct order once seemed like a life-or-death proposition for him. Reciting the exact dates of the Siege of Sweetleaf, or memorizing the genealogies of the royal houses of Thanelaw had once been critical knowledge.

I was a fool. My teachers were fools. The lessons were lies. I'm not prepared for what really matters. Simple, basic survival.

In all his lessons Ash had never once come across any accounts of a white demon. He wished, now, that Markov had taught him more useful survival skills than parrying techniques and advanced sword fighting footwork. He lacked the basic senses that these two farmers had. Something primal. Something bestial. His life depended on their inexplicable abilities. _Does Simon feel the same way_? _Surely, he had not sensed the danger either?_ No one would be talking until they got to safety —wherever that was— but the need to know was killing him.

A few days ago he had taken great pride in his abilities. He could read and write, he knew the basics of most of the faith's core philosophers, and could hold his own in any theological argument —except against Zirev, who constantly frustrated him, treating the world's most important ideas like they were playthings designed for his amusement. History was another great love. Mostly military history and accounts of the Empire's great heroes and scholars.

The beet brothers, though, were illiterate peasants. They had never read the _Tome of Tears_. Nor the _Book of 50 Names_. He had read the Abbey's copy of the _Scroll of Light_ several times, as had Simon. None of the other yardlings cared much for the library. The older knights hadn't either, although once or twice Ash had caught Yount in there, brushing the dust off of some ancient atlas.

Ash shuddered as his foot slipped from the mud and into the icy stream. _I'd towered over the other yardlings, both in stature and in martial ability._ Yount and Markov had noticed, and spoke to him often about his future plans in the Abbey. _These men, these great heroes. They had high hopes for me._ Exmortus had been his home —not just a way out of his troubles up north, but a clear path to honor, to glory. The chance to become a knight. Not just some minor nobleman's spoiled sixth son. A real knight. A Paladin of Torain. A Champion of the Chalice.

_Yount said I was making superb progress in my training. Holy secrets were to be entrusted to me at the proper time. I was just a few months away from my first expedition_. "Soon enough," Yount had told him, unsmiling, "I remember my first mission like it was yesterday. You'll be better off than I was, though. Markov and I will see to that."

_Did Yount's first mission involve the extermination of all his friends and family? Did he have to run from supernatural forces beyond his understanding?_ His education was worthless. His martial training was suspect at best when he was not holding a sword and shield. _Out here, in real danger, I'm nothing more than a useless librarian. With no books._

Wrist-deep in freezing mud, crawling on all fours like a half-drowned rat, running away from a danger he could not sense, with no weapon of any kind, Ash felt more helpless than at any time in his life. He clutched the small wooden box tightly. _Simon was right_. _I will deliver it to the Empress, at any cost. The dead will not be forgotten. Exmortus will not be lost to history. Not while I live._

His hand sunk into a patch of wet, runny slop on the side of the stream. He felt a large stone, and remembered what the old man at the crossroads had said. _There are weapons everywhere, all around us._ The stone felt heavy and round, good for throwing. Ash scooped it out of the mud, pocketed it and continued on.

A few yards up, he felt foolish. _What kind of chance do I have, a rock against a beast from hell?_ _One rock might stun one of them, perhaps their leader, if he connected right between the eyes..._ _presuming they even had eyes._ The dark shapes had not seen them in four feet of water right under their noses. Perhaps these creatures relied on their sense of smell, or their sense of hearing, or some other, infernal ability that he could never understand.

Simon's breathing was labored and heavy. Steed was starting to slow down. Ash strained his ears to hear anything behind, above, around them, to no avail. _This is my mission now, my life. Time to take control of it._ He broke into a low crouch, ran up to Steed and grabbed his leg. The brute swung around at once.

"The _fuck_?"

Ash cringed. If the beasts had ears, there was no doubt they knew where they were now. He brought his face close to Steed's and whispered. "We need to rest, just for a moment."

Steed nodded, looked up to where Ziggy had halted and motioned ahead. The stream cut through a small canyon in the loose soil, pooling waist-deep amid eroded mud walls eight to ten feet high. The gnarled roots of dozens of trees were the only things holding the mud in place.

There was little shore here, but Ash felt that they could defend themselves better here than on level ground. His legs felt like acid was coursing through them. Simon was red-faced and out of breath, his gasps making small mist trails in the cold air. _He doesn't have a weapon either_.

All four glanced around in silence. Ash studied the roots in the earthen walls surrounding them. _Where there are trees, there are fallen branches_. A pair of clubs would give him a little more confidence in their continued survival. Steed had his massive scythe strapped to a hand-made holster on his back and Zig had his bow and quiver, along with all his daggers lining his leather vest. He and Simon had nothing, but they had military training, if nothing else. Simon's choice of weapon had always been the mace, which was similar to the club. Ash felt his mind getting clearer.

He stood up to his full height and grabbed at a root to test its strength, but his lower back spasmed and his legs ached from crouching. After a long, lingering stretch he felt better, good enough to attempt what he needed. Steed was chewing on a small piece of wet root while Ziggy was cleaning the snot from his nose with a rag. Simon was staring off in the direction they came. _Waiting_.

Ash grabbed a thick root and pulled himself up. His long wingspan nearly reached the top of the mud wall. His feet found nothing but slippery soil until he felt a hand steady them. He glanced down. Both Steed and Simon were there, holding his legs. Steed raised and lowered his eyebrows, then clumsily shook his head in a circular motion. _He wants me to take a look around._

Ash grunted loudly and lifted himself up to the ground level. It was quite dark by now with a cloudless, starry sky lightly illuminating the dense forest directly above him. The black mass of trees blocked everything but a winding sliver of sky that flowed off to the northwest. Ash pulled himself up some more to see if nature had provided him with a pair of solid weapons, but he could see no obvious clubs amid the tangled branches and bushes.

But something saw him, and snarled.

### Chapter 6 – Escaping to the White Castle

Ash's blood froze. At the edge of the fog wall surrounding him two eyes stared at him with pale yellow menace. He wanted to jump, to climb down, to fly —but his limbs went limp and his bones hung like stone weights. His heart stopped, then resumed with a booming, crashing sound that drowned out every other sound in the forest. His hands shook violently. Waves of blood coursed through his jugular at irregular intervals. The beast snarled again, a faint glistening below its eyes. _It's baring its teeth_.

Time stopped as he and the creature stared at each other, frozen in place, waiting for the other to act. Wisps of night fog drifted between them, concealing and revealing the eyes behind pale ghost masks. Ash's heart slowed. He thought he heard Steed's voice ask him something unintelligible from a great distance away. _It's ok, my friend,_ Ash said in his mind to the beast, _I'm not here to hurt you. I'm not a threat. I'm going now._

As if the creature understood, the pale eyes blinked, then momentarily looked away. Ash waited. When the eyes returned, he made his move. _It needs to see me go. See that I left. See that I'm not coming back._

Slowly, deliberately, without taking his eyes off the beast he lowered himself into a crouch. The pale yellow eyes followed him intently, but the snarling stopped. A low growling noise escaped from the creature's throat. Ash continued downward, never taking his eyes off the two orbs staring at him from the edge of the fog wall.

Ash maintained eye contact for as long as he possibly could, until his line of sight dropped below the level of the ground. Instantly he ducked down and motioned for Simon and Steed to lower his legs. Quietly, he pointed at his own eyes with his ring and index finger, then up at the bank.

"Wolf."

They waited. No sound came from the bank. Steed sniffed the air. Ziggy breathed in through his nose, making a slight whistling sound. Simon's face was a white sheet of terror. He was still holding his breath.

Finally, gambling that the danger had passed, Steed gestured for them to move on. _This is not the beast that was looking for us_. Of that much Ash was glad. He felt like he had –finally– won a victory, however small.

A few hundred yards up Steed motioned for them to stop. The dirt walls bracing the small stream were high here, maybe ten foot or more, and the twisted roots jutting from the eroded banks provided them with some cover from the night sky. They could see a white cloud of fog floating over the creek ahead. As good a place as any to make camp.

Ash sat down on a large root protruding from the cold mud and removed his boots. They were soaked at the bottom, and his feet felt like cold fish swimming in a leather pouch. They were as white as death. Steed did the same, while Simon huddled underneath an outcropping and shivered.

Ash heard a splash; Ziggy had taken off his shirt, tied it between two of his arrows and was trying to corral some of the tiny fish they had seen swimming downstream. The boy's upper body was porcelain-white and naked save for his oversized leather vest, which made his skinny arms and neck look like thin twigs of wet bone. Ziggy sploshed around as Ash tried to dry his feet with the edge of his damp tunic. The others watched hungrily as Ziggy caught some small fish.

When Ziggy climbed back up onto the bank he had just six small minnows trapped in his shirt, still alive and wriggling. Steed took two and slurped them down without chewing. Ziggy took two for himself, biting into the spine to kill them and then licking the tiny fish guts off his shivering hands. Simon didn't have the strength to hold his fish. It slipped from his grasp and nearly flopped back into the river before Ash stepped on it. Ash gave Simon his fish but he dropped that one too. Ziggy speared it with a knife and gave it back to Simon with an amused look on his face.

Ash grabbed the one from under his foot tightly in his hand. He bit into it with some reluctance, but once he had awoken his stomach he felt he could have eaten thousands of the little minnows. _Damn it, I'm only teasing it. Making it angry._ Ash's stomach gurgled, sending dull rumbling aches throughout his torso. He looked at Steed's blonde hair, broad build and sky-blue eyes. Other than the way his eyes pointed in different directions, the resemblance to his father and brothers was uncanny. _Best find out about Zirev's note and take my mind off of it._

"Steed?"

The big man grunted.

"Tell me about your father."

Steed blew a large glob of snot into the stream. "Never met the fuckhead. Ma was a whore, so it coulda been just about anybody in the Empire."

"Probably a faggot," Ziggy chuckled to himself, "Or another whore, maybe one of them with both man and lady bits."

"You two really talk about your own father like that? Your own mother?" Ash was horrified. His own parents had never been warm to him, especially after what happened on the cliff face, but he was prepared to defend their honor at the slightest provocation. _It's what sons are supposed to do. My parents may have had little love for me, but they brought me into this world. They gave me life._

"Why not? She had sex with anyone who could afford it," Steed blurted. "And some who couldn't. Maybe she still is."

"Naw, I think the maggots are buggering her nowadays," laughed Ziggy.

"You don't even know if she's _alive_?"

"Who cares?"

"Not me."

_Small wonder. "_ That's terrible. That's the worst thing I've ever heard. My mother refused to talk to me after, well, after a while, but I still love and respect her."

"Then you're a moron," Steed said, and closed his eyes. Within seconds, he was snoring.

"I'll take the watch," Ziggy said as he scampered up the roots, still shivering as he gracefully disappeared into the thick mess of branches above. Ash looked at Simon. He had barely touched his fish. From the looks of it, he had tried to scrape off the scales with Ziggy's knife, unsuccessfully.

"Do you think I'm a moron, Simon?"

"Not at all. I certainly plan on loving my parents, provided I ever find them."

"After this is all over, we'll go looking for them. Just you and me. We'll leave the two country boys at the White Castle."

"After we've delivered the box?"

"After that, yeah."

The gentle trickle of the stream and the coarse snoring of the big man roared around the silence between them. Simon looked up at the sliver of sky above them, searching.

"Not like we've got anything better to do, eh?"

Ash pondered for a minute. "No. No, I suppose not." He leaned back in the chilly mud and, growing deaf to the harsh whispers tickling his ears, instantly fell asleep.

After a short, fitful nap the four trudged on through the night. Ash had been plagued by nightmares. A blue wolf charged at him, ripping at his throat as he watched the visceral look of terror and pain on his own face from above. Then it happened again, from another angle. And again, and again, and so on from a different point of view each time until he woke up, Steed shaking him firmly by the shoulders.

The fog was getting thicker above them in some places, thinning out to nothing in others, although it never settled directly above the flowing water. Without the stars to navigate by, Ash could not be sure of their location. He knew from the navigational skills his father taught him as a child that they had gone in a generally north-western direction since entering the Beastwood. After several hours the mud walls got progressively shorter and shorter until they were back on all fours, crawling along the muddy banks like four-legged snakes.

A shadow flitted in the fog above them. Then another. Then a third.

The four stopped. Steed silently drew the scythe from its holster, while Ziggy nocked an arrow. The starlight was struggling to shine through the thick fog, creating an eerie illumination across the stream and the mostly unseen trees beyond. Ash held his breath.

He saw another one.

He was looking straight at it. A human-shaped shadow of dark blue was momentarily outlined against the mist about six feet in front of his face, then vanished. Another blue shadow joined in, raised its arms above its torso and disappeared just as quickly. Steed sliced a large gash in the fog behind Ash, but nothing other than thick mist reformed over the pale white wound.

Ziggy inhaled deeply before he let loose an arrow. The mist devoured it in silence. Steed started breathing faster.

"Ghosts. Fog spirits. Let's run."

The four broke into a noisy sprint along the banks of the stream, half running through water and half through cold mud. Blue shadows appeared through the fog on both banks, the shapes running and jumping alongside them before fading back into white mist. The faster they ran, the more frenzied the spectres danced.

They splashed loudly through the freezing stream, their boots filling with icy water. Ash could not say how long they raced or how long those dark blue shadows raced alongside them. The phantoms' touch sent snaking tendrils of chill across his arms and legs. _If we stop, they will suck the warmth from our bodies._

_They will kill us_.

Suddenly the forest thinned out. They were on a well-maintained, paved road. The fog continued on the other side, as did the increasingly frequent bursts of blue shadows.

"This must be the road to the White Castle," Simon shouted. "We're safe!"

_Damn it, Simon, not yet._ Some distance behind them they heard an inhuman baying. A deep, hungry sound, the demonic cry of a starving beast. Exhausted, the four bolted down the road to their left. The castle could have been fifty miles or fifty feet away. Either way, their lives depending on making it to the Wall before their pursuers did. _Even if we make the Wall..._

"Steed! How far away are they?"

"Mile, maybe two. Hard to tell... last time I heard a dog howl like that, I was porking your sister."

Ash was too drained to feel the sting of the insult. "I don't have a sister, asshole."

"You sure? She looked just like you." He let out a hearty guffaw as he sprang up the road, holding his scythe across his chest.

Ash and Simon struggled to keep up and after a few minutes, Ziggy was lagging behind all of them. The boy's fire had gone out. Ash went back and grabbed him by the elbow. Ziggy snapped his arm back and glared at him in silence.

Another horrible sound behind them —a loud _pop_!— then silence. The fog was thinning out. Ash glanced behind them and saw it. His heart slid into his throat and he nearly retched.

"The _star!!_ It's coming for us! _Run_!"

"How does it keep finding us?" Simon asked breathlessly, trying to keep up.

Ziggy's knee buckled and he fell. Ash stopped to pick him up but the boy recoiled at his touch.

"It's your box, idiot, he's come looking for it." Ziggy dusted off his knee and bounded forward with an fresh burst of strength. _Where did that come from_?

_Is he right_?

Steed yelled back. "Toss the box on the side of the road! Let it keep the fucking thing!"

"Never! Are you mad?!"

"I'll fucking do it myself."

Steed turned around and sprinted at full speed into Ash. Ash juked to his left but Steed clipped him. Both slammed to the stony pavement. The star loomed closer behind them.

_I'm not about to give up on the Abbey, on Zirev, on myself_. _Not now, not ever. Not again. Never again_. Ash sprang to his feet and exploded down the road. His long limbs tapped the road surface with gliding, rhythmic strides. _The others can die back there for all I care_. He knew what he had to do. _The box will be safe_. _I will get this to the Empress. Or die._ His lungs worked like a well-oiled bellows, inhaling and exhaling in perfect unison with his long, loping strides.

I will not die.

A surge of energy coursed through his exhausted legs, torso and arms.

I will not die tonight.

His body sliced through the icy air like the prow of a swift ship, the fog gently parting before him. The black night air around him was pulsing, breathing, firmly guiding him down the road with supernatural speed. He had never before felt so alive.

A red haze marked the horizon ahead. _Flames._ Ash fought his doubts. The Wall was there, within reach. _Even if it's on fire. I will make the Wall. Nothing else matters._ His pace did not quicken. His long legs steadily loped toward the red haze, which was growing larger with every step. Droplets started forming in the corners of his eyes and mouth. Beads of sweat crowned his high forehead, ice crystallized in his lungs. _Nothing else matters. I must make the Wall._

So close now.

He could hear nothing and see nothing, save the growing, glowing red haze before him. A broken wagon wheel lay in his path: he leapt over it like a prize stallion. The fog had almost entirely dissipated, and he now sensed that the night sky was not so dark. He kept running. He felt a sharp stone through a brand-new hole in the sole of his boot but continued running without missing a step.

The red haze reshaped itself into a massive structure in front of his eyes as the fog cleared. The Wall: a monumental, orange-red snake of brick and iron stretched out forever to the left and right of his peripheral vision. In the center of the snake was a dull white structure, smaller than a proper castle but larger than a keep.

He ran, and as he did his hope swelled within him. His chest expanded and contracted in harmonious rhythm, filling his body to bursting with excess energy. He wanted to leap into the air, to plunge into the night sky and dive deep into the rolling ocean of ink.

Suddenly his hearing and sight, mercifully blacked out by his mind, returned in a tempest of cacophonous sound. People were screaming behind him, voices he knew. The baying was close, very close. A large, sickening sucking sound filled the air at irregular intervals, each time sending a rumbling chill through Ash's spine. Supernaturally bright light lit the sky behind him, casting a tall, thin shadow onto the paved road ahead.

The castle was nearly in full view. The Wall was blazing like red-hot iron. The sucking sound was now almost above him, just behind his head, so close he felt he could reach up with his arms and grab it. Stifling heat singed the back of his head and neck. Ash dared not look up but at the far borders of his vision the night sky stormed like a terrible black ocean, as titanic waves of pure obsidian slammed into an immense object just out of his sight.

A pair of explosions thirty feet above his head blinded him as a powerful, invisible force slammed into the back of his neck. The box flew from his hand as Ash's face smacked into the hard pavement. He saw stone, then red, then nothing.

### Chapter 7 – The Lord Commander

Ash woke up lying on a mattress in a large room. Daylight streamed through the high windows on one side of the vaulted walls. His forehead ached, as did his nose. Ash touched it gently and felt a fresh linen bandage.

"Ash?"

He turned and groaned. Simon was sitting on a wicker chair on the edge of his bed.

"How many days have I been out?"

"Days? It's not even noontime. You've been out for two, maybe three hours."

Ash didn't like that answer. "Where are we? Are we safe?"

"We're in the hospitaler's chambers at the White Castle. As for 'safe'... well, once you woke up we're supposed to see the garrison commander. Molt. He's already seen Steed and Zigmund."

Ash darted up. "Did you tell him about the demon? The box?" Ash threw open his sheets: they had taken everything. "Where is the box...?!"

Simon shifted in his chair. "Err... they confiscated it. Steed told them it was meant for the Empress. They had never heard of Zirev, unfortunately, nor did they believe that we were being chased. At one point, Steed made an unflattering reference to Commander Molt's grandmother, and.. and nearly got us thrown in the cells."

Ash laid back down on his pillow, a bundle of rags tied together inside a soiled bedsheet. He didn't know if the layer of yellow grime on the sheet belonged to him, or another invalid.

"Well, that's good news, I guess. Not in prison," Ash snickered to himself. _But is the box safe here? "_ Where are they now?"

"Molt dismissed them, all of us. From his sight. They're waiting down near one of the western turrets. I was sent here to watch you until you woke up." Simon sighed heavily. "I fear his Lordship is not at all pleased with the damages to his Wall."

Ash closed his eyes tightly. His right temple was throbbing with a dull pain. _Normally that's where I feel my anger the strongest._

"What happened out there?"

Simon paused, studying the cracked stone tile on the floor. "You ran ahead of us. It attacked us. It ignored the three of us and headed straight for you. Or for the box. I didn't think you would make it, but then —explosions, huge balls of black fire everywhere. The thing didn't seem hurt, but it flew away all the same. I don't know, maybe it was hurt, but didn't show it. The Wall was glowing red everywhere, and.. and the night air was _heavy_."

"With smoke?"

Simon rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. "I, I don't know how else to describe it. All around us, above us, the air was black and damp and full of.. something .. terrifying. Almost pulsing. It was like the thing woke the Wall, which woke.. woke the air itself." He looked down, embarrassed. "It's hard to describe unless you were there. The Wall just seemed... alive."

"The _Wall?"_

"Yes...fortunately for us. Or.. possibly not.." Simon trailed off.

Ash wished he had not lost consciousness. "So how did I get here?"

"You were knocked out.. by the time the garrison sent out some soldiers to pick us up, you could see the inscriptions. On the Wall. Sigils, huge ones, some forty or fifty feet high. None of the soldiers knew what they meant, unfortunately. Only that demons and other evil spirits could not look upon them and live. To tell you the truth, they made the hairs on my neck stand up, even when I jotted some down from memory on some blank parchment Zigmund found for me. Here."

He showed them to Ash: swooping, curving, bending lines, geometric shapes dotted by tiny circles, strange lettering he did not recognize. None of it looked even remotely like anything he had encountered in his linguistic studies. Staring at them, he felt a strange tightening sensation in his shoulders and neck. "What does it mean?"

Simon put the parchment back in his little pouch. _Where did Simon get that pouch? And the parchment, for that matter?_ "I'm not sure. Zirev once showed me an unlabeled tome in the far northwest corner of the upper stacks that had something similar to these inscriptions, on the first few pages. But it was in a language I wasn't familiar with. I suspect the builders of this wall knew well enough."

"What about Molt? Surely he must know."

Simon looked down, scraping his foot along a seam in the floor. "Err.. he's.. we should probably go meet him now. Get it over with."

"Good idea." Ash got up slowly, his temple throbbing. His body fought him for every inch, craving sleep, but Ash strained his sore muscles until he was wobbling on his feet. A small droplet of dark red blood fell from his nose onto the stained bedsheet below.

The few hours of rest had done Ash some good. His body felt better than it had in days. He recalled the feeling of physical and mental vigor he had while running for his life, and wondered if that had more to do with it than two hours on a soiled mattress. Still, he would have liked a day or two of sleep before moving on. For the first time since leaving the Abbey, he felt safe. Whatever ancient secrets held up this Wall, they were stronger than his pursuers. _For the moment, anyway._

Simon led him out into an empty courtyard flanked by four white towers arranged in a square. Between the two thickest keeps stood an intimidating oaken gate. The towers, though sturdy, were just a small interruption in the massive, unending stretch of Wall. While from this side the Wall looked rather ordinary, he noted that all of the stone had been painted a faded shade of red, almost dark pink. The four towers and the gate were of a dazzlingly bright shade of white stone that hurt his sore eyes.

Shielding his eyes from the blazing towers, Ash stared out at the sky on the other side of the Wall.

"Simon, do you see that? Up there, up there above the Wall. The sky. You see that?"

"I don't... wait. Wait. What —what happened to the sky?"

"It's... missing?"

Neither knew how to explain what they were staring at. Just above the towers on the other side of the Wall some wide strips of the sky were gone, as if a slice of the heavens had been peeled off, exposing a sky-blue wound that was incongruous with the air around it. Ash recalled Simon's description of the heavy night air, and shuddered.

"C'mon, Simon, I've got some questions about this place that need answers."

The two walked into the northernmost keep, past a pair of barely-attentive guards that waived them through without so much as a glance. Ash nodded to them. They dignified his gesture with a labored grunt. They walked up a half-dozen flights of stairs and entered through a thick set of iron-studded doors, into a spacious chamber lined with twenty-foot-tall maps, tapestries depicting battle scenes and enough torches to light a room ten times its size. In the center was a large circular wooden table covered with maps, charts, lists and other pieces of parchment Ash could not discern. Lord Commander Molt was on the far side of the table, standing near the only chair in the room.

"Come in. Let's make this quick."

Commander Molt was a tall man, possibly as tall as Ash —but in reality a good half-foot shorter, as a pronounced slouch made his long neck jut out from the top of his armor at a right angle. The commander stood straight otherwise, his curving neck placing his long, thin head well out in front of the rest of his body. His face was drawn, his lips pulled tight and his beady black eyes had almost no whites to them whatsoever. He wore the dark gold cloak and lute-and-wand insignia doublet of the Imperial Army.

"Commander Molt, this is Ash, our companion. The one with the box. The one that was attacked."

"Sit down, Ash. I've got some questions for you."

_Not half as many as I have for you._ "Certainly, your lordship."

Molt leaned over him as he sat down, his unblinking eyes revealing nothing. "What was that thing that attacked our Wall this morning?"

"Sir, I'm not entirely sure. We first encountered it–"

"In Exmortus Abbey, I know. Bright white light, wings, sword, whip, I know all that already. But what was it?"

"That, I don't know."

Molt pursed his lips even tighter. _Did he really expect me to know? "_ Your companions say you all left Exmortus several days ago, running from this and other unidentified creatures. Why did you bring them here?"

"Well, sir, I –we– we weren't safe, and ran. For our lives."

"What was your function at the Abbey?"

"Soldier in training, sir. Soon to be a knight."

Molt grunted. "I highly doubt that," he said in a much higher voice. "A real soldier wouldn't run from his duty. A real knight would rather die than run. You don't understand. I would rather die here than run from the Wall, and I'm not even a knight. My men, too. You don't understand, they would die to protect the Wall."

"I can definit–"

"You don't understand what it is you've done to my Wall. My piece of the Wall. Things like this just don't happen. Not here. Not until you showed up. You don't understand, your cowardice has resulted in damages. Damages." The commander let the word hang in the air, licking his thin lips.

"I wouldn't call it cowardice, you see–"

"You call me sir."

"Sir, I'm sorry. Sir. You see, the prob–"

"Damages. Now I have to file reports on the damages. You don't have to file anything, but I do. I dislike filing these reports. You don't understand, I have to send one of my men and two of my horses to Alestorm, and another one of my men and two more horses to Almsraven, and onto Helios, where they'll probably make fun of me again in Clearstone, and my men will be gone for weeks, maybe longer. I should have you fill out these reports. You caused the damages."

"I was just–"

"Sir!"

"Sir, I apologize, I was just running from certain death with a messag–"

"That's another thing I need to file a report on. You don't understand, I can't just take your box to the Empress myself. I need to spare another two men for that, and four horses, and all the rations and equipment that entails. Do you enjoy making my life harder? I'm an officer of the Imperial Army. Do you see me making your life harder?"

"Sir, I can assure you–"

"You don't understand the problems I face here. And now, this business with your demons and the explosions. And the damages. What can you tell me about all this?"

"I'm –sir– I'm afraid I don't reall–"

"Very well, you know nothing. The damages you have caused to our Wall are hardly insignificant, but can be repaired without much cost to our Empress' treasury. You've got an honest face, not like your friends. I'm feeling generous this morning. You will not be held liable this time, but I want you all out of my jurisdiction this instant, never to return. Be gone." Molt stood next to Ash's chair, with his arms crossed, staring blankly at the door.

Ash stood up, facing Molt. "I've got a few questions of my own. Fir–"

"You don't understand, Mr. Ash. I ordered you to leave. Leave. And call me Sir."

"I'm not one of your soldiers. And I've got som–"

"You don't understand. The damages. I could have you all arrested until you paid for them."

_With what money?_ "All I need to know is whether–"

" _You don't understand._ I will arrest you if you ask me one more question. I will _arrest_ you!" Molt's face was red, his breathing hard, even though his face still wore an expressionless mask. Ash was angry, but bowed.

"As you wish. _Sir._ "

They found Steed and Ziggy in the far western courtyard beyond the towers, in an area surrounded by small tents and huts. A number of merchants mulled about, selling smoked meats, local cheeses and various sundries. Ash felt defeated. Without Zirev's box he had nothing more to live for. He thought about returning to Boarsky.

Could I go back there now? Has it been long enough?

"There's our man Ashy! Did Dickneck get you down?" Steed was standing near a stall, feeding a strip of blackened meat to his piglet Boob. Ziggy was rifling through a large pack. Ash hadn't seen the pack before.

"Lord Pole-Up-His-Ass took my box. If I had a weapon... there were only two guards, and..."

"You mean this box?" Steed reached into Ziggy's pack and threw him the box. "A present from my bastard of a little brother." Ziggy's light green eyes lit up like candles, and he grinned from ear to ear.

Ash looked it over just to make sure. "Holy shit. How did —we need to get out of here! How... how did you get this?"

Steed tossed him a clean gray tunic, a scabbard and a stubby sword. Ash studied it. It was dull, somewhat rusted and of dubious make. Still, it was a sword. "The guards on the Wall here are about as sharp as a cow's ballsack. We had a little disagreement with Officer Friendly, and decided to exact revenge by helping ourselves to some of his stuff. While I offered to plow his grandma's genitals for half her normal rate, our little shit here got some souvenirs. Here, buddy, you're probably pretty hungry after all that running."

Steed tossed him the charred mutton he had been feeding Boob. Ash wiped the piglet's saliva off the end and pocketed it. "They'll know this stuff is missing soon. We need to leave, _now."_

"We're waiting on our horses."

" _Horses?_ Did we–"

"Relax, Ashy, the stableboys can't read either. But they know Molty's signature when they see it. We're his honored guests, delivering an important message to the Empress for him. What, you didn't know?"

Ash was terrified. He had finally found someplace he felt safe, a place they could hole up in for a few days, tending to their wounds, but now... just more enemies to run from. This was an inauspicious beginning to his journey into the heart of the Empire. Half of the countryside would be looking for them now.

"You two don't need to come with me." _I know what Zirev said. I know. But fuck Zirev. He doesn't have to live with this oaf. I do._

"Hah! You can't shake me that easy, Ashy. Besides, that devil got all my fucking beets."

"Yes, but.." _Blessed Torain, don't leave me with these two._

"Ah, Belty, my good man, there you are." A scrawny, pockmarked stableboy approached, looking at the four warily. Especially at Ash. He led four horses, saddled and ready to ride.

Steed beamed. "Your assistance in this matter will not go unnoticed by the Empire, Belty. Did you bring us the rations we are due? And the extra saddlebags?" Belty silently nodded to his questions. "Well, my good man, we'll be on our way to deliver our message to Winterberry then. Torain's blessings be with you." Ash had never heard Steed wax so eloquently. The four mounted their horses and rode out on a fast gallop.

Moments later, a scream emitted from the northern keep, followed by the clanging of an iron bell.

### Chapter 8 – The Bog King

Ash looked at his map. By his calculations they were still somewhere in the middle of the Sam Hills. Beyond that he had no idea. The hills were not individually labeled on the map and even if they were, he had not been able to keep track of which ones were which. The area was not as heavily forested as he would have liked. Luckily, the stony, hard ground would make it next to impossible for the garrison to track them.

But he was not so much a fool to think that all of the garrison's soldiers were as incompetent as their Lord Commander.

_If the garrison has any skilled rangers in their employ..._ the thought made him shiver in his saddle. They were headed south, for certain, but beyond that they were hopelessly lost. All the hills bled into and overlapped each other, with the same hardscrabble bushes, irregular pine tree clusters and dry streambeds. A few times they had had to jump over narrow, silent rivers rushing west with surprising speed. Not one of these small, fast rivers were on his worthless map. No doubt these were the headwaters of the mighty Wild Ink River, and some of these streams would lead directly to Almsraven. It had been two days since they'd stolen the horses and left the White Castle, and Ash wanted nothing more than to find a comfortable inn, ditch the horses and make down the river via boat.

He also knew that any Imperial horsemen chasing them would be prowling the outer walls of Almsraven, looking for four morons on horseback. They had his real name, his first name anyways —Ash was glad he would not drag the proud House Xavier even deeper into the mud than he already had— and some fairly easy to spot physical descriptions. Even if Steed boastfully disregarded the danger he had put them in, Ash was not so trusting of the dumb luck that had gotten them this far.

Still, with a sword by his side, meat in his belly and a horse between his legs, he felt strong, stronger than he had at any time in the previous weeks. He could handle an Imperial ranger or two. But if that _thing_ came flying over the Red Wall...

The four had ridden their horses hard in the hills for the first few hours on this side of the Wall and ever since, they had needed more and more frequent rest stops. Their mounts tired easily in the rolling hills, and Ash was worried. The stony ground was treacherous in spots, and the other three were unskilled riders. They could barely stand up when they dismounted from their horses, and spent a majority of the time complaining of sore groins and bad backs. Steed had already been thrown from his horse twice, once after slipping in a patch of icy mud the previous afternoon, and again when his mount stepped into a hidden rodent's hole. He had been fortunate that the horse had not broken its leg. Steed escaped both times unscathed, laughing off both instances and making crude remarks regarding the hole's similarity to certain of Ash's mother's bodily orifices. The comments stung, but Ash quietly let the brute's filthy talking slide off his back. _This is no time for petty, inconclusive squabbles. I'll get him back later._

The trained horses he had ridden at the Abbey were strong, worthy beasts, but Ash worried that these sorrel nags might collapse at any second. Their pursuers would ride far better horses. He strained his ears for the sound of approaching hoofsteps for days, and their continued absence only made him even more nervous. _Justice is coming_. _If we could just make the river..._

As dusk approached the company made camp in a small hollow on the side of a hill. Simon spotted it first, an alcove hidden from view by a cluster of boulders and pine trees. They made no fire, despite the chill.

Ash had slept as peacefully as a newborn babe the previous two nights. The eerie whispers had vanished, and Ash rested comfortably for the first time in weeks.

He got into a nice routine of stretching out his long, saddle-weary legs, slumbering through the first three watches, then taking the last one and meditating in the cold morning air. He climbed to the highest point he could find during his watch and scanned over the hills to the north while dawn broke over the Wall to the east. The Wall was often visible from the higher hills but the farther south they traveled, the less he saw of it. He looked forward to the icy air cleaning his mind, the quiet stillness of an early winter sunrise, the refreshing breakfast when the others had woken. Ziggy had gotten some choice foodstuffs in exchange for that bolt of silk, and the four boys feasted each morning.

As he slept, Ash dreamt a million fragments of dreams, of Galena's beautiful hair, the fire in the Snow Tower, of Zirev's terrible note and the sigils on the Wall. The pieces combined together, creating new joys and terrors in the night that he would try and piece together in the waking hours. He had disturbing dreams of blue-hued alien ghosts, girlish krakens capsizing ships and one particularly disturbing nightmare in which a giant hairy bone-white spider dug its claws into his back and its black fangs into the back of his neck, ripping out his soul and laying its eggs in his still-breathing carcass.

Whatever troubles lay before him, Ash knew that Torain would guide and protect him, just as He had in the Beastwood, just as He had his whole life. _Knighthood may still be a possibility someplace else. Perhaps in the far north, or in Thanelaw, or in the great coastal cities of Helios... if the contents of this box are important enough, perhaps the Empress herself will pardon me. Common horsethief, or potential Savior of the Realm? They said no one was ever wiser than the Empress..._

When Simon woke him for fourth watch it was still pitch-black. Simon's eyes were worried as he gently shook Ash from his sleep. He sat up from his bedroll and noticed both Steed and Ziggy were awake as well.

"Fires. To the south. Not sure how far away. Steed says a half mile or less."

Ash was shocked. To the _south_? Had their pursuers missed them? Were they surrounded? He darted up, climbed the small embankment and peered out over the hill. He could make out a small orange flicker on the top of a hill some ways away. Just a few pine trees on the barren ground between them and that fire. Trying not to make a sound, he slipped down the hill face and back to their camp.

Ziggy had disappeared. Simon and Steed were hastily packing up their camp. The boy's horse was still there, packed and ready.

"Where's Ziggy?"

"Scouting. Be back in five minutes."

_Damn him._ The boy's erratic behavior grated on Ash's nerves.

Five minutes passed, then five more. Ten more. Twenty. The eastern sky was slowly changing from black to dark grey to light grey. Still no sign of Ziggy. Ash crawled to the top of the hill to look for him several times, but only saw the distant campfire and the last time he checked even that had disappeared.

"We can't wait here forever. If he's not here in five minutes, we leave without him."

Steed snorted. "You in a hurry to die, your lordship? That little shit will return, sure as rain. I've tried ditching the bastard all my life."

"Five minutes, or we're leaving without him."

Steed took two strides toward him and grabbed his neck. He brought Ash's face an inch to his own, his breath sour, his sky-blue eyes boiling with rage.

"Ziggy _never_ gets left behind. _Never._ "

Ash's mind thought of a million responses but all he could do was silently nod his head. After a tense breath Steed exhaled and released his grip. Simon stood watching, frozen.

The big man drew a long knife from his pack. Ash stumbled backward. Steed crouched down with his back to Ash and started shaving his fuzzy stubble into a crude semblance of a handlebar mustache.

"Besides, we've got a plan."

Ziggy jumped down out of thin air, startling both Ash and Simon. "Done!"

Steed paid no him no heed, still scraping the tiny blonde hairs from his chin. Ziggy grabbed a handful of cheese from Steed's pack and chewed it, oblivious to the tension.

Ash's heart was racing. He had crossed an invisible line. Carelessly stepped between a mother bear and her cub.

"Steed, I.. I apologize. I.. that's not what I–"

"Do it one more time and I'll fucking kill you where you stand."

Ziggy stopped chewing and raised one delicate eyebrow. Ash and Simon were silent as stones. Steed finished shaving, stood up, wiped the blood from the nicks on his face with his hand and held it in front of Ash's face.

" _This_ is what matters. Everything else can get right fucked. Understand?"

"Yes."

Steed dabbed a spot of drying blood on the tip of Ash's nose. "Good. You need to lighten up, Ashy." He sat down on the ground, spread his legs and started furiously scratching his groin. "Zig, how're we doing?"

Ziggy looked at Ash with childlike pity, then resumed chewing. "We're good."

"Good. Ten minutes?"

Ash wanted to wipe the blood off his nose, but didn't know what was right and wrong behavior here. He had escaped the white demon twice —and had come far closer to death with a single careless remark over breakfast. He also didn't like how the brothers conspired without him. _Am_ _I not the leader here?_ In his gentlest voice he turned to Ziggy.

"Where have you been? We could have left by now."

Ziggy grinned evilly, then grabbed an apple from Steed's saddlebag and bit into it. "They've already started. Give 'em a half hour or so, then we'll follow."

Ash was confused. "Us? Follow them? Who are they?"

"I dunno. Horsemen. Rangers, maybe? One of them was carrying this." He handed Ash a small crumpled-up note. Ash opened and read it.

His fears were confirmed.

An Imperial Order from Lord Commander Molt, demanding the arrest and capture of four swarthy horse thieves, Criminals from Beyond the Wall. Strangely, the order did not note their names, physical descriptions, or possible destinations. _How will they know when they find us?_ Ash wondered if all the Empire's commanders were as inept.

The thought did not make his plight any easier. The Imperial guards were the only things standing between him and the white demon.

"Criminals? Really?" Simon was reading it over his shoulder, his eyes beaming. _Simon seems to enjoy the notoriety._

Steed leapt up, still scratching. "Alright fucktards, here's the plan. Those rangers just left, heading west. I counted three of them and five horses. We give them a half-hour head start, then we find their trail and follow them, slowly. They trotted off at a pretty good pace, so we shouldn'–"

"Follow _them_? They've got orders to arrest us!" Ash had never heard a stupider plan. Even the other yardlings at the Abbey would have laughed at anything so moronic.

"We're not going to _catch_ them, ho-bag, we're going to trace their steps. They know where we're headed better than we do. They know the land. And they've already decided that we're no longer riding south. We'll follow them to the outskirts of Almsraven, then ditch the horses and slit their throats. I'm not going to sit here and lick the ice off my balls out here in these hills forever. Get your horses ready, we ride in half an hour."

Ash was speechless, but he had no better plan. The imperial riders had tracked them this far across what he had figured was impossible ground. But the rangers had made a mistake, an unlikely one, and offered a way out of these unending hills. Their rations would not last forever. And knowing where their enemies were would give them a tactical advantage. There was no denying that.

Ash lifted himself into his saddle, waited the longest thirty minutes of his life, and set out.

It was past dusk when they came upon the dead horses. Ash looked down at the carnage and could not determine which flesh belonged to horse and which to man. The signs of combat were scattered all over the small patch of clearing. Small metal rings, a broken sword hilt, a half-helm that looked as if it had been eaten, then burnt, then spit out.

Up to that point, Ash had been fearing an ambush. Steed and Ziggy's plan to follow their pursuers at a safe distance seemed utter madness to him, yet he had followed them all the same. No one, other than perhaps Simon, would listen to him. Steed responded to Ash's extensive military and tactical training with a guffaw and a pull on his crotch. Those Imperial rangers were lying in wait for them. They knew the lay of their own land.

He steered his horse around the puddles of blood, slippery on the cold ground. He no longer feared a trap. Whoever had taken these rangers, met them in combat and slew three of their horses was clearly a formidable opponent. Outlaws, brigands, desperate wanted men, or worse. And with numbers, most likely. Rangers are generally quite skilled fighters. Ash's eyes scanned the path ahead for signs of fire or movement.

"Look at this fat henfucker! They dragged his blubbery hide into the bog!" Steed was pointing at a dark red streak about six feet in length. Ziggy had said that one of the three rangers was quite obese.

Ash trotted up. "How do you know it was him?"

"That's his fat down there on the ground, ain't it?" He pointed at some solid bits in the dark crimson soil. Ash nearly retched. Ziggy coughed behind him.

The red streak led into the bog that surrounded the clearing. Similar signs of dragged corpses were now revealing themselves to Ash, gruesome possibilities emerging from the anonymous gore, stories with no heart and no moral rising from carnage and staggering in no direction. _Their attackers escaped through the bog. A surprise attack. Needless carnage. A sign of desperate men._

"Ambushed from the bog," he mumbled. "We need to get out of here, now."

Steed wheeled up on his mount. "Ambushed?" He smiled. "Looks like dragon-work to me. Swamp dragons. Ma used to tell us stories about them attacking soldiers at night. Feed on man-blood, and shit emeralds."

"That's not true," Simon angrily blurted. "There's no such thing."

"Let's hear your explanation for this little dinner feast, old man."

"I —I don't know. But we best leave." Simon slunk in his saddle. "Not swamp dragons, though."

Ash could not agree more. "The brigands are probably celebrating their victory now, licking their wounds, getting ready for their next kill. We've got a little time to get out of here before they find us. Let's move out." He purposefully used his baritone commander's voice, the one he had practiced for long hours in his private quarters at the Abbey. He hoped it would have an effect on these undisciplined louts.

Steed sniffed the air, swallowing huge gulps of the icy sky in his wide nostrils. "Over there. Fifty yards off the path. It's not cooking its meat, probably 'cause it don't have to. Swamp dragon. Just like I said. Let's move."

He pointed to a spot far off to their right, fifty yards to the north of the path. Ash squinted his eyes in the fading light. All he could see was the same cold, wet bog they had been riding through for the last half-day. Simon tugged on his arm and whispered, "Bubbles!"

He could see them now. In a patch of bog nestled between two fallen trees near a pool of dark brown sand, large orbs were boiling over the surface of a black, oily liquid. _An underground lair? Odd_.

The four clopped through the pools of blood, past the edge of the clearing and down the narrow path as quickly as they could.

### Chapter 9 – The Forgotten City

They rode through the empty stone halls, smithies and mansions of Almsraven for hours before seeing any sign of life. Long-abandoned farmsteads, wells and mills dotted the low hills a day's ride from the edge of the bog. Small, isolated warnings of the deserted city ahead. They trod intricately paved roads of granite and marble, past large forgotten palaces overgrown with vines and cracked temples to forgotten gods that were ancient a thousand years ago.

Ash was filled with a mix of wonder and horror. _What happened here? What ancient disaster drove these people from their homes?_ Ziggy left to explore some of the abandoned mansions while the other three rode down one of the larger paved roads.

Steed had spotted a pair of river gulls soaring overhead an hour earlier. _So close now. The river. Then, onto Helios._ When they finally arrived at the first signs of civilization –a bar– Ash was beyond relieved. Steed and Simon took the horses around to the stable while Ash went in.

The tavern was quiet but there were some stirrings of life. The building itself was well-kept, of strong make, very roomy, and relatively empty. Three men were playing dice in the corner, two soldiers were silently eating leeks and roast beef near the door, while the fattest woman he had ever seen was pouring ale into a pair of tankards.

"Ay, you a handsome one, aincha? Whaty'll you do for, hon?"

Ash could not speak. He had not seen a woman in almost ten full years, not since he was shipped off to the Abbey. The middle-aged barmaid was broad-shouldered, with a heavy shock of curly black hair, a pug nose and a host of missing teeth. Ash found himself staring at her wide hips barely squeezing into the space behind the bar. Her ample rump seemed bigger than any of their horses', jutting out of her back like a spacious shelf.

"Deaf, mute, or dumb? A tall drink, ay, no doubts!"

Ash shook his head slightly to snap himself out of it. When he was a small boy he had a way with women, an effortless charm that came with being the youngest of six sons. Especially with the older ladies. He lowered his face until his eyebrows just covered the tops of his melancholic violet eyes, and gazed at her with his best smoldering look.

"Myself and three friends would like a room for the night, two, preferably, if you're not too busy. And food and quarters for our four horses." He said the last sentence quietly, in case the two soldiers knew to look for them. A quick side glance confirmed that the soldiers still had their heads down, shoveling their food into bearded faced in silence.

The bar wench leaned over, her massive udders nearly spilling out of her top. Ash focused his gaze on the three red boils on the bridge of her nose. "You got coin?"

"Yes. And four dinners too, I should add. _M'lady."_

The woman chuckled. "Oooh! I haven't had a proper little lord come in here for quite some time! What's your name, gorgeous?"

"Ash. What's yours?"

"Karin, daughter of Shem. That'd be my late dad, what owned this place."

"Ah. Excellent to meet you in this huge empty city, Karin, daughter of Shem." He decided to work her for as much information as he could get. They needed a boat, a good one, and maybe this woman could help.

"You as well, _Lord Ash."_

Ash blushed. He really did like the sound of that. "Tell me, where have all the people gone? We've been traveling through this city for hours, and you were the first–"

"Ay, Almsraven ain't what it once was, m'lord. I take it you're visiting from afar? Ay, watch your going, Sheff."

A serving boy was trying to squeeze past her backside while holding three plates of steaming roast corn and river cod. Ash suddenly felt a strong excitement in his loins watching her buttocks give way when the boy pressed against them. The boy seemed irritated that she was blocking his way. Ash hoped he wasn't blushing, or staring, or worse.

"We've come from—" Ash looked over at the soldiers, who were still quietly chewing away, and drew her in by lowering his voice, "Exmortus Abbey, on the other side of the Wall."

"Oohh, a proper priest, then! I should cover my teats up, eh!" The wench laughed, sending tidal waves of jiggles all over her wide body. She made no move to cover her teats up.

"No, not a priest, not exactly, we're–"

"Oh, forgive me, young Father, I meant no disrespect. Did you come from the White Castle, then?"

Ash wished she hadn't said that so loudly. He grimaced, and chose not to look over his shoulder. _Too suspicious. "_ Er, yes, by way of the swamp to the east of here."

The wench grinned from ear to ear. "Did you, then? Paid a visit to the Bog King, didcha?"

"The.. who?"

"The Bog King. The King of the Bog. Demands a toll to pass through, if ya don't pay, he don't grantcha to leave." She laughed heartily.

"Who is the 'Bog King'?"

"..An' too bad, too, if the friends you left behind were half a-good lookin' as you, m'lord."

He was intrigued by this Bog King. Had this King saved them from the imperial rangers? "This King, does he have a–"

"Hey, Sloppy Tits, what say we two leave this bar and wrestle outside in the stables?" Steed butted his wide face between the two, resting on his elbows just inches away from her bosom.

_Damnit, Steed, don't chase her away. "_ Karin, my friend–"

"Steed's the name, naked sex is my game. I'll show you all of mine if you show me all of yours."

"Steed, you —I'm sorry, Miss Karin, my friend here is just–"

"We're wasting time talking. Time to bone, beautiful."

Ash flushed red with embarrassment. He was shocked when the wench grabbed Steed's forearms, giggled and started running her greasy sausage fingers along his biceps and shoulder. "Steed, is it? You're awful forward."

_I've got to save this, fast_. "My apologies for Steed, m'lady, it's just that we need a boat for the morrow, and–"

"Ashy, do you _mind_? You're ruining the _mood_." Steed was facing him, but already had his hand far down the front of her loose bodice.

"The mood for what?"

"For _fuckin'_!"

Karin laughed heartily. "I've got bad news my Steed, I'm afraid. I'm a married woman, and a mother besides."

"Not a problem. Your husband can watch. You too Ash. Bring a mop."

The image that flashed in Ash's head made him physically ill. The barmaid was giggling uncontrollably as she led Steed to a room in the back. A moment later Ash was alone at the bar, tired, hungry and confused. _What the hell just happened?_ He glanced around the bar. The three men were still playing dice but the soldiers were gone, their dinners half-eaten and their ale tankards still full.

Oh, shit.

Ash ran outside and saw Simon and Ziggy talking. "Did you see a couple of soldiers pass this way?"

The two ignored his question, and Simon motioned Ash to come over. "Look at what Zigmund found in an abandoned mansion!"

Ash was nervous, but the wide-eyed look on both their faces intrigued him. Ziggy was beaming, holding a pair of thumb-sized crystals in the shape of tear drops, one deep blue, the other dark red. The deep blue one seemed to have a tiny silver kraken embedded in its center, while the red crystal held a miniature smith's hammer. Even in the dark light of dusk, the crystals gleamed in his hands.

"Beautiful, Ziggy. What are they?"

"I'm keeping them. I can make a necklace out of them later."

For a moment, Ash thought about a necklace of sea shells, pearls, and the deep-sea kraken crystal. A wonderful gift for a young maiden. _Galena would have loved it. She might have forgiven me..._

The dour-faced serving boy Sheff interrupted them. "Your dinners are ready, sirs, and your rooms shall be ready within the half hour." The boy stooped, sighed at the ground and droned in a listless, monotone voice, "Is there anything else you will need for the night? My mother is presently indisposed for the evening."

Ash's stomach got a sick feeling again. "And what of your father?"

"Out whoring downriver, most likely, m'lord."

_Can't say I blame him. The woman weighed four hundred pounds, if not more._ "We'll need a boat in the morning. Do you know where we can find one?"

The boy exhaled loudly, then looked down the street with an aggressive disinterest. "There's a river captain inside, sir, a Mister Glassbeard. Excellent captain, good tipper, knows the river well. Will there be anything else?"

"No, Sheff, thank you for your kindness." Ash motioned the other two inside. Four steaming hot dinners of roast corn, garlic sausage and pork loin were on the table where the soldiers had been sitting. The two tankards were still there, untouched and in the same place the soldiers had left them. As they sat down, Sheff silently brought out one more tankard of ale, for Ziggy, then left for the backroom without a word.

Ash bit into his sausage. It was surprisingly rich, the grease running down the small amount of stubble he had grown since escaping the Abbey. He needed a shave —Zigmund and Simon seemed incapable of growing a beard— but it would better if they cleaned up someplace safely downriver.

He took another bite, then turned to the table with the three men to have a look. Two of them were small, wiry fellows with scaly red skin, their sinewy, skinny arms showing rippling bulges under their half-sleeved shirts. Both looked as similar as brothers with thin features and faded blonde hair, their red faces clean-shaven except for a small patch of blonde bristles sticking out from their chins.

The third man was much taller, cloaked in deep blue garments, with a tightly-cropped black beard, blue eyes and a thin sprout of dark black hair under his floppy-brimmed hat.

"Excuse me, Captain Glassbeard?"

The three men stopped their dice game and looked at Ash. The tall one swallowed a piece of cod he had been chewing. "Who wants to know?"

Ash stood up, walked over and extended his hand. "Name's Ash. These are two of my companions, Simon and Zigmund. We've another upstairs somewhere." The two blonde men snickered. Glassbeard's face showed no expression of any kind. "We're traveling to Helios and have need of a good, fast boat."

The two red-skinned brothers looked at each other, then at their captain. After a moment's pause, he spoke. "Just so happens I've got a boat, headed downriver in the morn. But I've got cargo already."

Ash waited for a moment for Glassbeard to go on, but it seemed the captain had finished. "Well.. we won't take up much space. And we'll pay you, pay you well, for the favor, captain."

Glassbeard did not take his eyes off Ash, nor had he blinked since they started talking. After a minute or two of agonizing silence he closed his eyes and spoke. "You can ride along in the hold, but it will cost you. Three gold rods."

_What? Is he insane? "_ Sir, that price is a steep one. We're just poor travelers, priests and penniless monks in the service of Torain, and we.."

"Your horses, then. Provided they're still alive after being ridden all the way from the Wall."

_He knows_. "Done." _Did I just doom us all? What's the price on our heads?_

Glassbeard opened his eyes and stared at Ziggy, but the boy was not paying any attention to the conversation. The boy had finished his meal and was already halfway done with Steed's. "Get your rest now, _travelers_ , but at first light tomorrow we sail. You can find the docks easily enough, just follow this road past the square and continue on to the river. My boat is the black-hulled sloop, tied near the abandoned customs station a half-mile south of the end of the road. Bring the horses, and your other companion. No one else."

_Is this a trap?_ Regardless, they needed a boat. The horses had been run ragged for days, and wouldn't make a tenth of the journey to the next city downriver. Besides, it had been more than ten long years since he had ridden on a ship. All that time, the water had been calling to him. "We thank you for your services, captain."

"Don't be late." The three got up, nodded to Ash and Simon, and left.

The tavern was suddenly as desolate as the city around it, the only sounds Ziggy's noisy chewing and a faint knocking sound from far off. Ash was not hungry. _Have I just led us into a prison cell? 'Proper lord,' indeed._

Ash dreamt, and in his dreams the wooden roof above his hard mattress would burst into white flame, and Ash would scream... but when he bolted up from under the sheets he was in a quiet, darkened room with two heavy sleepers. _Why is Simon asleep? Why didn't he wake me for second watch?_ Ash tried to get off the bed but his legs sunk deep into the dusty, dark purple bedcovers. Ash put his hand down on the mattress, and it was swallowed by the bed. He tried to pull his arm out and it was sucked further down into the warm, squishy mattress. He tried to cry out to Simon to pull his one good remaining arm, to save him, but words rattled around his throat and bounced back into his stomach and lungs. The more he struggled, the more he sank deeper into the black-purple bed, which was pulling his limbs off one small piece at a time...

_thud._ Ash heard something coming down the hallway, something heavy. _thud._ He could see nothing. His eyes were welded shut. _thud._ His eyelids were heavy as iron.

They drugged our food, the bastards. The Bog King has come back to finish the job, to take the toll that we never paid.

_thud._ Ash tried finding his face with his hands, but they hung lifelessly from his elbows like drowned cadavers. He slapped himself across the face with his inert left hand and strained to open his eyes. His legs were unresponsive. The light from the hallway streamed under the bottom of the door. _thud_. A shadow crossed the light, and stopped.

_THUD._ The door shook as something heavy slammed against it. He had locked it from the inside before collapsing after dinner. _So soon after dinner. Suspiciously soon._ The metal knob rattled. _They're trying to get in._ Ash tried again to move his limbs but they flopped around like dead fish. He sat and watched helplessly as the intruders... _left?_ The shadow suddenly disappeared, the Bog King's heavy footsteps carrying down the hallway.

_They're coming back, with force. With numbers._ He was alone in the room. Had Ziggy and Simon already escaped and left him here to die? Had the White Demon found them? He thought of Galena, of Zirev, of Steed. _Has anyone I've met survived?_ Once they killed him, all memories of the people he knew would die with him. History would never know of them, songs would never be sung for the beautiful little girl on the cliff face, glaring at him with silent, withering hatred. Not that Zirev deserved a song _. You shithead, you should have told me to my face._ He wondered what sort of song Steed would get. Not anything you'd hear at the Empress' court. _Where the hell was he?_

Tears welled up in the corners of his eyes. _This was not the way I wanted. Not here. Not in a tavern. Drugged. Alone._ The doorknob rattled again. _How sturdy is that door? How severe a beating..._

The lock turned, the door opened and the room flooded with dim torchlight from the hall. Ash opened his eyes wide.

To see his killer.

A behemoth with a barbed tail dove through the doorway and slammed onto the wooden boards below. A larger figure reached over and closed the door, leaving it cracked a little.

The behemoth groaned, smelling fouler than a ten-pound sack of shit. _The Bog King._ Ash tried to feel his right hand. _Perhaps I can make for my swordbelt in time..._

Simon lit a lamp, and Ash saw the disgusting beast writhing on the floor. It was Steed, half-naked and spattered with greasy knots of hair. He was covered with purple bruises, a deep red mark across his cheek and two black eyes. Splinters stuck out of the back of his left shoulder, and he clutched his kilt and a bundle of soiled leather clothes. His piglet squirmed underneath his hips. The big man's massive scythe was still strapped to the holster on his back.

Ash's limbs were thawing out, but he still could not see where Ziggy was. "Steed? Who did this to you? Who?"

Steed snorted a glob of blood and mucous to the floor and fell in it face-first. He closed his eyes and smiled. "Boys, I think I just got laid."

"You _think_ you got laid? How —how could you not know?"

Steed rolled over onto his back, giving his piglet some much-needed air. "I blacked out there for a while. She got on top as soon as we closed the door, then scooted forward over my face. Smelled worse than a freshly-butchered goat. I passed out. Then I woke up here." He rubbed his eyes and grinned.

"Best night of my life."

A breath later the walls shook with his snoring.

Ash turned to Simon, who was trying to suppress a grin. "Where's Ziggy?"

"On the rooftop. The horses were making noises."

"What noises? Did he sleep? Why didn't I get second watch?"

"You looked too peaceful to bother. Besides, the little guy doesn't seem to need more than an hour or two a night." _Simon's right about that._ _Still, nothing is more infuriating than the boy wandering off when he's supposed to keep watch._

Ash looked out the window and saw the first rays of dawn peeking over the eastern horizon. "Let's start getting ready. Steed. STEED!"

Ash kicked the brute in his ribs, gently at first, then progressively harder. Finally, Simon splashed a tub of filthy cleaning water over the brute's face. Steed sputtered, cursed and slowly came to.

The three collected their belongings and saddlebags and went down to the stable. Ziggy was there, sitting crosslegged and humming lightly to himself. The horses were gone.

"Where are our horses?! We have no way to pay for the boat!"

Ziggy stopped humming, and looked at Ash with his bright laughing eyes. "No idea, m'lord."

_Well, shit_. "Do we have any money? Gold? Silver?"

"Ten coppers and one silver left."

"Glassbeard won't like that."

Steed was still mostly asleep, and ran face-first into a wooden pylon. " _Oof_." He snorted a glob of blood and snot at the ground. "The price we pay for love."

Simon and Ziggy both giggled, but Ash was on edge. He glanced around for signs of soldiers, of Glassbeard, of anyone. "Let's head for the docks. Maybe we can reason with him."

Steed rubbed his nose, which had started leaking small droplets of blood. "We'll sell your shitin' hole to the buggers and get some rest on the river. Let's move."

_Would he say these things if he knew I was his brother?_ Once on the river, he would have to get Steed alone, to talk to him. _He needs to know, too. About his lineage. About how he should be acting, about what's proper. I can't carry this around with me forever. I just need to find the right time to tell him._ He looked at Ziggy, who was scowling back at him from the corners of his eyes _. Away from prying eyes._

They trudged down the dark, empty streets carrying their saddlebags, weapons and equipment. The four were half a mile down the street when Ash realized that he had never paid the barwench.

"We didn't pay the tavern keeper for our room."

Steed snorted, and a ball of dried blood dropped to the pavement. He stuck his tongue out and wiggled it around. "Paid in full, Ashy. She can keep the change. She'll pay us next time we come back."

Ash stared ahead at the approaching docks. "I don't know if we're ever coming back to this town, Steed."

"Even better. There's millions of ladies in the Empire, and only one Steed. She'll hafta wait her turn, after I bone all the rest of 'em. That's fair."

The way he talked of women irritated Ash, but he had learned to pick his battles back in the Abbey. The yardlings often tried to bait him by saying the most idiotic things imaginable. Ash would administer 'The Abbot's Justice,' as he called it –secretly, to himself– but it only made the taunting worse. The thought of those miserable fools pained him. Morons though they were, they were someday to be his brothers, even if none of them knew scripture from sheep shit.

Ziggy whispered something in Steed's ear, and the big man laughed.

"Let 'em try."

Ash didn't like the whispering. "Let who try what?"

"Couple of soldiers following us. I'll rip their nuts off if they try and stop us."

A lump of muscle froze in Ash's throat. "Let's hurry. Not too fast. They might not be after us." _Yet._

They arrived at the docks quickly, by far the busiest place they had seen in Almsraven. Two dozen sailors, merchants, workers and others were mulling about, trying to load, unload, count, recount, and haggle over boxes, crates and jars of goods. The sight of people was a refreshing change from the empty gray gloom of the city.

"Do you see it? Glassbeard's black sloop? Did he tell us what its name was?" Ash was starting to regret ever coming this way.

Simon tugged on his arm. "The soldiers are coming this way."

Ash looked over his shoulder and saw two imperial soldiers walking towards them. One of them pointed directly at them and said something to the other. Ash quickly turned back. _Too quickly. Damn it._

"HEY! YOU!" A deep baritone voice rang out behind them. "TRAVELERS!"

Ash's empty stomach churned. _I'm such a fucking idiot. Here it comes. Justice._

He glanced up. It was Glassbeard.

"Best hurry up, lads, the _Dark Heart_ is over there." Glassbeard was smirking. Ash had not seen him smile at all last night.

"I'm sorry, Glassbeard, but–"

"The horses? Not to worry," Glassbeard hurriedly grabbed both Simon and Ash by the arms and kept walking. "Just got an excellent price for 'em. Seems _imperial_ horses fetch a good price in these parts."

The group made their way to Glassbeard's black-hulled sloop. It was a smallish craft, though big enough to hold the seven of them comfortably. The two blonde brothers scampered aboard like spiders, one put the sail up while the other untied the moorings. Everyone else hopped on board. Ash leapt across the watery chasm and felt a clean vibration run through him when the boat shook beneath his feet. _It's been a long, long time._

Glassbeard took the rudder. "Now, on to Helios. I've got to make some important stops on the way, so I hope you boys won't mind laying flat along the deck right now, and not looking back." Ash and Simon did as they were told, but as they pushed off Steed stared at the approaching footmen, lifted his kilt high and dropped a river of runny feces over the side of the ship.

"That ought to keep 'em busy for a few weeks."

Glassbeard looked at the trail of floating feces and sighed. "So much for a quiet cruise. Everyone pick up an oar. They're coming after us now."

### Chapter 10 – The Weeping Lich

Between favorable winds and the strong backs of Ash and Steed, the _Dark Heart_ moved quickly out of the crossbow range of the city garrison. They sailed on downriver. Glassbeard kept one eye behind them at all times.

"We're fortunate they had no ships ready. They expected you to ride alongside the river on horseback." He took out a small pouch, dipped his hand in a black moldy substance, put it in his mouth and started chewing. "The garrisons this far north aren't led by the sharpest of wits. The Wall does most of their work for them. Stronger minds are ahead of us. The closer we get to Helios, the stronger we must become."

Ash was profoundly relieved. "How did you know about us?"

Glassbeard chewed his aromatic black cud, then spit it into the river. "I sail up and down these rivers, delivering post and small goods cargo to each garrison. You learn a lot that way."

"But won't they come after you?"

"Aye, I suppose they might." He shoved another handful into his mouth and glanced back. "I'm owed a lot of favors on this part of the river, however." His steely blue eyes scanned back to the front of the boat. "I'll take you as far as I can, depending on the relative danger to my person and my reputation."

Ash pulled back on the oar. The river spray in his face felt good. "Fair enough. Why did you choose to help us? You could have turned us in for the reward money."

"The _Lord Commander_ owes me a different sort of favor." Glassbeard spit out another wad of aromatic black chew, then stared over the river in silence.

The boat was quiet for quite some time. The Wild Ink was aptly named, with streaks of black, tar-like muddy water streaming through the river like the stripes of a tiger. Ash pulled at the oars, enjoying the feel of physical labor. The invigorating motion of rowing had reminded him that it had been too long since he had been on the water. The sloop was nothing like the deepwater longships in the salt seas of the north that he remembered as a small boy, but the fluid movement of the deck below him still filled his muscles with a childlike enthusiasm. Ash's chest expanded and contracted with every pull, a rhythmic dance that he had not experienced in many years. The sloop glided through the water with the grace and ease of a seasoned dancer, the only sound the small waves lapping up against the sides of the boat.

"What's this shit in the water?" Steed was not having a good time of it. The ogre had clearly never rowed a boat before and was jostling poor Boob with every pull.

Glassbeard looked at him with calm blue eyes. "The swamps on this side of the Sam Hills feed this river. What you're seeing is the tar runoff from the bogs. They say it's poisonous to drink."

Ash thought about the blood trails in the marsh from earlier. "Have you ever been through the bog? Do you know of the Bog King?"

Glassbeard's expression did not change. "Not personally." He looked back for any pursuing ships. "You boys can stop rowing now. Mid-day winds are finally picking up."

Steed emitted a loud sigh of relief, sprawled out on the deck and fell asleep, Boob nestled snugly in his right arm. Ziggy hung halfway off the back of the ship trailing his small hand in the wake while Ash and Simon sat near the rudder with Glassbeard. The boat's rocking movement as it sped downstream felt exhilarating to Ash, and he stripped down to his waist to sun his damp white skin in the late morning sun. He laid there for several minutes, letting the warm rays cook through his skin, before he felt he was being watched.

He darted up. No ships in sight. Glassbeard was smoking a pipe at the rudder, ignoring him. Ziggy turned his head away quickly. _What the hell is that boy up to now?_ Ash laid back down on the deck, and again after a few minutes he cracked open an eyelid and caught the boy staring at his chest.

"You got something to say to me, Zig?"

Ziggy's small face flushed red, and he turned his back to the rest of the boat, staring off at their wake. Ash chuckled quietly. _I remember how I was at that age. Watching the older knights change into their armor. The black hair on their bodies. Like exotic, alien beasts._ He felt a small pang of pity for the poor creature hunched over the back of the boat, then smiled and laid back down on the deck.

Ash felt good. His stomach was not as empty, his wounds not as sore. It was good to have finally found someone to talk to who wasn't a complete idiot.

"If you don't mind me asking... how long have you been plying this river?"

" _Rivers._ Not too long. A few years. It's easy sailing, almost no trouble on the water itself. When I was younger, I used to sail a war sloop for the Empire out of Korvald, a port city in the north."

"I know of it. My family is from Boarsky, my father the Ward of the Water in the City of Blades."

Glassbeard's eyes lit up. "Really! A Xavier boy! I knew your father. Knew of him, anyway. We sailed sorties together across the Vapors to Norwald. I was never under his command, but your grandfather and my father fought together against the Hyperion fleet at the Battle of Yunir. We lost, of course, but your grandfather was able to save my father's ship. The _Squid's Sister_. Of course, by the time I came of age, my brothers had already claimed and sunk it, off the coast of Pythos, far to the south."

"The land of snakes, I hear?"

Glassbeard closed his eyes, spit and solemnly put his pouch away. "I sailed down to look for them. Down past the Storm Horns, past the grey cities of Xor. My two eldest brothers had dared to try and cross the Reek, a small channel of lethal waters north of Pythos and south of the Mountains of Madness. None had been heard from in months, then years, so I decided to go find them. Dumbest mistake I ever made."

He paused for a moment, staring a thousand miles past the prow of his little river sloop. "Never found them, of course. No one makes it out of the Reek. It cost me my ship, my crew, almost my life. But we made it through. I made it through. Myself and the... _others_. But half a ship was less than worthless on the treacherous Ocean of Milk, and I foundered on Pythos. Aye, calling it the 'Land of Snakes' don't do it any justice. The entire continent was _hell._ "

The three fell silent for awhile. Simon was fighting off sleep, but Ash was enthralled by the old seaman's stories. _It's good to hear about someone else's troubles for a change. "_ Hell?"

Glassbeard's smile came back to him as he looked at Ash, then melted off just as quickly. "Aye, hell. I spent nigh ten years in that bug-infested jungle, until all my bones turned to mush and my skin boiled off my rotten bones. The snakemen found me, saved me from monsters I care not to describe. I was grateful then, but had I known... I would've let the sea take me, or the bugs, or the man-eating marshes. The snakemen were beyond good and evil. They drugged me, chained me, slowly tore strips of my skin from my body. They gave me potions to make sure I didn't bleed to death. They took my skin, and any innocence I might've had left after living through the Reek." Glassbeard's eyes were welling up, his face bleached white. "I often wish I had bled to death on that black altar. But nobody bleeds to death in Pythos."

He stood up awkwardly, and removed his jacket and shirt. Ash gaped in horror when he saw Glassbeard's torso. Where skin should have been were irregular stripes of purple-and-pink exposed flesh. The man had had the skin carved off of him in two dozen places, and was missing both nipples. He winced, carefully putting his clothes back on. "On my legs too. Still don't bleed, not to this very day. Their poisons will run through my blood until the day I die. Maybe longer."

Ash was at a loss. His own stories seemed insignificant. "How... how did you escape?"

Glassbeard's lower lip quivered. "Murder. Fire and murder."

Dusk was falling as the _Dark Heart_ pulled into the dock, and the Weeping Lich was alive. The inn was built on a series of planks and boathouses, with small channels of inky river water winding their way through the debauchery. Drunk oarsmen, drunker captains and river whores could be heard for a league in all directions. In the minute it took for the blonde brothers to tie up the sloop, Ash had already heard the beginning, and swift ending, of two drunken brawls.

"Are you sure this is wise? Shouldn't we continue on, in case they've sent ships after us?"

Glassbeard laughed. "If I know the commander of the Almsraven garrison –and I do– he'll have given up chase ten minutes after we'd gone, filed his report and sent it off to Molt. Molt is a Wall dog, and Wall dogs do not have much favor on this part of the river." He leapt from the deck to the docks, but not before Ash spied him sneaking a quick glance upriver.

_The old captain is hiding his fear_. Ash tightly clutched his pack. He had not told the captain anything about his true mission, though he had been tempted to often enough. The man's fantastic stories, his icy, then charming demeanor all reminded him of his own father, a stern parent and charismatic leader of men.

When all this is done, if everything goes according to plan, I may win my passage back to Boarsky.

Steed had gone ahead as soon as they pulled up, eager to get involved in one of the many fistfights that were spilling out onto the planks and into the thick black water. Ziggy was below deck napping. Simon was faithfully right at Ash's side.

"Should we go in?" Simon said in a higher pitch than usual. Ash peered upriver for a moment, half-expecting to see an imperial sail round the bend.

"Let's follow the captain to-night. He says we'll be safe here until morning. He's led us this far, right?"

"He could have turned us in for the money."

"And he didn't. He took our horses instead."

"Were they worth more than the bounty?"

"It doesn't matter. He could've had both. Besides, there's something about the man that inspires trust." Ash pictured his father as he said this. Simon nodded silently in agreement, his eyes locked on two burly men battering each other with wooden chairs twenty feet in front of them.

The three sidestepped the bloody melee and headed inside one of the rooms. Inside, three strong oarsmen were lifting an unconscious comrade off the floor, his skull shattered over his right temple, his right eardrum pierced by jagged wooden splinters. Glassbeard took no notice and sat down at the far end of the bar, next to two inked-up men in bright pink tunics, and a chubby whore that was unsuccessfully trying to work them. He nodded at the two men when he sat down. They nodded in turn, then got up and left. Ash wondered if they were off to slit Ziggy's throat as he slept, then kicked himself for thinking the worst of this man that had turned down an award to save them.

"Who were those two?"

"Yoshii, trader-priests from Maru-qat, I'd reckon. Pink is a common color choice out that way, I'd heard."

Ash was out of his expertise in a place like this. Glassbeard could've said those men were troll hunters from the Neckscarf Peninsula and he would have to believe him. His eyes found the floor, which was soaked with beer and inky riverwater.

"Only certain cities in Maru-qat, actually." The words coming out of Simon's mouth surprised Ash. "Pink is the sacred color of the city of Anubium, as well as one of the nine divine colors in the Monastery of the Nine Rays." Ash saw that Glassbeard was just as surprised as he was. "Still, Anubium is landlocked, so seeing two of their trader-priests is quite a rarity." Simon was smiling, and a little flushed. _This is his battlefield_.

Glassbeard paused for a moment, then laughed far louder than he had at any time on the boat. "My lad, you know much and say little. 'Silent waters run deep,' as they say. Well, you will see far more unbelievable sights as we get to Helios. In fact, by then even your extensive learning may fail you." He laughed, then buried his face in a huge tankard of ale.

Ash took a sip of his. _I don't remember ordering this._ It was passable, a little bitter, but thin and runny compared to the ale he had gotten used to at the Abbey. "Say, barkeep, you don't happen to have any Exmortus Ale on hand, do you?"

The barkeep's wide, ruddy face frowned. "Not a cask. Our supply is quickly used up, and our regular supplier has not been seen for weeks."

Ash remembered the old man at the crossroads and the sickening way the low star had swooped down to the crossroads that terrible day. "Do you mean Bill?"

"No idea who that is, son." The barkeep went back to his work.

_Another victim of the white demon, gone forever with no one to remember his name._ He wondered if Zirev had made it out alive. He didn't have too much hope for the other brothers, or the yardlings, but the prior had a special sort of cunning, a special sense of who to talk to to get what he needed to get done. He knew the secret corners of the Abbey better than anyone. _Would I even recognize him if he stood in front of me? He looked pretty badly injured._ All of the Abbey's priors had all the keys, but Zirev had dedicated his youth to exploring the depths, dark corners and crevasses of the compound. Ash remembered Zirev telling him that the Abbey was over two thousand years old, older than the Empire itself. _Destroyed, in one hellish night. Just like the tales of old Norwald. If the four of us die, the Abbey's demise will become just another one of Loross' unknown mysteries. A stack of shattered rocks with no name, no history, no glory._

Ash looked over at Simon, who was attentively studying a small shrine in the corner of the bar. While the rest of the floating room swirled in the chaos of drinking, cursing and fighting, the corner behind them was eerily untouched. Whoever had set up the shrine had bolted a small cabinet atop a sturdy oak table, which in turn was covered with candles, small bits of cloth, a variety of herbs, some small children's toys, a tiny wooden warship, an empty shot glass and a small dish holding a single piece of cooked pork and a hardboiled egg.

"Glassbeard, what is this thing in the corner?"

Glassbeard was still lost in his ale, and didn't bother to turn around. "Ask Erasmo. The owner. It's his."

Though he had spoken it softly, the barkeep heard his name and came over. "What can I help you with, captain?"

"My friends here are interested in your dad's house." He went back to draining his tankard.

Erasmo scowled. "You can look, but don't touch. That's the castle of my ancestors, it is."

Ash did not think it looked like much of a castle. "Your ancestors?"

Erasmo nodded. "The Empire is a place full of wonders of every type you can imagine, and ten more than you can't. But none of those flash and trash charlatan's tricks compare to the power of your own ancestors. Long before men had gods, they had their dead mums and dead dads looking out for 'em. You boys best remember that."

Simon looked worried. "I don't know anything about my mother or father. They found me at the steps of the temple."

Erasmo reached over to put a hand on Simon's shoulder. "Aye, but _they_ know _you_. You are their blood, their only connection to this world. They cannot do the things we all do. Eat, drink, smoke, fight, fuck. But they can feel those things again, _through_ you. I keep this shrine to them, feeding them cooked meats and fine liquors every week, and in return, they protect me from the evil that assaults us every day of our lives."

Ash had studied such baseless superstition in his lessons but had never heard anyone spout off the nonsense personally. "But what about the fights, the deaths? We saw a man bleeding when we walked in, his skull cracked open."

Erasmo chuckled. "Ay, lad, he should have honored his ancestors, as I do, and he'd still have his brains in his skull rather than on the end of my mop."

Glassbeard grinned, but Ash was not in a laughing mood. "Torain blesses and protects his people. Are you telling me you don't rely on His teachings?"

Erasmo nodded, the smile wiped clean from his face. "Son, there are many gods here in the Empire, more than a wise man would dare to count. You'd best remember that, and respect it. Your ancestors don't care about the whims of the gods. They protect their own living brood when the gods would gladly let you rot in a dungeon or starve alone on a raft." Erasmo placed his face an inch away from Ash's, his sour breath filling Ash's nostrils. "Respect the dead, _son_ , or join them." He laughed, then went to the tiny store room behind the bar.

Ash was silent. _I do honor my ancestors, but not in this way._

Don't I?

Simon's eyes were brighter than they'd been in weeks. Ash could tell that the old man's superstitions were fascinating him. _Or possibly it's the cheap ale_. "I've always wondered about my parents, you know. My mother, especially. When we finish this task you're on, do you think we could head east to Dinsdale? It's not that far from Helios, not that far on the map."

Ash did not think he would find anything that could help him, but he felt he owed the boy. "If we make it that far, alive, I promise you, we'll go to Dinsdale and find your parents."

Simon smiled, then took a big swig of his ale, spilling some on his chin. Erasmo came back in with a small cask and poured Ash a new tankard.

"I've barely started on my first one."

"No matter. My ancestors tell me you'll be needing a good strong swig of this before long."

He drank it. The homey, familiar taste was unmistakable.

### Chapter 11 – Pagans in Panax

The _Dark Heart_ left the Weeping Lich early the next morning, setting out for the city of Panax. Ash had not slept well, plagued by the same recurring nightmares he'd suffered for weeks. Simon had stayed up half the night discussing the practical specifics of ancestor worship with Erasmo. Ziggy had been roughly accosted by a drunken slob who mistook him for a girl, and Steed had bloodied three oarsmen because of it.

_Let's hope our one night of fun doesn't catch up to us out on the river._ Ash still did not fully know Glassbeard, who had spent the night drinking crippling amounts of ale with no apparent ill effect. He had told tales of his travels across the Sea of War, of the Kraken Mere in the far northeast, of trading for silks and talismans in the vast port cities of far-off Teng. Ash had liked the stories, but noticed that he told them _slightly_ different each time. Just a minor detail here and there, but it was enough to put Ash on his guard. He slept with his mail and leather on under the sheets, which made deep sleep impossible.

They sailed for a day, then a night, then another day. The Wild Ink wound its way around forests, marshes and rolling hills. They sailed past more and more boats, some sloops like theirs, some fishing boats, even the occasional pleasure boat. Before long the land became flat and featureless, the forests and hills thinned out into farms and ranches. Once they hit the flatlands of the Empire, the wind picked up and they began to make excellent time downriver.

The gentle rocking of the sloop, combined with little to do, made Ash comfortably drowsy. For the first time since they had fled the Abbey, he felt safe. The white demon with its dark baying beasts could not cross the Wall. The Bog King's toll had been paid by the imperial rangers, and even Molt's orders were three solid days of sailing away. The autumn skies were crystal blue, he was surrounded by people he trusted —for the most part— and every mile was a mile closer to Helios, the Empress, and the end of his mission.

"Say, Glassbeard, is there anything to fear on this part of the river?" He couldn't imagine that there could ever be anything unsafe this deep into the heart of the Empire, but he asked to break the boredom and monotony.

"Just river devils."

"River devils?" Ash pictured the white demon rising from the water with its bright white sword and whip. He glanced over the side, and saw the familiar light-speckled wave crests lapping the side of the boat.

Glassbeard spoke with an icy curtness. "Yes. Just look out for any suspicious bubbles, or rustling bushes on the bank. The _southern_ bank."

One of the blonde brothers snickered, and Ash couldn't figure out if he was jesting with him or not.

"What do they look like?"

"Sometimes like fish, other times like humans."

"I'll keep my eyes out." _Asshole._

Panax had been Glassbeard's original destination before he agreed to take on Ash's company, and when they finally arrived at the bustling docks the three crewmembers got to work. Ash and Steed helped unload the crates from the hold while Simon went with Glassbeard to the customs house. Ziggy wandered off into the docks, which were far bigger and busier than Almsraven's.

Panax was the largest city this far north in the Empire, comparable in size and wealth to Dinsdale or Nyth, built almost exclusively on trade. Several rivers converged on this spot, making the merchants of Panax very, very rich, according to Glassbeard. When he had mentioned that, Ziggy's eyes had widened. _I doubt you'll find many abandoned mansions to plunder here, little friend._

When the cargo had been unloaded, accounted, sold and shipped out again, Glassbeard dismissed the two blonde brothers and led Ash and company out into the city. Ziggy had made some small coin performing a whirling fire dance for the sailors and other spectators at the dock, almost two silvers worth, and he was raring to spend it. Ash had wanted to stay near the ship, but after some discussion the rest of the group, particularly Simon, convinced him to go into the heart of Panax.

Not too far from the docks they ventured into the biggest, busiest marketplace Ash had ever seen, with merchants, farmers, jewelers, smiths, weaponmakers, perfumers, magicians, even the occasional armorer. The great grey fortress of Cairnhelm was just up the Weeping River —built by the ancient first men of Norwald to hold the flatlands— and soldiers filled the marketplace with laughing, cursing and haggling. Ash saw a farmer selling fresh apples and wanted one but could not find Ziggy, who was carrying what little money they had. A minute later Ziggy jumped in front of Ash, startling him.

"Here." He handed Ash his own pack. The pack with the Empress' lockbox in it.

Ash was mortified. "How did you–"

Ziggy giggled, then smiled ear-to-ear while avoiding Ash's eyes. "A cutpurse took it from you, but I got it from him. And a little more." He showed him a small coinpurse that was chock full of coppers and silvers. "Everyone gets one silver today. Even Glassbeard." Glassbeard looked amused. He had made a hundred times more than that earlier that morning on the docks, but he accepted the coin all the same.

Ziggy quickly melted back into the crowd, then Glassbeard said he needed to head back to the docks to wrap up some business. Ash wanted to return to the ship but Steed and Simon had had enough of the docks, and wanted to explore the sights and sounds of Panax's marvel-filled market. Simon took a strong interest in the magician's booths, poring over scrolls and trinkets, while Steed was solely interested in those selling military goods. Ash decided Simon could use some time alone, and walked with Steed.

"What are you going to spend your silver on?" Ash felt awkward walking alongside his half-brother. _What am I waiting for?_

"I'll know it when I find it." He picked up some metal arm greaves, then quickly put them down before the seller had a chance to haggle.

"Say, Steed..." _Where do I start? "_ Did you... where are you from, originally?"

"Ma's love hole. You?"

Ash's face flushed. He never thought that way about his mother. "I meant, where, geographically."

"Geowhat?"

"What part of the Empire."

"Oh, the Abbey. Wasn't born there, ma moved us there when we were still shitting all over ourselves."

"And where did she come from?"

"The whorehouse where she worked. Do you think this helmet looks good on me?" Steed picked up a massive steel helmet with ornate bullhorns and put it on with some difficulty. _Clearly, he's never worn a helmet before_. "I like this, like it a lot. How much?"

The merchant, a short, stocky old man with a beard that came down to his belt, spit out a piece of a rotten apple he was eating. "For you, ten silvers. Anyone else, twenty."

"How about one silver piece?"

"How about you leave my booth and never come back?" The stocky man yanked the helmet off Steed and gave him a patronizing glare. "Fucking soldiers."

As they walked on, Ash pressed the issue. "Where was your mother from? Which country? North, south, eas–"

"North. When she came down, she— holy shitnipples, _this_ is what I came here for!" Steed picked up a black bone mask from a table covered with the oddest assortment of trinkets and baubles Ash had ever seen. The seller, a leather-skinned old woman with a rubbery face, could not have been taller than three foot. "How much for this, lady? Name's Steed."

The old woman poked Steed in the thigh with her cane. "That mask make you very fearsome in battle. Very fearsome. You a soldier?"

"No ma'am, I'm a _warrior_. This is my friend, Ash. _He's_ a soldier." Ash nodded. She did not look his way.

"One warrior worth forty soldiers, sometimes fifty. With fear on his side, sometimes a _hundred_."

Ash wondered if Steed was smart enough to see that she was working her magic on him. "Steed, we can't afford that mask, it's obviously too expensive." It was a nice little mask, jet black, made from an unknown dark wood and resembling the top half of some terrible creature's skull. The black horns curved inwards toward the bottom of the mask, carved to resemble the jagged teeth of the creature's upper jaw. Steed turned it over and over in his hands, his eyes widening as she spoke.

"Well, so far I've killed a boar, two dozen wolves, and more goats than this guy's had hot meals." He jabbed a finger in Ash's chest and laughed. "How much for the mask?"

"Forty gold."

Ash nearly choked.

Steed seemed unperturbed. "That's more than I'm willing to pay, wealthy though I am. Why so much?"

The old woman motioned for Steed to bend down, then took the black bone mask from his hands and fitted it onto his head. Steed stood back up, grinning widely. He turned to look at Ash, his sky-blue eyes peering at him through the mask. The hairs on the back of Ash's neck stood up.

He _was_ fearsome. _Extraordinarily so._

"For a true warrior, the tiniest pebble or a single drop of water can mean difference between victory and defeat. This mask will make things.. _easier_.. for you, and harder for your enemies."

Steed removed it, a dumb grin swallowing his face. "I'll take it. Ash, give me all your money."

"We've only got two silver pieces between us!" Ash was tired of this little charade. _Why waste our time with this when he knows he can't afford it?_

"Well, ma'am, we've got two silvers and a shitload of hot muscle between us. What do I need to do to get this mask, little sweetling?"

The tiny old crone grinned, and finally looked Ash's way. Then she told them.

The old woman handed them a pair of small clay cups with a milky yellow-white liquid and traces of mushrooms inside. "Drink this. Both of you. Moonfluid. It will help you to see."

Ash was hesitant. "To see _what_?"

"Your true enemies. Yourself."

Steed had already quaffed his in a single gulp. "Go on. Tastes good. Like milk and honey."

Ash was wary about the whole ordeal. "What if it's poisoned? I don't know you. I can't trust you."

The tiny woman just smiled. Steed slapped him fiercely on his shoulder. "Look, Ash, I just did it, and I'm still standing. Tastes like milk and honey, I just told you."

Ash was still reluctant. The old woman had fed them nothing but half-shrouded mystical answers since they'd left the marketplace. Now, in a field just outside the city, he was on edge. Bright red and yellow ribbons were tied in the branches of the circle of trees surrounding them, and when they had first come into the clearing, Ash had just avoided stepping on a sparrow's head with a nail driven through its beak, a tiny victim sacrificed for some purpose unknown to him. A crowd of mostly women, dressed in black, had formed in a circle around a huge pile of kindling in the center of the clearing. Another man, a tall blonde soldier with a longsword in his belt, was drinking from a similar cup twenty yards away.

"No. I want to know what we're doing here. Plain, simple, direct explanations. Otherwise, no."

The small wizened woman gave his thigh a poke with her cane. "True warriors to be tested tonight. See where your enemies are, and where your valor lie. If you pass the test, your big brother win the bone mask. If not, you go home at midnight, nothing change." She gave Ash a kindly smile, the sort of comforting grandmotherly smile he had longed for many a lonely night in his dark frigid cells in the Abbey.

"C'mon, Ash, we _can't_ _lose_! Plus, I'll owe you one after this."

_The man who saved my life two, perhaps three times owing me a favor?_ Everything in his gut was telling him not to do this. "If we're harmed, people will come looking for us. Imperial people."

The old crone laughed and slapped his forearm with her hand. "Like I said, you go home if you fail. No risk, tall boy."

Ash grimaced. "Give me the cup." He put the liquid to his lips and poured. It tasted nothing like milk and honey. Ash doubled over as his throat tried to reject it. The fluid stayed down, darting into his stomach like a lizard. It felt like searing lead, and tasted of rotted meat and privy water. Steed rocked with laughter as he lifted Ash back up.

"Too strong for you, Ashy? Too bad there's no more of that fine Abbot sperm to wash it down!"

Ash would've punched him but he was too dizzy. The taste of bile in the back of his throat came up to meet the rancid liquid's trail still moistening his tongue, and he nearly retched.

Just stay calm. Stay in one spot until the sickness passes. They won't win me.

The kindling went up in a great fireball, and the Soul Festival began. The crowd formed into a tight circle around the fire. The circle was entirely women, most of them older, many of them quite plump, and all of them dressed in black. The women started wailing at the flames with competing harmonies, the pitch and timbre of each song scraping against the others in horrendous cacophony. The old crone was among them, her cane rising and falling in front of the huge fire.

An even larger crowd of farmers, civilians, soldiers and others not so easily identifiable began crowding around the field. Some were talking and pointing. Others rocked back and forth in silence, staring blankly at the circle of women around the bonfire. One pair of soldiers laughed at some private joke, while another group of farmers started removing their clothes. The man he had seen drinking from the cup stood alone, gazing intently into the flames dancing behind the line of women. _What is this..?_

The Abbot once warned him of witches' covens hidden in the unreachable places of the wilderness, but Ash had not expected to find one so deep in the heart of the Empire. Especially one so well-attended by what he assumed were normal citizens of the city. He recognized one, a fat balding man who he had seen earlier in the day selling turkey legs and seasoned sausages. The man was not wearing his blood-stained apron here, but rather a simple black cloak with a rope belt and no shoes. He had not seen Ash, or if he had, he was not paying any attention to him now.

Ash tried to remember what the Abbot said of these dark gatherings, but his memory was cloudy. He tried to think back to that conversation, but could only see Zirev snickering loudly at the Abbot's stone-faced warnings. _I remember his insolence well enough. Damn that fool, and damn my blindness for not paying enough attention to my lessons._ Ash resolved not to participate in whatever happened in this accursed clearing. _I'm not here for the test. I'm here to observe. Observe and learn. As long as I stay out of it, I'm safe._

The dancing began. The women ran around the fire in a circle, flinging their limbs wildly while someone hidden in the crowd beat a drum. Then another, smaller drum joined in, followed by a deep bass _thump ta-thump thump, thump ta-thump_ _thump_ that seemed to emanate from the soil itself. As the drumming got louder the women lost all control, rolling along on the grass-covered ground or ripping their clothes off as they jumped through invisible portals. _Where's Ziggy? He would have loved this._ He turned to convey his remark to Steed but the brute was running in the circle with them, his thick limbs swaying wildly and with half as much grace as a dying ox. _Simon, too. He seemed to take an interest in the folk magic at the Weeping Lich.._

Suddenly Ash's heart began racing, pounding, louder and louder until the sound of his heart drowned out the _thump ta-thump thump_ of the heavy bass drum. His neck was burning, and he swatted at hundreds of mosquitoes on his arms that he could hear but not see. The hairs across his body stood up and tried to pull free in every direction. Around him, people were disrobing: soldiers, farmers, jewelers, young and old alike. A thin pale girl a few feet away smiled lustily at him, first with her huge brown eyes, then with her smile, then with her milk-white nakedness. He walked to her without wanting to, then followed her into the circle.

People were running alongside him, jumping, laughing. He ran and jumped and laughed with them. Objects fell from his hands and were snatched up and dropped by others. He knew the girl was someplace behind him but he could not see where.

He turned his head to find her and the full effect of the moonfluid hit him. To his left the fire appeared to ripple and shimmer. The wide, pimply pale white back of the woman in front of him was covered in tiny globules of sweat which he could see too clearly now and that bubbled and spat and glistened and made him sick to his stomach. He tried to run around her and fell face-first on the grass, the sharp blades bent in the directions they were trampled and covered with the sweat and spit and fluids of multiple women which also made him nauseous. The crushed blades emanated a heat he had never noticed before. A reflection of the flames that they used for warmth and sustenance but which he was now blocking with his huge human head. He apologized with a solemn nod and crawled on his elbows to the outer edge of the circle and rolled over and stared at the night sky.

The air was half-orange and half-black as the two colors battled for supremacy in front of his eyes. The three drums had been joined by other instruments or they had become louder in his ears, the thundering bass sending ripples of movement through the earth underneath him like a thrown stone in a pond, the vibrations crawling through the soil and the grass and into his extremities and through his limbs and into his heart which seemed to be growing larger and larger with every beat of the drum. He grabbed his chest with his hand, felt dizzy and clawed into the earth with all four limbs, fighting the earth's heavy breathing which was trying to shake him off its surface and send him sinking into the dark sky friendless and alone. He knew none of this was true, nothing was happening but he closed his eyes tightly and held his breath and focused solely on clutching the earth behind him and never ever letting go.

He opened his eyes, and saw stars.

He closed his eyes and the stars became larger, brighter, hotter. He opened them again and closed them again but the stars' motion never changed, coming at him like great burning arrows. They did not twinkle in the sky but hurtled towards him faster and faster until they became huge red burning furnaces of explosive death thousands of miles across. Vast spouts of molten fury hundreds of miles across arced into shapes resembling arms and legs and swords and whips. One of the stars grew great black eyes. It looked at him, inside him. He knew that it knew who he was and what he had stolen from it. He froze.

The burning star-demon spoke something in an ancient tongue unknown to him, lifted his sword and charged. Ash cowered. He had no sword. He was naked save for his boots. The star demon turned from red and orange to black and purple, his black eyes turning into pale blue stars shining with terror and malice. Ash tried to cry out but his mouth was dry as old mortar and the words slid into the lining of his throat and disappeared.

A shining silver blade burst through the star-demon's chest, followed by another, and another. Five blades in all, five thin horizontal lines wriggled their way through the dark demon's chest, stomach and gut. Dark runes he had seen somewhere before spilled out of the creature's torso and floated into the sky. Ash looked up and saw thousands of starving black phantoms fight for and devour the runes as they rose into the jet-black ocean hovering over the flames. The dark creature collapsed to its knees, the blades sinking back into his chest where they had came.

A large figure stood over the first demon's twitching corpse. Twice as large and twice as wide and immensely more powerful, its face an ebony skull with curved horns ringed with a halo of red flame. It carried a massive threshing scythe and towered over Ash's naked, white body. _Death. The Grim Reaper._ Ash put his small thin bony hands in front of him but he knew it would not help him now. All around him the world backed away from the two figures, wiping its hands and plunging them into an abyss where the laws and the growth and the warmth and the good things were never again permitted. The Reaper stepped toward him and extended his hand.

" _Get up, dickshit._ "

### Chapter 12 – The Tower of the Host

Ash couldn't believe it. Up close, it was the biggest thing he had ever seen.

"Impressive, ain't it?" Glassbeard grinned. It was nothing new to him, obviously, but his young passengers were clearly in awe. The old captain was taking a perverse pleasure in their excitement.

"It's... it's beautiful." Ash first spotted the legendary Tower of the Host when they had set sail from Panax, the city of noxious witches and oblivious farmers. At the time it just looked like a small dark watchtower in the distant horizon. A day and a half later, the huge structure dominated the river, a great greyish-blue spear piercing the cloudless autumn sky.

In the long hours since they'd left the port city, Simon had told Ash everything he knew about the massive watchtower. It was constructed by the early men of the world-spanning empire of Norwald at the height of its power. It stood on Prim's Hill, an oddly-shaped block of granite that looked like it had been dropped onto the soft, muddy flatlands by some drunken sky-god. It was manned in the early ages, when the warriors and ice-wizards from Norwald came across the Sea of War to aid the people of Loross against an invasion of murderous foreign creatures. It was abandoned when Old Norwald fell in an afternoon, re-garrisoned by the Empress in her rebellion against the evil lords of Dregloth, then abandoned again in the eight hundred years of peace that followed. Simon told him many more stories, of ancient heroes, great Norlords, and the slimy horrors that were defeated here countless eons ago.

Glassbeard had told him that a man standing at the very top could piss on the Red Wall.

Ash was beyond impressed. The Tower was thousands of years old, yet it still stood tall, lean, unbroken. Its stones were of polished blue granite, using masonry techniques that had been lost in Norwald's mysterious destruction. The color of the Tower lent it a hint of ghostly transparency against the blue sky. Ash hazily recalled feeling this way about a building once as a small child, a temple he had seen in one of the cities in the north. The streamlined, ancient perfection of this tower was overwhelming. Ash had spent long hours studying maps of towers in the Abbey library, and was soon fighting back a well of emotion in his throat.

"I want to go up and take a look." Ash was adamant. _I may never pass this way again_. "I must. Is it manned?"

Glassbeard gave an exasperated sigh. "No, but we're making good time right now, and the next inn–"

"The next inn can suck the shit from my grandmother's cock. We're going up that thing _now_." Steed had not cared a whit for the Tower as they approached, but seemed enthralled by it now. "I want to fling my shit on Helios before we get there. You know, give 'em a little advance warning, before I show up and turn that whole city upside-down."

Glassbeard was the master of his own ship, but he pulled up to a tiny wooden pier below the tower all the same. The blonde brothers stayed on the boat, glad for the chance at a few hours of extra sleep, while Glassbeard wearily got out of his ship with the younger men. Ziggy leapt onto the pier with boundless boyish enthusiasm and sprinted full-speed up to the base of the tower.

"Little fool. The steps alone will take us hours." Glassbeard stopped for a moment, looked back at his ship, then continued. "You lads go up ahead. I'll catch up with you halfway."

Ash and Simon glanced at each other. _Does Simon feel it, too? "_ No problem, captain. Just don't leave without telling us."

"No chance. It's been years since I've been up there. 'Bout time I tried feeling young again. But I'm not about to race you youngsters to the top. I go at my own pace."

The entrance to the tower was a large iron door expertly built into the base of the tower, at the top of a winding switchback that would make any battering ram useless. The five walked through the strong, swirling winds at the tower's base and into the lower level.

Ash looked up as they squeezed through the heavy door. _A masterpiece of living history_. The first hundred feet of the tower was one tall, vast room with a pair of winding staircases snaking to the upper chambers, with a complex system of stops, landings and arrow slits ringing the walls. A large stone block covered what must have been a way down through the granite hill, for storage, barracks and dungeons. Ash was both surprised by the enormity of the vault and the overwhelming stench of urine.

Glassbeard must have seen Ash wince. "Like I said, abandoned for centuries. By soldiers, anyway. Vagabonds, thieves, outcasts, exiles, travelers, shepherds and their like have used the Tower as a waterproof privy since then. But the upper floors are thankfully free of the smell of piss and sheep shit. The steps may look unsound, but they've looked that way for thousands of years and millions of men."

Ash saw that the thousands of steps were smoothed over in many places, and just narrow enough for two men to pass carefully. With no railing, it would be a treacherous climb. Ziggy had already started up, bounding over two or three steps at a time.

Ash was nervous, both of the steep drop to the tower floor and of what they might find waiting for them when they got back to the boat. They had not seen anyone following them that morning, but after that Soul Festival business in Panax Ash had sworn never to trust anyone he found on the river. _Steed was clearly under the spell of the moonfluid and that tiny accursed witch, but still... murder?_ Ever since the drugs had left his system, he thought about the tall blonde man he had seen before the bonfire, drinking from a similar cup. Steed's casual descriptions of the witches exchanging bets after the poor man's death profoundly disturbed him. _Stealing imperial horses is one thing, drug-fueled homicidal rages are another. Let's hope the news of what happened last night doesn't reach Helios before we do._

They climbed, and climbed, and climbed some more until they reached an opening in the vault's ceiling. Simon was out of breath, refusing to look anywhere but the two steps immediately in front of him. Ash had looked down just once, gotten dizzy, and put his hands in front of him to catch the next step up. The muscles in his thighs tensed, refusing their orders to help him climb up. Ash's will fought with his body at every step. When he finally emerged onto the first landing he rolled onto the floor, sweating, face-up towards the ceiling. Ziggy was there, chewing on a pickled apple.

The mosaic on the ceiling was a startling one, full of tall warriors with brown and black beards battling gigantic hairless monsters. The monsters were grey, or green, often with multiple tentacles and teeth-filled maws in strange places. Many were vaguely reptilian. Some were more like insects, while others were arranged in unfamiliar anatomical shapes. A small number of them had appendages similar to humans, but heads like nothing he had ever imagined. From the tips of their tentacles, the grotesque creatures expelled what appeared to be blue flame, although Simon said it was more likely demonically-harnessed lightning. To the right of the canvas, behind the monsters, the artist had left the space intentionally blank, with only the barest outlines of an ocean in the horizon.

The attention to detail in these ancient mosaics was perhaps the most startling thing of all. Waves of Norlord warriors with heavy axes and mirrored shields ran to meet the creatures in open battle. Behind their disciplined ranks, a host of white-robed ice-wizards rained down blue-hued bolts of their own. Some of the creatures, specifically the most human in appearance, looked as if they had their necks slit or their tentacles loped off by beardless assassins. And behind them all, almost hidden on the far left edge of the mosaic was a single, solitary figure with a blank face emerging naked from the sea. _The artist had quite a lively imagination._

When Simon finally came up, he stared at the mosaic in awed disbelief. He loved reading about these same legendary deeds. Seeing them in pictorial form filled him with childlike joy.

"Are there more of these mosaics?" Simon said after they had stood in silence for a few minutes.

Glassbeard's head poked out over the staircase's opening. Without glancing up, the old captain responded. "Tons of 'em. Surprised they've held up this long. Pretty to look at, but the view upstairs is the better one."

After a short rest for their weary legs, they continued up. Each staircase was much shorter now, with the upper levels of the tower leveled off into chambered floors. Windows replaced arrow slits, allowing a sea of sunlight into each chamber, a stark contrast to the darkened vault below. Ash and Simon were both struck dumb by the sheer magnificence of the Tower, it's size, it's art, it's long history. _Ostkar the Unyielding had once walked these steps. Borath, son of Roarg the Unkillable, had once defended this tower from a thousand-limbed alien god. Fjol the Forlorn used this tower as a staging ground for his hosts, before driving the star krakens back thousands of leagues to the east._ Each step was a polished stone tome of unwritten history. _Will skilled artists ever create mosaics of my deeds? Will I live on in art that outlasts me by thousands of years?_

After an exhausting climb, they finally reached the topmost chamber. It was roofed in a tough glass-like substance, with wide windows looking out in all directions. While the others looked southwest towards Helios, Ash rushed to the easternmost portion of the lookout. He saw the Wild Ink snaking through the green and yellow farmlands, splitting at the large brown-gray mass of Panax and continuing on into the horizon. The Weeping River was blueish green, the Wild Ink a dark grey, and the two colors mixed, combined and melded together at the fork in a gorgeous dance of sparkling green water. Beyond that, the skies were covered with dark blue rainclouds. Ash had hoped to be able to see the Red Wall from here, to look beyond it to the still-smoking ruins of his childhood home, but even this tower wasn't tall enough to see that far. He strained his eyes across the horizon for a glimpse of a single bright white star flying in his direction, but could see nothing in the daylight. He saw only birds, a few boats out on the river and some tiny specks along the farmer's roads that were most likely merchants or farmers taking their crop to market. He was still peering off when the others grabbed him.

"Look! Ash! Helios!" Ziggy's bright eyes were shining like diamonds. _It's obvious what's on the boy's mind, why he really agreed to come along with me to Helios. "_ Can you imagine it? Some of those towers look like they're made of pure gold!"

Ash walked over and peered out to the southwest. Downriver, roughly about as far away from the Tower as Panax, was a city glistening like gold. Where Panax was all mud and market, this city's center looked like a hill of a hundred shining spears jutting out into the sky. Another river, much larger than the Wild Ink, joined it there and flowed father to the southwest. Even from so far away, Ash could tell that Helios was as beautiful a city as everyone had claimed. _And so close._ The Empress would see them in just a few days. The mission, Zirev's memory, a safe place to rest his head, all so close Ash could almost taste it. _We've braved much to come this far. The Empress can't fail to appreciate all we've done to keep her mysterious prize safe._ Ash leaned his elbows on the ledge and closed his eyes. _Not far now. Not far at all. And then, onto Dinsdale, for my Simon, my one true friend in this world. My brother. Almost._

"You fools, that's not Helios, that's just Bonewits." Glassbeard laughed, pulling his flask from his pocket and taking a swig. Liquor dribbled down the corners of his mouth and into his beard as he smirked at them.

" _Bonewits?"_

"Ay, a great city in its own right, but not one one-hundredth the majesty of Helios. Were it a clearer day, you might've caught a tiny glimpse of it from here. When this tower was built, Helios wasn't much more than a struggling port town. That was before the merchants built it up, and the wizards took it from them." He took another deep swig from the flask, then stoppered it up. "You lads will find out soon enough. Three ships are coming from the east, flying imperial gold sails. We leave _now_."

### Chapter 13 – Wizards and Windbags

It had been two days of hard sailing. The _Dark Heart_ was a swift ship, especially for a freshwater boat, but there was no place to hide on the river. They had not stopped since leaving the Tower of the Host, with the three sailors taking two-on, one-off shifts all day and all night to avoid the imperial ships.

Seeing them work this way, Ash had offered to pull to shore and walk the rest of the way. Glassbeard wouldn't hear of it. He was not about to cut them short on his promise to take them to Helios. _Did he promise? I don't remember._

The Wild Ink flowed faster the closer they came to Bonewits. Simon said that Bonewits was an old city, older than the Tower, and had a long history of birthing powerful wizards. Ash was wary of anyone calling himself a 'powerful wizard' after seeing the alleged magic of the witches in Panax. _Their holy festivals are nothing more than drug-fueled dogfights. Would they celebrate as they do, if they knew of the simple elegance of the Silver Mass? Of the Passing of the Chalice, or the glorious choruses singing on the thrice-annual Festival of Atonement?_ Ash wondered at how these wizards, who were rumored to be the most intelligent and learned persons in the world, could lack the basic human qualities of wisdom and simplicity. _The Abbot was right: they have traded their souls for unnatural power and the empty promises of the Adversary._ Once the Abbey's high walls and holy cathedral were ample protection from the Adversary's host of agents in the outside world. _My eyes are open, now. The enemy can strike anywhere, anytime, anyplace. My heart and my mind must be vigilant._

Steed seemed unbothered by the crime he'd committed. He spent the hours amusing himself with his black bone mask, adjusting it, tampering with it, angling it up to the sun for a better look, then adjusting it again.

"Magic mask, huh? Let's head back to Exmortus and give it a whirl. Hell, let's head back to the White Castle. There's a certain lord's grandmother that might take a liking to it when she finds me pleasuring myself all over her grandson's corpse."

After the events at Panax, Ash thought the mask looked _horrifying_ when Steed put it on. It had been a mistake to tell him, though, as the big man now woke Ash in the middle of his naps with a swift jab in the ribs and the mask inches from his drowsy face. The thing was eerie even when Steed left it unattended, often appearing in places near Ash or where he didn't expect to find it. The more he looked at it, the more convinced he was that it was not made of wood, but from the skull of some evil, otherworldly beast.

Glassbeard confirmed Simon's stories about the wizards, though he had never stayed long enough in Bonewits to actually meet one. They were generally too important to hang out in the kinds of places he frequented, the captain explained, cloistered in their tall, thin towers, away from the traders and fellow merchants Glassbeard did business with. At any rate, these wizards were secondary ones, compared to the _real_ sorcerers in Helios. Glassbeard told them in Helios you couldn't swing your dick in a circle without slapping the beard off one of their haggard faces. Ash and Simon asked if he had ever seen visual proof of their mystical powers, but Glassbeard just chuckled to himself and kept silent.

The outskirts of the port city were dotted with large plantations, growing wheat, corn and potatoes, as well as crops Ash had never seen before. The field hands working the plantations and orchards were even more portly than the farmers at Panax. _Their masters must be disgustingly obese._ Zirev once told him never to trust a fat man who wasn't a butcher. When Ash asked if that applied to the Abbot, Zirev laughed. " _Especially_ the Abbot." _Zirev had been wrong about him, though._

Simon was telling Ash how much he desired to see wizards' towers with his own eyes when one of the blonde brothers pulled the sloop over to a lonely pier on the southern shore. No buildings were near it, and Ash noted that it was well-concealed from the river by overhanging willows, six-foot tall reeds and a small jetty, just enough natural cover to hide the boat from searching eyes. As the other red-skinned sailor went down to wake Glassbeard, Ash and Simon jumped off to tie the ship up.

They took all their belongings and equipment and left the boat alone and unprotected at the pier. "It'll be safe enough here," Glassbeard assured him. "And we'll be safer once we get to the Blue Baelor Inn. It's just up ahead, past those two wooden posts in the road." Glassbeard pointed at a small, dilapidated building.

As they neared, Glassbeard roared out "ALMSRAVEN!" A thin, bearded, bespectacled man poked his head out. Glassbeard yelled again. "Fink, you bloody bastard! We need two rooms, fourteen ales and seven meals."

The bearded man held his spectacles to the sun, nestled them back on his wiry face and looked them over. "The four of you can stay, but Glassbeard and his pair of red-skinned friends can go elsewhere. This craven turncloak is no friend of mine." A long awkward silence followed, and Ash was going to refuse his offer — _we all stay, or none of us do—_ but Glassbeard lunged, grabbing the man in a headlock and tousling his hair, and both men fell to laughing.

"Fink, you jealous little shit. These are my traveling customers, Ash, Simon, Steed and Zigmund. We're headed to Helios."

The man greeted them. "Sam Fink's my name. You four will have to stay in my own quarters, we're stocked to the gills to-night with wizards heading upriver."

Simon's eyes widened. " _Real_ wizards?" Ash looked around, but saw and heard no one.

"Yes, m'lord, real ones that fart and cuss and drink and shit just like the rest of us. And they pay three times the going rate, wealthy bastards. Just don't tell 'em that I overcharge, else they'll be turning me into a river toad. Come in, come in!"

The inside of the Blue Baelor was just as shabby as the outside but quite spacious, and utterly devoid of people. Ash wondered if they had stumbled into some sort of trap. "Are wizards invisible then?"

Fink smiled. "I hope not. I'm not in the business of giving away free rooms. Invisible, no.. _never on time_? As sure as the sun sets. This place will be full with drunken crawpipes in expensive robes within the hour."

Sam certainly knew his customers. As dusk came, a steady stream of taverngoers started filling the tables and benches inside. The first ones were quiet and secretive, avoiding eye contact and keeping to themselves, but as more and more of the robed patrons arrived the early ones grew louder, prouder and more boisterous. Ash and Steed had already finished their second tankard of thin Winterberry ale before the real crowd arrived. Within minutes, the entire room was packed shoulder-to-shoulder.

During the high ceremonies to Torain, the Abbot and the other priests had worn their most ornate, gilded vestments —the trappings of the Faith's holiest men— but nothing prepared Ash for the ostentatious display of fashion at this otherwise nondescript inn. He saw fat men covered neck-to-foot in brilliant gold robes lined with ermine, reindeer and even rarer furs. Many of the patrons wore pointy hats that stood two or three feet above their foreheads, while others wore giant jeweled chains around their necks, wrists and ample waists. Some bore seven-foot staffs of white pine, or mountain rowan with pearl inlay. One especially large patron wore a shiny red robe lined with rubies the size of pumpkin seeds, had a pointed hat covered in platinum runes, and bore a staff of polished white marble topped off with a sapphire the size of a child's fist. Ash, dressed in his simple monk's tunic and mail shirt, felt the sting of poverty for the first time in his life. _It is easier to take your vows, when you are surrounded by those appearing no different from yourself._

The place was now insanely loud. A pair of musicians weaseled themselves into a corner and played terrible renditions of 'Sweet Maiden of Mine' and 'The Lightning Kiss,' as well as songs Ash had never heard before and could barely hear now. Another lithe young fellow got up on the bar and entertained anyone who would look at him with a pair of dragon marionettes, singing awful songs in a high-pitched, nasally voice. No one would talk to Ash —of which he was immensely grateful— as he eavesdropped on a hundred conversations at once. Two patrons were yelling at each other about the best places in Thanelaw to get a certain rare herb. Another pair debated over some recent appointment at a local mage's guild. A trio of patrons dressed in purple robes with gold stars sewn onto their hems each bragged about some powerful demon —a Zern? Xorn? Ash couldn't make it out over the din— that each of them had cowed to their will. _They're not talking to each other, just taking turns boasting. They're not even acknowledging each other. These are the absolute worst people in the world._

Someone bumped into Ash's shoulder. "Do you salute the twilight?"

Ash turned to his left and saw a thin young man with sandy blonde hair and the beginnings of a goatee, dressed in a bright yellow robe lined with lion's mane fur. The young man's steely grey eyes were near-transparent as he repeated his question.

"I _asked_ , do you salute the twilight?"

Ash didn't know what to say without sounding stupid. "I–I don't know. I don't know what that is." _Should I know?_

The young man looked down his nose at him. "Then you can't possibly be as great a wizard as me."

Ash was now a little amused, and more than a little irritated. "No, I suppose not. What's your name, mister wizard?"

The boy grunted. "You don't _know_?"

Ash paused for a second. For all he knew, the kid could be some sort of magician savant. He had to tread lightly here. "I'm not from around here. You'll have to excuse my ignorance."

The boy ignored him, looking around for a moment, before resuming his conversation while fixating his eyes on a middle-aged sorceress at the bar. "I suppose I could forgive you for that, if you're just some yokel from the sticks. You certainly smell bad enough. My name is Shaves, Shaves the Golden." He pointed to a jeweled dagger on his gilded belt. The hilt was a pouncing lion with red rubies for eyes and what appeared to be actual miniature teeth made of inscribed ivory. "I could destroy you and everyone in this bar if I wanted to. But I won't. Those of us who salute the twilight need not display our powers too boldly, or the other guilds would become envious and covet our knowledge."

The young man paused for effect. Ash didn't know what to say. He was pretty sure the boy had no magical powers to speak of.

"Powerful, huh? I guess that's why you're busy standing here talking to me." Ash looked over at Steed, who was deeply involved in what was probably a similar conversation with two obese, bespectacled wizards in deep blue robes. He could see no sign of Glassbeard, Ziggy or Simon through the crowd.

The boy's eyes appeared genuinely wounded for a second, until he brought up his chest to Ash's shoulder. "Tread lightly in my city, peasant. My _Empire_. For those who do not salute the twilight will be as hooves on the cattle, as the fingers on the monkey, as the bells on the neck of the cat. Mark my words!"

Ash did not glance back at the mighty mage as he made his way to the bar. "What's the dinner to-night, Sam? I've got a mind to eat in my room in sweet, sweet silence."

"Troll penis. Quite the delicacy. From far-off distant Chakash."

" _Troll penis?"_

Sam leaned in closely. "Ground-up stray dog with bits of pigeon and any cat slow enough to get caught this morning." The man chuckled. "There's half a roast goat cooked in garlic and onions in your room. Glassbeard got the other half. Up the stairs, last door on the right."

Ash felt relieved. "Thank you, Sam, you've been very kind."

"No worries. Sleep well to-night, your room is mostly removed from the noise down here. They all leave at the stroke of midnight, anyhow."

Ash thanked the man and went upstairs. Simon was there fiddling with a small bottle, while Ziggy had laid out some different coins in neat, orderly piles.

"Where did you get all this money?" By his count, they should each have less than a silver apiece. When Ziggy produced the silk purses embroidered in gold leaf that the coins had come from, Ash got his answer. He was a man of Torain, but out here, in desperate times, he convinced himself to overlook some of his traveling companions' moral faults. _Like pickpocketing. And murder._ His recent experience with Shaves made it a little easier to swallow.

"What have you got there, Simon?"

Simon was carefully sniffing some clear fluid in a bottle. "A potion I bought off of one of the Cowled Ones. He said it had healing properties. I figured that could be useful, if we're ever in a fight."

Ash had his doubts. "How much did it cost you?"

"Two silvers, mine and Ziggy's."

"It looks like water."

"Yes, I said that too before I bought it, but I am also not aware of the, uh, well there's certain ways to recognize a proper magical, that is, this vial is specially–hey!"

Ziggy grabbed the bottle from Simon and quaffed it in a single gulp, then flipped two gold coins into Simon's lap.

"Yep. Water." Ziggy grinned and scrunched his eyes, stuck out his tongue and wiggled it from side to side. "With a tinge of urine. Give me another strip of that roasted goat. Ecck."

### Chapter 14 – The Poet's Flow

Sailing down the Wild Ink, Ash looked up at the thick forest of spires on both sides of the river. The gilded ivory towers failed to impress him after what he had seen of wizards and warlocks at the Blue Baelor. Tall, bulb-tipped minarets of marble, silver and gold rose up on both sides of the river here, but Ash could only manage a passing interest in some of the architecture. After the first two or three dozen mage's towers, he had grown bored with Bonewits' citizens and their tasteless displays of wealth.

"Are there any _real_ wizards in Bonewits? In Helios?" Ash had half-experienced powerful magic at the Wall, but none since.

"What, you can't see the towers?" Glassbeard's blustery laugh carried over the water. "Now, notsomuch, but this city was founded by 'em. Before the Norlords came from across the sea, this little town held its own against the invaders from the East. Although if you ask me, it was probably more about the gold they had on hand than any invisible secret powers."

Ash pondered that. _The ancients had knowledge that we've lost in the long eons since._ He saw Simon was deep in thought. The boy had been heartbroken to find that his magic potion was nothing more than piss and water.

The beet brothers, on the other hand, had done exceptionally well for themselves the previous night. Ziggy lifted quite a haul in coin and precious jewels, as well as a gold bracelet of two sea snakes that had tiny emeralds for eyes, devouring each other's tails. Steed had made friends with half the alleged wizards in the bar, drinking most under the table and boasting of the times he slayed swamp dragons, devils and other fell beasts out beyond the Wall. He had even grabbed Shaves the Golden in a headlock after the two exchanged some choice words, much to the amusement of the older warlocks.

_He also asked every one of them to do a magic trick for him, and none obliged._ Shaves came the closest, when he angrily threatened the big man after their little one-sided tussle and warned him that he would soon be back to send him into the Void of the Ages or the Void of the Sages —Steed didn't catch the exact name. Despite his triumph, Steed's mood was sour in the morning. He really did want to see sorcerous deeds being performed, and all he got was marionettes and excuses. Ash wondered if Helios could be any worse. _Surely, the Empress herself has arcane power?_

"Captain, is it true the Empress is over two thousand years old?" Ash knew what the history books claimed. He wanted confirmation from the wise old captain. _Glassbeard's_ _been around the world twice over. He'd know better than some dusty tome written hundreds of years ago._

Glassbeard paused, then spoke in a lower octave than usual, "So they say. She rarely goes out in public, I hear, but.. I've got my doubts. Sounds a little too fairy-taleish to me, although you won't catch me saying anything of the sort in the streets of Helios. Not outside the Dukes' quarter, anyway."

Ash had his answer. _Another stupid parlor trick for the rubes who live to be fooled._ He once burned to see the legendary city. Now he could hardly wait to get this business done with and put every fraudulent wizard and warlock behind him. _The Empress will help us slay the white demon. She has to. It's her realm at stake. And afterward, perhaps I could return to Exmortus, to rebuild, to restore it to its former glory..._

Soon the _Dark Heart_ reached the fork where the Wild Ink joined with the slow-moving Poet's Flow. The change in speed was jarring, and Ash was half tempted to get out the oars like they had at Almsraven. Glassbeard was in no hurry, however, still guiding the craft at the rudder. _All's well, I suppose, considering we haven't seen so much as a hint of those imperial sails._

Within the hour they put the gold towers of Bonewits behind them. The Poet's Flow was a lazy, languid river that moved at a sleepy pace. To make matters worse, the wind at their backs down most of the Wild Ink had died down to a gentle breeze. Had he been on a pleasure boat —of which they now saw several, heading with them slowly down to Helios— Ash would've welcomed the tranquil peace.

But not after seeing what _true_ wizards were like. The more miles he could put between him and these accursed cities of the West, the better.

Day turned into dusk and dusk into night, but the river barely moved. Far off to the south, Steed pointed out a beacon of irregularly-shifting colors. Bright green, lemon yellow, blood red.

"What's that beacon? Another wizard's tower? A lighthouse for wealthy scions?" The way these magicians constantly vied for attention annoyed Ash. They were like an entire nation of Ziggys, armed with ludicrous amounts of excess wealth.

Glassbeard frowned. "That's Helios, lad."

Ash sat up and stared. "Why does it change color like that?"

"The city's towers are not like those in Bonewits, aye, or anywhere else in the world. The big one, the Empress' Palace, it changes colors, and the rest of the city follows." He spat a glob of black-brown chaw into the water. "It's how they show their loyalty. Their obedience to her authority."

Ash stared at the ever-changing city for as long as he could, trying to discern some sort of pattern. _Is it a code? It must be a code_. Neither he nor Simon could figure it out. _We should've brought quill and paper._ Simon had used up the parchment Ziggy stole at the White Castle, doodling notes and small scraps of information about Dinsdale. By the time Ash retired to the hold for the night it was only a few hours to daybreak, and his eyes were red and watering. Simon would stay up and try to figure out the pattern before the daylight washed the colors away.

When Ash awoke it was past midday, and the multi-colored beacon from the night before was now a vast, gleaming city of silver, white and gold. They were still on the outskirts, sailing at a painfully slow pace. Ziggy was up, counting, stacking, arranging and re-counting his stolen coins, while Steed was sprawled out on the deck, snoring like a bull mounting its mate. Simon was passed out in the hold beside him.

The countryside north of Helios was green and lush, flat river lands with surprisingly few farms. Huge plantations that didn't appear to grow crops or ranch animals passed by in an endless procession on both banks, marked by the sounds of musical instruments and girls laughing. Each plantation had its own pier, some of them so jutting so far out into the river that they had to swerve, slowly, to avoid getting capsized. They passed dozens, perhaps hundreds, of well-stocked pleasure barges complete with dancing girls, bards and the often unpleasant odors of rich foods.

"Let's board one. We'll sell the goods in Helios, maybe right back to their original owner!" Ziggy jumped up and down on the deck in childish glee, rocking the boat and waking up Simon.

"I think that's a terrible idea. We've done more than enough stealing for a lifetime." Ash did not like the wealthy wizards, but any theft is a crime in the eyes of Torain. _At some point, I need to put my foot down before this lawlessness gets out of control. Like a true Champion of the Chalice._ Ziggy's expression dropped in mid-jump, and the boy sulked into the hold. _Besides, we may even earn a sizable reward for the return of this box._ Ash hid this private hope from the others, in case it didn't come true. _But if it does, it may change the way the others think of me. Might even change some of their attitudes towards Torain's 37 Simple Truths, and convince them to go out of their way to do the right thing._ Ash would have to atone for the transgressions of his fellow travelers. The Faith had sacred pyramids in all the major cities out west. Certainly Helios was no exception. Once they finished their business with the Empress, Ash would find the local pyramid and donate a third — _no, a half—_ of whatever reward he received. _Simon will too, probably. And it should be a sizable reward, depending on what's hidden away in this thing._

As the city got larger the wind died down to next to nothing, hardly even a breeze. The current was slowing down too but Glassbeard did not bring out the oars. Instead he gazed thoughtfully at the approaching city and kept silent. Ash wanted to row, to speed things up, but as no one else brought it up he decided not to press the issue.

They reached the affluent suburbs of Helios in the heat of the afternoon. Right away he noted that the cold winter weather was not present here. The sun warmed the wooden deck of the ship like it was the middle of spring.

The city loomed large in front of them. _Glassbeard was right. Bonewits was nothing more than a pimple on the ass of the Empire compared to Helios_. Copper and gold structures exploded up into the sky wherever Ash looked, some with fifty-foot spires, others with massive egg-shaped tops painted with bright, swirling colors. Bridges of polished stone spanned between the towers at a diverse array of heights as they neared the river harbor. The Poet's Flow here widened out considerably, feeding the city's innumerable canals. Ash was shocked that the city had no walls to speak of.

"Where are the city walls?" Ash couldn't believe that all this fantastic wealth was _unprotected._

"There are no walls here, lad. Nor soldiers, nor battlements, nor castles, other than Clearstone Keep. The city's never needed them." Glassbeard gestured to some of the structures that were almost too wide or irregularly-shaped to be considered proper towers. "No army has been stupid enough to try and take a city of wizards, nor will they. No _external_ army, at any rate. We'll put up at Clearstone, the sloop's too big to navigate the city's canals."

Ash was unconvinced that any imperial capital would purposely leave itself undefended, but his eyes seemed to confirm Glassbeard's tale. "This city had _never_ been taken? What about the Dregloth?"

Simon awkwardly butted in. "The Empress bent the knee to the lords of Dregloth. The terrible Legion of Bone never came within a hundred miles of Helios. The summoners of the Sheaim never came within a thousand." His voice started to trail off as his gaze locked onto a beautiful purple-and-green tower with runic inscriptions inscribed around the base in gold leaf. "And during the Rebellion, her armies lined the Red Wall for a war that never came. This city is as unspoiled by war as they come."

Ash couldn't understand it. Both Boarsky and the City of Blades had fallen, been rebuilt and fallen again. Countless times. _That is how heroes are made._ He wondered if Helios had ever produced a hero, or if they had all grown soft hiding behind the Empress' skirts. _Zirev was from here._

That explains a lot.

They lazily continued along the course of the river for over an hour, the vast palatial capital city preening and posturing to their right. Despite his distaste for indulgent luxury, Ash had to admit that the architecture was indescribably beautiful, and in some cases so stunning as to leave him speechless. Strange multi-pronged edifices of silver spheres connected via flashy bridges would dominate in one section of the city, while another elaborate mansion looked like a random assortment of runed triangles cobbled together hastily, ready to collapse at the slightest touch.

"Guildhall of the Stewards of Fire," Glassbeard replied, scratching the stubble creeping up his neck. "And that one, that one there, is the Empress' own guildhall, the Lady's Conservatory of Music. The most powerful of all the mage guilds."

Ash turned around and saw the most astonishing edifice he had ever laid eyes on. Jutting out into a gentle bend in the Poet's Flow, a host of silver and light pink towers shaped like harps hung out over the still water, as glittering silver strands strung between them held aloft a diamond-covered, multifaceted sphere of pink crystal. Ash could see tiny dots floating to and fro inside the transparent glass globe, and heard the ethereal piping of delicate music wafting over the river and into the boat. The music was stirring, elegant, full of beautiful harmonies and grace, of softly-wielded power and the infinite possibilities of such power.

" _That's_ a guildhall?"

"The most powerful in the Empire. The Empress' favorite. No one challenges them. Hardly seems fair, but it is what it is," the old captain said, his eyes fixated on the river ahead. "They say the guildhall's got swimmin' pools of rich red wine, and a chamber filled with trees flowering with baskets of exotic fruits. Only women are allowed in there, of course."

"Sounds like my kind of place," blurted Steed, who had been wakened by the music. "Bet these ladies could use a good deep-dicking. But just the ones with meat on 'em. The skinny ones can go fuck themselves."

The music put Ash in a playful, cheery mood. "So picky, Steed? What if they throw themselves at you?"

"I'll throw 'em a turkey leg and a slice of mutton and tell 'em to come back when they've got a handful of ass. Can't trust a woman with no ass."

"What about me?" Glassbeard chuckled, "I ain't got an arse."

"Don't fret, captain, Ziggy's got a hankering for your type," Steed laughed. The half-eaten apple that smacked into the back of his neck only made him laugh harder.

The river wound its way to the east of the city until they reached the sea harbor near Clearstone Keep. Ash was again dumbfounded. The legendary keep was a perfectly square edifice with no outer walls, towers or defensible gates. The building's walls were made of a foggy, translucent glass that showed color and movement behind it, but only vaguely. Instead of stone battlements, the walls were topped with ten-foot tall pink crystal spikes, with no room between the spikes at the base of the wall.

" _That's_ the unconquerable Clearstone Keep?" Ash was horrified. His own father had a small keep as befit a minor lord, a thick four-story tower atop a cliff face. His father's walls, battlements and towers were his longships, which weren't even really his, as they existed only in service of the city. But Ash had spent hundreds of hours poring over castle maps in the Abbey's library, studying the defenses and weaknesses of some of the most famous castles in history. He often imagined himself as the lord defending the castle with nothing more than a handful of brave archers, or as the fearless marshal of an invading army of knights, men-at-arms and siege engines. _With no outer walls, arrow towers, proper battlements or even a moat... not to mention that the castle was not built on high ground... although it did have a commanding view of the sea... but the enemy could_ see into the castle _and..._

"The Keep is where the imperial army is garrisoned. Aye, it's never fallen either. Of course." Glassbeard was looking for an empty wharf to dock in. "The Empress had it built after Dregloth fell, so they say."

_It certainly does look like a woman's idea of a castle. A woman with no martial knowledge or competence of any kind._ Ash was relieved that he didn't live in Helios and have to rely on defenses like these to keep him safe from potential threats. He then noticed the strange, mushroom-shaped tower a hundred yards or so to the north of the keep. The tower's base was polished silver, with a massive disk-shaped structure lying atop it that was silver lined with gold. An unbroken line of glistening green wrapped the disk around its circumference. "What is that tower, then? Looks like it could topple over at any moment."

Glassbeard's dour face was lost in thought. "The Star Palace. Home of the Empress Herself. The place where you'll be goin', once you stop askin' questions and let me pull in to dock."

### Chapter 15 – Audience with the Empress

Away from the glittering globes and sparkling spheres of the city proper, the military dock at the mouth of the river was just as nasty and foul as every other freshwater dock he had ever visited. While the blonde brothers efficiently took the few remaining crates and bundles of post to their proper destinations, Glassbeard stayed with the four young men, shaking each one's hands and giving them a firm pat on the back. Ash detected a slight mistiness in the old captain's eyes as he finally came to Ash.

"The Star Palace is over yonder, son. The mushroom-on-a-stick, as you called it. You won't be able to enter there, of course. No one does. But just north of these docks there's a great park, with some interesting statues. You can't miss it. Beyond that, between the statue and the palace, is the Psychomantium. That's where you'll be received."

Ash gripped the captain's hand firmly. "Thanks, Glassbeard. When all is said and done, we won't forget you."

"Ah, forget it," the captain said as he forced a chuckle. "The horses were plenty payment enough."

"But what about your career upriver? Won't they come after you?"

"Well...," the captain trailed off, "To be perfectly honest, I was never really _into_ my duties these past few years. I'm a deep-water captain, I've got a deep-water crew. These toy boats don't interest me much. Never have. As it turns out, I made quite a killing in Panax. I'll kick around in Helios for a few, until I can find a buyer. I'm selling the _Dark Heart._ I'm moving on, back to the ocean."

Ash was genuinely glad for the man. "Molt will never catch you there."

"Molt couldn't catch an ox carcass if it up and died on that stupid table of his."

"Regardless, we owe you. Someday, I hope to be in a position to repay you for your kindnesses. I'd never have made it to Helios without your help."

"Ahh...," Glassbeard's eyes went glassy. The captain said nothing more. They nodded to each other, and parted ways.

Ash raced to catch up with the others. The military docks were busy but relatively small and within a half hour or less they found themselves in a magnificent park, lightly dappled with elegant hedges, rows of colorful flowers and impeccably-maintained pathways. The weather was enjoyable, as well-dressed men and women of all ages laid on expensive-looking blankets, lunching on small strips of meat and wine.

_Galena would have found this place lovely,_ Ash thought as he found himself staring at a pair of giggling young lovers. He scanned the rest of the pleasant scenery. _Odd, there are no children present. This city has some queer customs indeed._

"Think he'll pork her? Maybe we should stick around," said Steed without so much as lowering his voice.

"I think I might pork her," Ziggy quipped.

"What? And deny her companion a little buggering?" Steed laughed.

"She's more my type."

"Maybe if she packed on a few pounds and grew a schlong."

"There's not enough wine in Loross."

"Would you two shut the hell up?" Ash fumed, "Go ahead and.. pork.. whoever you want. I've got business to attend to with the Empress."

"Ah, Ashy, you know we were kidding about that gentleman. He's all yours."

Ash knew better than to respond, and kept walking toward the Star Palace. The others followed quietly, the two beet brothers occasionally exchanging profane remarks. Simon hustled to keep up but seemed to be enjoying the view with wide, childlike eyes. _Damn it. I had half-hoped to be rid of the brothers down at the docks. Why are they following me? I can't pay them. Their business with me is done._ Ash recalled what Yount told him once, about leadership. _The weak will follow anyone who looks like they know where they're headed. Even if they have no idea._ Ash pondered what his future would look like a day from now, after the Empress received him and opened her mysterious box. _Will I wake up in the palace? Or in a luxurious inn, surrounded by my rewards? Or simply back outside on the palatial steps, no richer than I was but all the wiser, and ready for my next adventure, for a new life outside of the sacred confines of the Abbey?_ He glanced at slow, steady Simon at his side. _Perhaps at this time tomorrow, we'll be on horseback, on our way to Dinsdale. Far better than my other option, on a ship heading north, off to face the House Xavier._

The shadow of the Star Palace slid under them as they walked and before long they came to the park just as the old captain had said. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people strolled about, marveling at the odd statues. A perfect circle of several dozen tall, leafless trees marked the edges of the clearing, with a single strand of thick gold, silver or curiously black rope extending from the tops of the trees to the center of the glade. Halfway to the middle the strands split into two, and halfway from there into two more until the exact center of the clearing was an exquisitely tangled web of gold, silver and black, where they covered all but the base of an enormous statue. The statue was somewhat human-shaped, although it was impossible to discern anything else about it underneath the intricate lattice of expensive fiber that encased it like a cocoon.

"Holy—Ash! That's _auril!"_ Simon said breathlessly.

"Auril?"

"Auril! Black gold!" Simon seemed exasperated by Ash's dumbfounded stare. "Black gold! Only the rarest of precious ores! Only found deep in the mines of the Dark Mother, the place where the Norlords trapped all those otherworldly monsters those thousands of years ago. Black gold! And so much!"

Ash looked at one of the strands. It _was_ strangely beautiful. Shiny, but nothing like obsidian. The strands of auril seemed to glisten and glow in the sunlight.

"If it's so precious, why waste it on these ropes?"

Simon's face fell for a moment. "Show of wealth? Power? She's an Empress, she needs to find ways to show it."

"I suppose so." Ash looked back at Ziggy, who was hungrily eyeing the prize behind the ring of heavily-armored imperial guardsmen encircling the covered statue. _And just what the living fuck would he do with a forty-foot high statue covered in priceless rope?_ Ash chuckled to himself, and pressed on through the park.

A crowd mulled around the entrance to the Star Palace, seeking an audience with the Empress. Imperial soldiers —large, impatient men in gold cloaks and grey mail with the word 'HELIOS' inscribed over the lute-and-wand emblem upon their backs and shields— tried to maintain some semblance of order. By Ash's standards, they were failing utterly.

The Star Palace was the central seat of the Empire's streamlined bureaucracy. The palace was a needle-thin tower at its base, with a plump spherical structure impaled on top of it like a flattened orange on a stick. The structure didn't seem to have any doors to speak of —at least none visible to the naked eye— but there was a plain, nondescript windowless square block in front of it, and this unassuming building was evidently the real seat of imperial power. Pages, scribes, clerks and other public servants scuttled into and out of this building through the two massive, ornate onyx Magus Gates. The gate the clerks and scribes used was the smaller of the pair, big enough for three men to pass abreast and guarded by imperial soldiers. The larger Magus Gate was a wonder to behold in its own right, an onyx-and-white marble archway sculpted in the shape of two wizened mages pulling on each other's beards. The mages were surrounded on all sides by sculpted books, illuminated with gold leaf, no doubt full of protective runes similar to the ones Simon saw on the Red Wall. The larger gate was heavily guarded by golden-cloaked imperial guardsmen wielding highly decorative spears. Glassbeard had said that this was the only place in all of Helios where imperial soldiers were allowed. The captain claimed that the individual mage and merchant guilds provided order in the streets, which were divided into territories by the canals. With a mass of humanity standing between him and his goal, Ash recalled the conversation he had had with the old captain earlier that day.

"What if there are disputes between the guilds?" Ash could not believe that the Empire didn't even police its own capital.

"Aye, there are and have been and will be disputes. The Empress solves 'em, mostly, quietly and quickly. Each guild has its own little territory, its own little army, not to mention their own specialized magics, if what they boast about is true. And if one guild gets out of line, the others band together to keep it in check. It happened just once in my lifetime. The Golden Dukes, a great merchants' guild, grew too big for their little island. They bring in the most coin by far, and all the goods, but the mage guilds spend it. The Empress shut them up right quick, though," the old captain said as he stared at the endless procession of gilded towers, "The city's splendor rests on a foundation of brutality. And that's the honest truth." Glassbeard had been strangely silent for a while after that.

Ash wondered what sort of leverage the Empress must have on these guilds to keep them in line. _Blackmail? Hostages? Gold?_ There was something unnatural about Helios. The cold winter air simply did not exist here. Beyond the ever-changing colors at night, beyond the strange architecture that seemed to defy the laws of physics, the air itself seemed to be coursing with electricity as if a lightning strike had hit a quarter-mile away. Except that there were no lightning strikes. No clouds, no rain, no snow, no wind. The only aspect of the city that seemed in accordance with nature was the ponderous Poet's Flow, and even that flowed so slowly, it felt like it was out of time and space.

And now Ash was shoulder-to-shoulder with the oddest collection of fools the Empire had to offer. Wizards —at least, those who dressed in the manner of wizards— were everywhere, clad in color-coded robes, pointed warlock hats and sporting beards that often hung below their waists. Other wizards were dressed differently. Shirtless with red loincloths, covered head-to-foot in strange tattoos. Some petitioners wore all black with faces painted white, dark black paint covering their lips, eyes and fingernails. Musicians, jugglers and fortune tellers peppered the crowd, as well as artists selling paintings of other petitioners, religious prophets of exotic cults Ash had never heard of, and a tight-knit group of monks in bright yellow robes that sat cross-legged on the ground, their heads shaved but for a single tassel in the back that often came down past their shoulders. He had overheard a nearby swordsman calling them the Flowers of God. _Not monks of Torain, I'd wager. They look ridiculous._

A pair of swordsmen were to their right, also jockeying for position in the crowd. When they saw Steed and the massive scythe strapped across his back, they introduced themselves as Bjorn and Max Bravo, two mercenaries from the great city of Aeturnus, a coastal city to the north of Helios.

The two made an intriguing couple. Bjorn was a greying, middle aged man as thin as a rail, with a prim and elegant posture, dressed in lace-lined finery under his crimson breastplate and finely-linked mail shirt. He carried two impossibly thin rapiers, one on each hip, and claimed to be the finest two-handed swordsman west of Teng. Bjorn spoke in a sing-songy, lilting voice, and a tongue that constantly licked his lips.

The other merc, Max Bravo, was the shabbiest knight Ash had ever seen. He wore loose-fitting rags, no armor, had a tangled mess of brown beard that had more fleas than hair and walked barefoot on two black, sot-encrusted feet. Had he not strapped a rusty greatsword to his back, he would look like a common beggar.

"So, you boys are from across the Wall?" Bjorn eyed Ash with hungry blue eyes while moistening his big lips with his tongue.

"I told 'em we came from the Abbey." Steed seemed proud of himself. "And we're here on a very important mission."

_You fucking moron._ "Yes, well, we have to get in to see the Empress. Bearing bad news." Ash tried to sound as nonchalant as possible. _Who knows who these strangers really are?_

Max Bravo loudly gulped a huge amount of mucous into his throat, then swallowed. "Yeah, I've never been out that way, not yet, brothers. Heard great things about it, though, you know? Maybe pay it a visit sometime in the summer."

Ash's face reddened as he was overcome with a wave of unexpected emotion. He fought it down, but felt the tears ready to burst. _Why now? In front of these sellswords?_ He had felt this way few times on the voyage downriver, luckily only when he was alone. He gathered his strength and rolled his fists into tight balls, digging his fingernails into his own palms.

"It's been burnt. Destroyed." He gulped down a pocket of air lodged in his throat, and spoke weakly. "Gone."

Max didn't seem to notice. "Yeah, in the summer sometime, brother. Say, do you guys have any tobacco?"

"Can't you see the boy is in pain? Max, you ignorant toad!" Bjorn turned to Ash, and gave him a sorrowful look. "I'm so sorry for your loss." He awkwardly tried to hug him but Ash instinctively swatted the man's arms away. Bjorn rubbed his wrists, a surprised frown on his face.

Ash had gone over the events at the Abbey in his head a thousand times, then a thousand times again. He felt the heat of the fires on his skin, the rumbling of the stone tower beneath him as the white demon spoke. He wanted to keep silent, but he could not control his mouth.

"Men. Good men. I saw good men die." He saw Markov's heart explode in his chest. "Blood. Black blood. Explosions. Heart exploding." _Why am I telling these total strangers about this?_ He was angry, near tears, and clamped his mouth and eyes tightly, as tightly as he could.

Bjorn seemed on the verge of tears himself, but Max's monotonous drone cut through the moment of silence. "Yeah, well, as I was telling my friend Jeoff the other day, everyone's brains, their minds, are not really _in_ their heads, you know? Not in their skulls. They're not even _in this world._ Most of the time you don't notice, but when your head gets cut off, the brain, your mind, that is, it temporarily sees _beyond_ the jail of the skull, and it, well, it decides to just _stay out there_. Not here, where the body is still hanging around. Out _there._ Where it can finally be free, be _free_ of the body. The body is a prison for the mind. That's why people die when you take their heads off. Their brains just, well, like what they see _and don't come back_."

Ash had heard enough. He grabbed Steed and Ziggy by their elbows and pushed through the crowd toward the gate. Simon tried to follow, struggling to squeeze through the throngs. The four muscled their way to the front of the crowd where two tall imperial soldiers stood guard.

"State your business."

The irate petitioners behind him were throwing curses and insults his way, but that only seemed to harden Ash's resolve. _I have to see this through, now. Not another moment wasted. Exmortus must not have been destroyed for nothing._

"I have a message for the Empress from Exmortus Abbey, a locked box that only she has the key to. Unfortunately, Exmortus is no more, having been destroyed by an unknown power of white flame." His voice was deep, resounding and commanding. A lord's voice. He found the box in his pack and presented it to the guards.

One of them looked it over, then handed it back. "And the rest of you?"

"They're with me. We're all that's left of Exmortus."

The first guard looked them over, especially Ziggy, then cast a heavy glance at the other guard, who nodded. "Go on in. You will see the Empress' Excruciarch. He will decide if you will have an audience with the Empress. But you must leave your weapons at the gate."

Steed balked and Ziggy groaned. "No way, fucktard. My scythe sticks to my back or it sticks in yours."

The guards did not flinch. Six soldiers on the other side of the gate started toward them, and several more glanced over. Ash needed to act, and fast. "No need for violence, Steed, we're safe in there.. right, sir?"

The second guard stiffened. "No weapons of any sort. Not even we are allowed inside armed. Your safe passage is guaranteed by the Empire."

Ash looked at Steed, gazed into his blue eyes and nodded silently. "Ahh, shit. Fine. There better not be any scratches or spit on Ugg here when I get back."

"Just leave your weapons with the clerk over there. _Next."_

The four handed their weapons to the clerk, then started walking underneath the archway of the beard-pulling mages. As they passed by the runed books carved in white marble, Ash felt every hair on his body stand straight up. He glanced at Steed, who's mane of greasy-blonde hair in the back had stiffened like straw. Simon grabbed Ash's elbow, and Ziggy shouted.

" _Ash! It's–"_

A mailed fist slammed into Ziggy's throat and the boy collapsed in a heap on the ground. Ash felt sharp, cold steel pressing against his throat. Strong hands grabbed his wrists. He heard the angry sounds of struggle behind him as a rainstorm of dull _thuds_ cascaded on Steed. They chained Ash's hands together, then a pair of mailed gloves expertly fastened a burlap sack over his head. As the darkness covered his eyes, Ash heard the sound of Glassbeard's voice, raspy but unmistakable.

"That one too. Aye, the little one. Them's the ones you want, _sir_."

### End of Part One

### Part 2

### Chapter 16 – The Cell

The burlap sack drawn around Ash's head smelled of blood, vomit and sweat. The gaolers did not remove it when they beat him, nor when they soaked his head with freezing water. His parched lips sucked whatever water they could from the dripping bag, but when he heard the iron hinges of his cell swing open he was never sure if he was getting a hard fist to the face or the water. _Is this how the Empire deals with horse thieves?_

Ash knew that wasn't why he was here. He had never studied imperial law, but common sense would dictate that the punishment fit the crime _._ Something else was going on here. Something involving Glassbeard.

There was the murder in Panax. Steed pierced clean through a man's torso with his scythe. _But that in was self-defense._ Ash tried reasoning with his tormentors twice on the first day. They didn't listen, and made sure he wouldn't ever try talking again.

_We had all been drugged against our will._ If he ever saw a trial for his alleged crimes, he would tell them. Steed would tell the same story. _Hopefully._ _If they haven't killed him already._ He recalled the horrible sounds of a half-dozen men beating one man behind him as they lead him away in chains. _I hope he took a few of those fucking guards with him._ _I never had the chance to talk to Steed, alone..._

_Surely, though, this is not for the horses, nor the murder at Panax._ Ash's arms and legs were bolted against the wall, a bag was over his head and he had not eaten in days. He tried to keep his wits about him when they dragged him away from the Magus Gates. They didn't lead him very far, and all of it on foot. _Surely I'm underneath Clearstone Keep._ The Keep's translucent walls, lack of battlements and other defenses marked it for a prison, not a fortress. Glassbeard lied to them, to throw off any last suspicions before he turned them in. _Turned us in...for what?_

The old captain told the guards something, accused them of some crime they had not committed, perhaps some heinous crime that had previously gone unsolved or for a crime not yet committed. Murder, or treason, or rebellion. _I never told him about the Empress' box._ All the same, Glassbeard had suspected something. He wouldn't have done it for the coin Ziggy stole at the Blue Baelor. _Although, that would make three crimes, and counting. Four, if you count fleeing, and five, if you would blame us for the three dead rangers in the swamp._ Ash didn't remember if he had mentioned the Bog King to Glassbeard directly. _But that wasn't us, that was the Bog King's work. In a society ruled by justice, the imperial guards would find him in the swamps and he would be hanging in this jail cell with a bag over his head instead of me. The Bag King._

Ash smiled at his own joke, despite the painful shock it gave him on his right cheekbone where they had recently struck him. Wiggling his jaw around to redistribute the pain, he suddenly felt sentimental for Steed, the perverted brute who's thoughtless, bestial instincts had saved their lives so many times. _He was the only one of us to fight for the right to carry his weapons._ Ash had offered his longsword up like a sheep.

_It seemed like the only thing we could do at the time_. _I was playing by their rules. They weren't._

All I wanted was to bring this gift to the Empress. I risked my life and my brother's lives to do this. And in return, they ambush us.

_And why did our hairs stand up as we passed under the gates? What sorcery was that?_ The Red Wall protected the otherwise defenseless farms and riverlands from evil invaders. _Did the gates protect the Empress from ourselves? Are we the evil invaders, the unwanted outsiders, in this place?_

Ash now wished he had simply broken the lock or busted the box open himself. The hard object inside might have been a trap, some sort of exploding device, or carrying some lethal disease, or... _if Zirev really sent us all the way to Helios to slay an Empress_... The man was his friend, but always kept an emotional distance. Zirev had his secrets. And he was originally from Helios. _Exiled in disgrace_? _I never thought to ask._ If he ever won his freedom from this place, he would need to stop taking people at their word. _Steed may have been sent to kill the Empress. Ziggy was handy with the dagger and bow. Assassin's tools. Simon, even, his knowledge..._ Ash stopped himself. His brain was driving in circles, each hazy, half-formed answer unleashing a host of more horrible questions.

But he could not stop himself. There was nothing else to do on the cold stone wall but think.

He tried to picture Galena as she was when they had played together. All in white, jumping from rock to rock along the barren cliff-face his father called home. For ten years, he had wanted to forget her, but in the dank prison cell, beneath the filthy bag he could not take off his own head, the memory of her terrible last breath gave him a small amount of control.

But only for a moment, until the pains in his belly racked his body and made him forget old ghosts. He tried to remember how long a strong man could go without food. Brother Gregg had told them in a lesson once, a thousand years ago in an illusory world built on lies. _Was it a week? Two weeks? Five days?_ Brother Gregg had a wart just below his ear, a huge thing with three long black hairs sticking out of it. The boil had never bothered Ash, but hairs had. He wished he could remember the contents of that lesson half as well as that revolting boil.

His mind wandered back to the crossroads behind the Abbey, where the old trader had warned them about this side of the Wall. _Had the white demon slain me, it would have done so while I had a full belly, after a solid afternoon's nap, and I would have died alongside my brothers of the faith._ He wondered if Torain had power behind these translucent walls. _How many petitioners can see into my cell even now?_ _Why all this needless torture?_ They would hear of this treatment, when he got his trial. _Justice demands it._

Time passed by with no break and no way to tell its passing. _Nature itself was slowed down by imperial sorcery on the Poet's Flow. I may have been down here for mere hours... or weeks._ Stories from his childhood spoke of heroes who had tampered with magic, and reappeared three days later aged a hundred, or a hundred years later aged a day. He wondered aloud if his own father would recognize him, or want to admit that this chained, naked form with a bag over his head had ever been his son. The cold stones sent a dull, unending pain through his back, buttocks and limbs, making this and a million other unanswerable ruminations mercifully brief.

At one point the gaolers let in another prisoner. The prisoner kept to himself in a corner, moving about restlessly and breathing heavily, refusing to engage in any sort of conversation. Once he made an almost inhuman growling noise and bit Ash's left leg, then tugged on his exposed penis. Ash screamed at him, shaking his chains to show that he was not helpless. The gaolers removed the prisoner after a few hours of Ash's screaming, then beat him with a blunt wooden object for their trouble. _I shouldn't have scared him off. Any company is better than none._ _Soon I will be the one growling and biting legs._

Time's tyrannical rule over every aspect of human existence had no dominion here. The gaolers kept odd hours, seemingly on purpose, often coming in to drench or beat him twice in rapid succession, then not at all for a long time. Once, perhaps a few days into his imprisonment, Ash thought he heard the faint sound of small, bare feet stepping on the stone floor outside his cell door. His door did not open —or if it had, it was done with a silent caution uncharacteristic of his gaolers— and the temperature in the room dropped. The extremities on Ash's naked body went numb, and the stones on the wall he was chained to felt like ice on his back and shoulders. The hunger, the thirst, the sensory deprivation hit him like a hundreds of tons of granite and he believed, just for a moment, that a tall, stately female was in the cell with him. Through the darkness of his bag, he felt the cold, damp breath of a mouth screaming less than an inch from his face. His ears vibrated, not with any human voice, but with the sound a dying beast of burden might make in a distant wing of a vast abandoned palace. A sharp pain shot through both of his ears as a droning _hiss_ exploded in his eardrums. He wanted to shout but feared what the guards would do to him if he did. Then all was silent. The room was no longer cold, and Ash was alone once again. He had not had another episode like that since.

_The box. They have the box._ He wondered if it had reached the Empress yet. Most likely not. Even if it had, Glassbeard was there to claim credit for bringing it all this way. Unless it was a trapped box, in which case perhaps the old captain was given a dose of his own medicine and is hanging in the next cell, blind and starving. _That would be justice enough._ Ash did not feel it in his heart. _No, a fair trial would be justice. This is a farce. A mistake._

The old trader at the crossroads wandered into his waking nightmare. The old man carried no weapons but showed no fear, even in the presence of demons and dark beasts. Likely these beasts had devoured him. _But what if they hadn't?_ The old man spoke of weapons everywhere. _The mind of man was the deadliest weapon of all. Or something like that._ Ash felt his chafed hands bolted to the wall, the aching bruises on his torso from the beatings. _If my body is a weapon, it is a poor one._ His sword had never been drawn, not even once. _Neither had my senses._ He tried to sever the chains with his mind. He visualized power surging through his hands, his arms, burning white-hot, weakening the iron that was yellowing his wrists, making it brittle. When he felt he had done enough, he clenched his jaw tightly and ripped his right hand off the wall. It moved less than an inch, and the bolt of pain that sawed through his bruised wrist was enough to convince him that the old trader was full of shit.

Spending long hours dissecting castle defenses and studying military campaigns had done shockingly little for his life. He had been sent to the Abbey in disgrace, already a black mark on his proud house's name at the age of ten. But even in that wagon heading east, long before he first spied those tall grey Abbey walls, he decided he was going to be a great lord someday. A knight. Fearless in battle. _I had nothing to lose. That makes me the most dangerous foe of all._ A great lord, leading a host of knights against the Empire's ancient enemies. Dregloth's skeletal Legion of Bone. The summoners of Sheaim, with their vast armadas of demons, devils and goblins. Both of those empires had crumbled to dust eight hundred years ago. _Unfortunately. Legendary heroes need legendary enemies._ He even mapped out castles of his own, castles that were dragon-proof. Demon-resistant keeps. Towers that no walking dead could ever bring down.

He never confided his dreams to anyone save once, to Zirev. _He laughed at me. "Great leaders require just one thing," he told me, "And it has little to do with castles and towers, and absolutely nothing with dragons and demons."_ Ash scoured the ancient histories for the answer. He looked over the military journals of the famous conquerors. All the heroes were described as just, trustworthy, loyal, commanding, demanding, knowledgeable, firm, optimistic, cautious, quick-minded, patient, loved, feared, hated. Some had been great lords at birth, others had risen from the ranks of peasants and orphans. He often gone back to Zirev with his answer. _Trust. Loyalty. Fear_.

Zirev had laughed at every one of them, saying it was right in front of his face, too plain and simple for a dreamer like Ash to grasp _._ _Honesty. Adaptability. Brutality_. The Abbot told him great leaders were all great planners. _Courage. Strength. A Sword_. Yount said the great lords were powerful communicators. _Noble Birth. The Blood of Kings. Wisdom_. Markov had said the same, until Ash told him Yount said it first, at which point he changed his answer to 'Integrity.' _Forgiveness. Focus. Faith_. Some of the other yardlings said 'wealth' —it had been a mistake to ask them.

Zirev laughed at each one, especially at the Abbot's answer. " _That explains everything."_

Finally, Ash gave up. He needed to know. And Zirev told him. He told him the one thing a great leader needed. _I hated him for it then, but he was right._ The answer haunted him since they had left the Abbey. This was his mission, but he did not lead it. _It comes so easily, so effortlessly to Glassbeard and Steed. They don't even try. They're not even aware of what they are doing._ When Ash finally took control of his destiny at the Magus Gates, he had led them here. To prison. To dank cells. To pain, starvation, and likely death.

Torain could send the white demon to him now and he would welcome it. To tear open the roof of this cell, to destroy his pathetic chained form with sword and whip. _That_ would be merciful.

" _You win. I give up. What is the one thing a leader needs?"_

" _You won't like the answer."_

" _Just tell me."_

" _Followers."_

Ash heard the heavy iron door swing open, and braced his head for another battering. A strong hand grabbed his forearm, then he felt a strange relief in his chafed hands and wrists. A gruff voice growled at him, just inches from the front of his face. His tormentor's acidic breath overpowered even the disgusting odors of the bag.

"Your judgment's been handed down. Come."

### Chapter 17 – Inside the Walls

Ash tried to struggle but his bonds were too tight, the strength drained from his limbs. It took more than he had just to stand up, his acid-breathed gaoler grudgingly helping him to walk.

My judgment is pronounced. There was a trial, and I was not present.

Madness.

He tried asking his tormentor about his alleged judgment but before he finished the words "What crime did I–" a heavy fist slammed into his back and sent his face flying to the floor. With his hands tied behind him and no strength in his brittle knees, the cold wet stone smacked him in the face with the force of a thousand-ton fist. Small bits of dried vomit and blood were now stuck in his nostrils and mouth, joining the fresh wet blood oozing from his gums. Ash spit out what he could. A quick count with his swollen tongue confirmed that his teeth were still there.

He was roughly dragged along the floor, then dropped. He heard the sound of iron keys rattling, then rusty iron hinges creaking. Soon enough came the shove. The new cell's doorway was too short for Ash's six-foot-six frame and the unmovable stone cracked his forehead open beneath the burlap. The gaoler shoved Ash's right shoulder down, then sent him face-first into this new darkness before slamming the heavy door behind him. The lock clicked shut, and heavy footsteps scraped down the hall into silence.

Ash rolled over on his back and let the trickle of blood seep down his throat. The stone floor was ice-cold and surprisingly wet. _Hopefully that's water, and not some criminal's blood. Or piss._ He gave a sharp cry of surprise when he felt something tug the sack around his head. _Rats? Snakes?_ The tugging continued. Ash thrashed around, his hands still bound behind his back, to scare off the less hungry ones.

"Knock it off, Ash, let us get this thing off of you." _That voice sounds strangely familiar._

"Simon?" Ash could only manage a whisper. His throat was dry as dust, his ears still ringing from the crack to his forehead.

"Yes, and –Ziggy?– hold his head up. A little more." Ash felt fingers working at his collar, where the bag was drawn tight around his neck. Within seconds, the pitch black darkness he had grown used to was replaced by a pale grey darkness. He saw a stone roof, and two pale, thin faces staring at him.

"Zig! Simon!" Tears welled in Ash's eyes, and a surge of pain washed up from his throat, through his jaw and into his face. "Blessed be Torain! I, I, am so.."

A gruff voice came from the corner above his head. "Don't be so happy, Ashy. We're all to be made a head shorter within the hour." Ash looked up at Steed, sitting ponderously on a large earthenware chamberpot. _If that poor thing breaks under his weight we'll all drown in shit, and Steed will have sherds in his cheeks._ The mental image made him chuckle.

"Why are you laughing?" Simon said with a slight quiver in his voice. His eyes were blood-red and ringed with dark circles. He too had taking a few beatings around the head.

"It's just good to be with you all. To face death together. I'm too craven to face it alone," Ash said, surprising himself. "How did you find out? They wouldn't tell me anything."

Steed snorted, then stood up and exposed his privates in the dim light. The sight of his unusually small member flooded Ash with a strange feeling of relief, although he couldn't say exactly why. All three of them were as naked as he was. Simon was covering his groin with a ripped burlap bag, and Ziggy was curled up in a corner shivering, his thin white arms wrapped around his emaciated torso.

"Raw Rork told me. He's not a bad guy, really. Just doing his job. I'd have punched the lot of you even harder, if I were in his shoes. He barely touched me at all. Zig, too, since they nearly killed the little shit when they took us."

Ash glanced over at Ziggy, hunched over with his pale legs drawn up to his chin, wheezing loudly. The boy's labored breathing sounded like high-pitched whistles. Ash wondered how he had not heard that when he was tossed through the door.

"They busted Zig's windpipe. Spent a few easy weeks with the prison's healer. Lucky little shit." Steed had sat back down again, near a small rat hole in the wall. "I took a few of those imperial dogs down with me at the Gates. Raw admired that. Said that the imperial soldiers are a bunch of prissy little fucks that look down on him all the time, and treat him like garbage. I just happened to elbow one of 'em in the mouth, what insulted Raw's poor wife last fall. Happy accident. Bastards."

"Happy accident?"

"I'm going to murder every one of them."

Ash was momentarily startled. "What?"

Even in the dim grey light, he could tell Steed was not smiling. "I'm going to murder every one of them. I don't care which one hit Zig in the throat. They look all the same to me. They're all dead men. Every one of them."

Ash didn't reply. _Maybe there's another reason we're in these cells. Maybe there's something else I don't know about this dangerous psychopath a dead man once claimed was my brother._

Steed sighed. "I didn't tell Raw any of this. I'm not stupid. Besides, he wouldn't have been too happy to hear it."

Ash was grateful the conversation had turned in a different direction _._ "So he didn't beat you? Starve you?"

"Oh, yeah, but he _had_ to. Told me that knocking the shit out of your pretty face was more fun, anyways." Steed laughed. "As for food, I've caught rats every now and then. They're attracted to the chamber pot, see? I let 'em sniff around for a bit, then WHAM!" Steed bellowed again, but this time Ash could see a dark mark on his temple.

Ash felt a slight chill. "So how long do we have to live?"

"A few minutes. An hour. They want to send us to hell together. Something about treason, or murder, or the Empress. I don't know, I wasn't paying attention. So anyway, when those fucktwats come for us, I'll grab one of 'em by the neck. You take his weapon and kill the next closest one. Zig, you grab the keys. Stab someone in the eye if you can. Two eyes, even better. Simon, you steal a glance down both halls to make sure–"

Ash sat up. _That's no chill._ "Steed! That rat hole –cold air– it's coming from—cold air is coming from that hole!"

Steed looked down. "Yeah, so it is. Zig, come over here and squeeze through this, would you?" Ziggy glared at him, made an obscene gesture and went back to his sulking.

Ash saw that he was the only one bound. "Who untied you? Simon?"

Steed picked something small off the floor and threw it at his brother. "Get his hands."

Ziggy _wheezed_ in annoyance, crawled behind Ash and began to fumble with his bonds. After a few seconds Ash's hands were free.

"How did you do that?" Ash asked, but Ziggy had already resumed his hunched-over position near the door.

"With a small pin kept in the hair. These locks are a joke. I'd have busted mine open myself, but Zig's way was quicker," Steed replied. "Ashy, your arms are skinny. See if you can–"

A loud iron cowbell echoed through the hallway, followed by the sound of dozens of heavy footsteps, the sound of mail shirts rustling and metal clinking. In the suddenness of it all, only Simon noticed that the stone block near the rat hole was moving.

A small, hairy hand shot out of the hole and grabbed Steed's ankle. Steed grabbed his attacker's wrist and yanked up the head and shoulders of a tiny, wizened man.

"Please, sir, let go. They're coming. They're coming for you. You need to come with me."

Steed let go of the little man's wrist and got down on his hands and knees. "Who are you?"

The short, thickly-bearded man was no larger than a small child, wearing a simple green monk's robe. He scuttled back into the hole, then reappeared with a bag almost as large as he was. "A friend. A friend of Zirev, no more. You four need to come with me. I have some of your things, including the Empress' gift. Come, _now_."

As the bearded face disappeared into the hole, Ziggy bolted for it, the emaciated boy nothing more than a bag of ribs, bony arms and strangely swollen, fleshy areas where—

Ash halted. _Breasts??_

Ziggy easily slid through the opening where the stone block once stood and disappeared into the wall. Simon squeezed through next. The harsh voices were outside of their cell. _I'm gawking. I need to close my mouth and focus._ Ash tapped the brick. _It's fake. Painted ceramic._ Small brass handles were bolted to a wooden frame on the side that was hidden in the wall. _Did my cell have an escape hatch like this too?_

They heard the clinking of keys and angry male voices. S _ome of those guards Steed took down at the Magus Gates are here for a little fun, before their prize is slaughtered._ Ash went to bar the door but Steed grabbed him and shoved him towards the hole.

"Go. I'll hold 'em," Steed whispered. "No, wait, give me that block."

Without waiting for Ash to give it to him Steed gripped it by one of the handles, went to the door as it was opening and smashed it onto the bare head of Raw the Gaoler. The jailer dropped his keys and his torch, gripped his bloody scalp and staggered backwards into the hallway. Steed moved swiftly to the opposite side of the cell. A helmed head and a mailed hand appeared in the crack of the door poking around for the keys. Steed bolted and leapt feet-first onto the middle edge of the heavy iron door, slamming it shut with a flying double-footed leap. The sound was so disgusting Ash would've retched had any food been in his stomach. A small dark blotch was on the doorway where the head had been, the steel helmet spinning on the floor. Steed grabbed the helmet and the keys.

"Let's move."

Ash slid his bony body through the hole with surprising ease. Steed was not so lucky. His shoulders were too broad, and as Ash and Simon pulled frantically on his bare legs they heard the cell door swing open. Voices yelling. From the cell they heard a dull _thud._ Steed's legs twitched, a small finger of feces pushed out of his anus as the muscles in his body went limp.

" _Pull, damn it! Fucking pull him fuck!"_

Ash yanked on the big man's hairy legs as hard as he could, hoping that Steed was not dead. Steed's body jerked forward. Simon lost his grip, then wrapped his arms around the man's massive thighs. The guards were pulling him back through. Ash sank his nails deep into Steed's leg but they had him out almost to his waist. Ash's heart froze. Their escape attempt would fail without him.

" _Steed, you fucker! Why didn't you tell us about Ziggy?!"_

Suddenly one of the guards screamed in a nasal, high-pitched voice. A second later Steed slipped one arm back through the hole. Ash and Simon grabbed his knees and pulled, their backs knocking against the far wall in the cramped space of the tunnel. Another _thud_ and this time Steed roared, his free arm slapping the stone hard. One of the guards let loose an inhuman wailing. Ash heard a loud _pop_ in Steed's shoulder, and the big man ripped his other arm free and slipped through the opening. His head bore a fresh bleeding wound above his ear. Ash paused. An evil grin swallowed the big man's face, his right fist covered in red and white fluid.

"It's been fun, boys, but I'll be back to bone your Empress some other time," Steed bellowed into the cell, before turning to the little man helping them. "Hey, friendo, did you get my scythe? I'll need it in about two seconds."

Before the little man could answer two imperial guards dropped to their knees and peered through the hole. Steed violently rammed his thumbs and middle fingers into their eye sockets, reared his head back and screamed and yanked their heads through the hole, his arm muscles twitching as he pulled with all of his immense strength. The two guards shrieked like butchered pigs wedged together in the rectangular opening up to their chests. Blood and eye fluid pooled on the stone floor beneath them, and ran down into the matted hair on Steed's pulsing forearms.

"Any one of you fucks that follows us is gonna get his dick ripped off!" Steed shouted over the piercing squeals of the two guards, "Ashy, Simon, let's find that little rat guy and ditch this imperial shithole."

The tunnel was cramped, especially for Ash, running naked on all fours towards Ziggy and the little man. _Is Ziggy a..?_ They were surrounded by stone on three sides, but on their right was a foggy, misty glass wall, beyond which was darkness. _Underneath Clearstone Keep. I was right._ The passageway ran straight for a hundred yards before the little man breathlessly motioned for them to stop and put his finger to his lips to indicate silence.

The four stopped. Voices. Behind them, in front of them, above them, around them. Even below their feet. The sound of crashing waves filled the little hallway with a steady backrush of sound. Heavy footsteps, running, and the clinking of metal on metal danced clumsily along with the disembodied voices.

The bearded man turned toward them, stepped backwards, and opened a small circular door in the floor.

"Jump here. There's a small rowboat waiting, and a rower. A mute from the ship. Muffled oars. Go. Now."

"Where are we going," Ash asked. "Who are you?"

"A friend. Fitz. I know Zirev." He handed Ziggy a sack. The wild young boy had transformed into a thin little girl, naked and trembling. "Here are your things. No weapons. Just what I could steal just now. The gift is in there, I checked. Twice. Now go."

Ziggy grabbed the bag and jumped through into the cold mud below, followed by Steed, then Simon. Ash looked back. Torchlight was coming down the hallway from the direction of their cell.

"Thanks, Fitz. I owe you my life."

"Thank Zirev when you see him," the old man replied. "Also, the Empress is dead."

He shoved Ash down through the hole. Ash landed on his bare buttocks in the cold mud just as the circular door above him closed. He looked up. The outlines of the door disappeared into the smooth stone beneath the Keep. _Could Zirev have survived? Did this little man kill the Empress?_ For a breath Ash recalled the icy female form that he imagined had been in his cell, and shivered.

Ziggy and Steed had started wading through the shallows towards a small, black-hulled rowboat fifty yards off. The waves here were small but Ash was weak and freezing. Pulling Steed's legs from the cell had drained his strength.

"Simon... Simon... help."

Simon yoked Ash's arm over his shoulders and waded into the water.

As Simon helped him toward the boat, Ash felt the cold waves lap up against his body. _I'm shaking. A lot._ _The pleasant late spring warmth we'd felt in Helios doesn't extend to the other side of Clearstone Keep._

The deep, grim tones of an iron bell rang out over the Keep, followed by another one a few hundred yards downshore in the Star Palace, then by a series of iron bells ringing out across the city, as iron and darkness fought fiercely in the night sky over Helios. _The little man was telling the truth._

"Simon?"

"Ash?"

"The Empress is dead."

"Impossible"

"Dead."

"Dead?"

"Dead."

Simon paused for a moment, the torchlights of the keep behind them bouncing off the waves, their reflections dancing across the bruises on his face.

"Are we going to get blamed for that too?"

"I think so," Ash laughed, "I think that was the plan all along."

### Chapter 18 – The Unkillable

The _Heron's Wrath_ was a smuggler's ship, black-hulled like the _Dark Heart_ but far larger and swifter. The craft was built for the open sea, making Glassbeard's small-sailed craft look like the tiny river skiff it was. The ship's captain, a gruff, black-haired, black-bearded tower of a man named Labeen, was one of only two speakers on the ship. Everyone else, from the oarsmen to the lookouts to the navigator, were dark-skinned mutes covered from head-to-heel in swirling, circular tattoos.

Ash felt profoundly uneasy aboard this ship.

Labeen had never heard of Zirev, or Fitz, or Glassbeard, and had not heard any news of the Empress. "The bitch is two thousand years old," the captain scoffed. "The old do not make news."

They put in two solid hours of sailing by the time the first rays of dawn broke behind them. _West. We're sailing west, across the Bay of Wrongs._ The bay's name had fascinated Ash as a child, more so as none of the adults seemed to know its exact origins. Neither did Simon, who had thought it was called the Bay of Vin, after the large, mostly uninhabitable island that separated the Empire's waters from the world-spanning Mengean Sea.

The smell of salt filled both the air and Ash's lungs, as he tried to hold down a breakfast of hardtack and raw egg with some of the silent crew. Despite his hunger, he had little appetite and was nauseous at the stench of the meal. He chewed listlessly, staring to the east as the oarsmen worked to put as much distance between them and Helios as possible.

_In a few hours, we might be sailing northwest, to my father._ The Warden of the Water would have sent his most trusted crew to save his son. Even if he was just the sixth-born. _Who else would risk it? Who else would spare the expense?_ He didn't remember his father using any ships in his service staffed by mostly-naked mutes. His crews of sealskin-clad warriors would view that as a dire insult. _Still, a great lord must have a quiet tool for quiet work_.

He was glad to be alive, to be free, even if just for the moment _._ The captain would not divulge anything to him, including their destination. _If we were to be killed, his employer would have left us to our ordered executions. Unless, he means to ransom us back to the Empire..._

Ash looked at Simon and Ziggy, who were hungrily devouring any food put before them. The four had been given spare clothes and warm blankets when they'd gotten on deck, and Ash stared at Ziggy eating. _It's so obvious now. Why didn't I see it earlier? The face, the hair, the slender build._ Steed was hunched over next to Ziggy, cradling his head in his massive arms and glowering at any mute that dared look at her. _He's protecting his little sister. Of course._

The big man was clearly in pain, a pain he had not shown in the tunnels below Clearstone. The guards in the cell had injured his temple with some sort of blunt weapon. The welt on his forehead no longer bled, but great gobs of fizzy white pus squirted out whenever Steed's hands put pressure on the wound.

"Captain, do you have a healer on board?"

The captain scratched his neck. "Of sorts. The Driftpriest. But I wouldn't bother with him."

"My friend needs healing."

"Your friend is stronger than an ox. Let him heal himself."

Ash stood up. When he stood up to his full height few men were taller, and this burly captain was no exception.

"Get this priest. Please." _What use is a priest if he can't help the afflicted? He's my brother. He saved our lives under the Keep. Again. Now it's my turn._

"I'll get him, sir," the captain barked. "But you're making a grave mistake." The mutes exchanged glances.

The captain returned with a maggot-white sack of bone and skin in the shape of a human. He was clad in a great blue-grey cloak that could have served for a man four times his size.

"Kathal, this is the young man that was asking for your help."

The milky-pale man stared at Ash with bright red eyes, then down at Steed. "The young beast is hurt. A friend of yours?" Ash nodded.

"Bring him to my cabin."

Ash and Simon lifted Steed onto their shoulders and followed the Driftpriest. The big man seemed to grow heavier with each passing step. He had passed out at some point during the morning meal and was breathing heavily. "Here. In here," said the pale man, pointing at a faded black door. They strained to get Steed inside, and dropped him heavily on the bed near a small case full of vials, potions and other sundries.

Underneath the cloak the old man was stark naked, the cloak held together by a silver clasp in the shape of a squid, with a dagger-like body on one side, the tentacles on the other, and a giant, oversized squid's eye leering between.

"You two go now. I'll tend to him."

Ash didn't like this. He saw it on Simon's face too.

"What will you do to him?"

"Hezog the Unkillable will give this man what he needs. You, however, must leave." The pale man waved them off dismissively, and before they knew what they were doing the two were reluctantly heading back upstairs.

As they returned to the deck, Ash sought out the captain.

"Who is that old white man? What will he do to Steed?"

"He is our lucky charm," the captain laughed. "No ship that has ever taken on the Driftpriest has sunk, or been boarded by pirates. His cost is as steep as his legend is long, but it was not my gold." The captain chuckled to himself, "I know not what will happen to your friend. This _Kathal_ , he worships his dark squid god from the unknowable depths. Your safe passage was too important to be left to chance. The Empress is more powerful than you can possibly imagine. As are her enemies."

"Who paid for him?" Ash asked.

" _That_ , you will find out in three days' time, if the winds are good. Pray to whatever gods you worship that your friend lasts that long."

_Three days? My father's port is weeks away to the north._ Clearly they were sailing to some smuggler's hideout, or southwest to mysterious Xor. _So we are being ransomed, then._

Ash, Simon and Ziggy were led to their cabin by another mute with soft, friendly eyes. The cabins were small and low, with six thin straw beds. Ash stretched out on his bed and closed his eyes, but could not sleep. His eyes were red and burning, and would not stay closed. _Something's wrong._ He thought he could hear Steed crying out in pain, crying for mercy, but when he opened his eyes he only heard the crash of salt water against the hull and the creaking of ropes. He tried sleeping again and again, but each time it seemed as if his dreams became real. A white demon rose from the waves and blew the ship to planks with a word. The _Dark Heart_ was chasing after them, ten times as big, ten times as fast and hosting hundreds of imperial soldiers. The pale man drew all of Steed's blood out and into himself, inflating in size until he was big enough to fill his huge cloak, and Steed was left shriveled, moist and boneless like a jellyfish on the bed. Day turned to dusk, which turned to night. Ash felt a huge hand grab his shoulder. _Steed!_

He looked up. It was the captain. "Come. You and your friends must eat dinner and regain your strength."

"And Steed? Is he eating with us?"

"No," the captain's eyes went wide. "He will not be eating with us."

Ash was nervous. He glanced at Simon, who hadn't slept either, and Ziggy, hunched over, wheezing through her broken windpipe. It had to be done.

"Simon, come with me."

The captain barred his way. "You can't go in. You asked for this, now you must pay the Driftpriest's price."

"I'm not paying his price," Ash said as he shouldered past the captain towards the pale man's cabin. Simon followed close behind. The cabin was two doors down, on the other side of the captain's own sleeping quarters. Ash stood by the door and listened. A rough, irregular gasping sound and a deep, low murmur. _Chanting. He's taking Steed's life for his god._ Ash swung open the door.

The pale man stood over Steed's white body holding a twin-bladed dagger in his hands. The hilt of the weapon was a jumbled mass of tentacles, with a squid's head at the top, its eyes of black diamond. A hazy cloud of light grey miasma hovered over the unconscious big man's sprawled form. The white man looked up at Ash, startled.

"Put the knife down. He's coming with us."

"Hezog claims this one's blood. Not all, just a little, " the old man whispered. "In exchange for his life."

"Torain claims this one, old man," Ash said as he stepped forcefully into the room. "All of him. Put down the knife."

"Your weak and pathetic god has no power over the blood-starved deep."

Ash moved in to wrest the dagger from the man but the pale priest was quick. He drew a sigil in the air with his finger while speaking words in a language Ash did not know, using a harsh, deep voice that was nothing like the weak whispers he had spoken with earlier. As he did, Ash felt his head, neck, and limbs go limp, as if his bone and muscle had been replaced with seawater. The salt stung the inside of his skin as it sloshed around his body and he collapsed to the wooden floor like a jellyfish. The old man glared at Simon, who stood silent, then resumed his chanting.

_I'm not going to give up on him._ Steed had saved them, maiming several imperial guards with his bare hands after they'd temporarily knocked him unconscious. _I must do the same_. Ash's limbs felt sluggish and unresponsive, but they still belonged to him. He flopped over onto his stomach, then rolled toward the pale man's bare feet. As he neared, he slapped his right arm against the old man's elbow with all the force he could muster. The pale man yelped as he scraped the squid-dagger across Steed's chest, slicing into his nipple and gouging his forearm. Ash could not defend himself, and braced for a dagger in his belly.

Steed's bleeding forearm suddenly turned from milky-white to purple-red. It bolted up and clinched the pale man's neck. Simon shrieked as the old priest's eyes bulged out of their sockets, his black tongue rolling around his thin white lips like an eel, his limbs twitching with sickening stops and starts. Steed's fingers were dark red, but his eyes were closed and he still appeared asleep when Simon pried open his hand a few minutes later to release the Driftpriest's limp body.

Slowly, the saltwater in Ash's body receded, the familiar senses of muscle and bone returning. He tried getting up on one elbow but his brain swam around his head, and he collapsed. Above him, the massive specter of the captain loomed upside-down, glaring at Ash and Simon. "You fools," the captain shook his head. "You have doomed us all."

### Chapter 19 – The Red Minotaur

That morning the ship turned to the southwest. I was right, again. Either a smuggler's cove, or Xor. He knew next to nothing of Xor. The Abbot refused to speak of it. When he asked Zirev about it, the prior just laughed and told him to go bury himself in some geography books. Ash told him that the tomes were strangely silent about Xor, to which Zirev replied, "They should be. It's the most boring place in the universe. Nothing of note has ever happened there, nor ever will." A strange answer, in retrospect.

Simon spent the entire night and day in the pale man's cabin with Steed, tending to his fresh wounds. The gashed nipple might not heal, but the scar would likely be a mark of pride for Steed, who didn't scar much for all his injuries. Simon wrapped the big man's chest, forearm and temple in linen bandages provided by the captain, and dabbed them with salt water and boiling wine to clean the impurities. Steed was completely oblivious to his surroundings, mumbling incoherently in the rare times he was awake.

Ash suspected Simon's other purpose below deck. He had surprised him once before dawn, pretending not to notice when Simon nervously covered something with the edge of Steed's blanket.

"How is the big ogre doing?"

"He'll be fine, I think," Simon said with a shiver in his voice. "I'll make sure to that. But we best find a real healer when we get to port. Wherever that is."

"My guess is south of here, to Xor. Do you know anything of it?"

"Zirev called it the most boring place on earth."

"He told me the exact same thing, " Ash chuckled, "I suspect he was lying about that, too."

"Do you think he's still alive? Zirev, I mean."

"Honestly, I have no idea. Everything I've ever known is wrong. I can't trust anything anymore, Simon. And that worries me. That worries me to my very core."

Above deck things were starting to feel right. The crew dumped the Driftpriest's corpse overboard with his cursed dagger and his eerie squid's clasp. Simon had wanted to keep both, but the captain would have none of it, although he did allow the old priest's case of vials and potions to stay on board after Simon argued that he needed it to tend Steed's injuries. The captain was paid to deliver four of us; money will win out over superstition and fear every time.

By the light of day Ash saw that they were heading southwest, through the rarely-used straights sailors called the Saltwalk. Ships almost never passed this way, as the southwestern coasts of the Empire were nothing but fishing villages, rocky cliff-faces, and the little-known land of Xor. All of the big port cities were to the north, and to the west, across the Ocean of Vapors, where the Empress' ancient enemy Hyperion plotted against Helios with their blood-starved warriors and death-obsessed sun cult. The two empires had clashed over the rubble of southern Norwald, most recently just a hundred years ago. Ash's grandfather had won his title in that war, for his bravery, if not for his results.

To the south there was nothing but mysterious ports, tiny villages and —Pythos. Where Glassbeard 'escaped' the snake-men and their dark rites. Ash wondered if Glassbeard had arranged their escape from Molt, just to turn them over later to the infernal snake cults. How else could he have escaped, except with promises of future young sacrifices? The idea didn't make a lot of sense to Ash, but neither did much else in the last few weeks. The sailing was good, though, and with good winds at their backs, the captain said that they might make port in two days' time.

They saw their first seaworthy vessel a little after their noon-day meal. It was miles off to the north, and heading east. The captain refused to take any chances and lowered the sails to escape notice. His fears proved well-founded when the other ship turned hard to the south.

"Captain, are they following us?"

"Yes."

"Imperial?"

"I hope so."

Ash paused. _If they're coming from the west, they couldn't have already heard the news of our escape... could they?_

"Will they catch us?"

"No, they won't catch us."

Ash stared off the stern at the approaching vessel. They weren't outrunning it. Seconds turned into minutes, then hours. The other ship inched closer. A much larger ship than theirs, a two masted vessel bigger than his father's warships. The captain ordered the sail back up but the wind was not in their favor. He bellowed orders at the oarsmen, then grabbed Ash by the shoulder.

"Go below deck and stay there. You must not be seen."

Ash obeyed without a word.

After a half-hour there was no question that the other ship would catch them. Out on the open sea on a cloudless, sunny day, there was no place for a ship the size of the Heron's Wrath to hide. Still, the captain did what he could with the meager wind, while the mute oarsmen moved in silent unison.

Ash was powerless to prevent what was going to happen. Simon was still tending to Steed, who lay helpless and bandaged in his bed. Damn it. We need his strength. We need him now. Ziggy was wide awake, stringing a bow the captain had found in the weapons cache. It wasn't as fine a bow as the one they'd seized at the Magus Gates, but Fitz's sack had little more than the Empress' box, Steed's black bone mask and a few trinkets Ziggy had snagged on the river. Ziggy was despondent over the loss of the two intriguing pieces of jewelry from Almsraven as well as all of her hard-earned coin. Ash shuddered to think of what Steed might do when he woke up without his piglet Boob.

Right now they had bigger problems. It can't be an imperial war galleon, with its white sails. Who would chase us across the Saltwalk?

His answer came quickly. The braying wail of a warhorn glided across the span of sea between the two ships. Pirates. Raiders. One of the mutes rushed down the steps into the cabin, handed Ash a crossbow and beckoned him and Ziggy to follow. Up on deck the captain was preparing to fight. Crossbows, piles of extra bolts and pots of hot pitch covered the deck. The mute sailors manned their stations on the northern side of the ship.

The captain turned to Ziggy. "I need you to shoot for his sails. They'll be in range soon. Burn them, or we die."

The larger ship was swiftly closing the gap, a red bull's head flying prominently from the taller mast.

"What's that banner?"

"The Red Minotaur. Scourge of the northern seas. Tales say they take no prisoners. Surprised to see them this far south." The captain handed Ash a crossbow and a spear. "You know how to use this, yes?"

"Yes." He'd never used a crossbow before. His father and brothers were well-versed in combat on the open sea, but he had left them too early to learn anything useful. How hard could it be?

He took position near the entrance to the cabins. Damn it, Steed. I need you here. You're more of my father's son than I ever was. If they got past him, Simon and Steed were as good as dead. At least Ziggy is skilled with that bow. The longbow was nearly as tall as she was, Ash noted as the girl enthusiastically skipped to the back of the ship and took cover behind a crate. Ash glanced at his spear. Rusty, and it's not been sharpened for years. This battle is the girl's to win or lose.

The warhorn sounded again, sending a silent shudder across the deck of the Heron's Wrath. Ash stared across the narrow span of sea separating the two ships. Prominently posing on it's bow was one of the most terrifying monsters he had ever seen. From the neck down it appeared to be a tall, lean man, wearing nothing but a blood-red loincloth and sandals. His head was a monstrous red bull's head, with soulless black eyes and a golden ring piercing the snout. He was surrounded by a motley collection of raiders, who, like the mutes aboard the Wrath, were armed with short swords, crossbows, and no armor of any kind. This is going to be a bloodbath. Ash remembered the heavy plate armor his father wore into battle —much of it purely ceremonial— and prayed to Torain to survive this battle intact.

Ash heard a thrum, then another, and within seconds the larger of the other ship's two sails was on fire. Ziggy was so well-concealed that even Ash could not find her on the other side of the ship, but a small stream of black smoke gave away the pot of burning pitch she was using. Thrum, then thrum again, and the second sail caught fire. The raiding crew was ready this time with buckets of salt water. Ash winced as they launched a volley of crossbow bolts at Ziggy's position, and exhaled when they all fell harmlessly short into the calm ocean below.

He readied his crossbow. As the other ship closed into lethal range, several of the mutes dipped their bolts into small buckets of burning pitch. Should I be doing that too? I never got–

"FIRE!" Captain Labeen's bearish voice boomed over the waves and a line of tiny comets plunked into the side of the larger ship. Ash felt a surge of adrenaline when some of them caught fire. Most did not. The raiders scurried about, trying to put out the fire in their main mast as well as the new ones on the port side of the ship. The Red Minotaur made an inhuman, metallic sound, and a volley of bolts thudded to the deck of the Wrath. One of the mutes was hit above the shoulder and fell backwards, his chopped tongue flopping wildly in his open mouth. Ash held his fire. I'm not here to hit wood. I'm here to hit flesh and bone and muscle. Somehow, he knew that it would be up to him to kill the minotaur before this battle was over.

The other ship lurched to port to board the Wrath. Even with a hole burning through both sails it was the swifter ship. Both sides exchanged volleys, and a few more mutes fell. A grappling hook whizzed past Ash's head and scrabbled along the deck before grabbing onto the wall less than a foot from the point of his crossbow. He looked over the wall and saw a handful of raiders scampering over the ropes towards the ship. Ash steadied his aim at the raider crawling directly at him —a filthy fellow, just skin and bones, with a long dagger clamped between his teeth— but a split second later a flash of steel caught the corner of his eye and the raider plummeted into the hungry waves below. A heavily-muscled oarsman with skin as black as tar ran down the wall with a sword, slicing the raider's ropes down as he ran. More grappling hooks shot aboard after he passed, and some of the raiders were able to scramble on board. The Red Minotaur, leading the attack, came over the wall.

Ash took aim at the head. The bolt punctured through the target with a grating, metallic scraping sound, emerging through the neck on the other side covered in blood. The minotaur did not fall. With the two handaxes slung onto a leather strap on his otherwise bare back, he whirled like a demon tornado across the deck, slicing friend and foe alike in uncontrolled fury. Ash had no time to reload his crossbow. He picked up his spear and jabbed it at the first raider he saw. The spearpoint sunk into the man's shoulder, then the old wooden shaft snapped like a rotten twig when the raider jerked away. For a breath the two stared at each other in silence until Ash, standing over a foot and a half taller than the man, shoved him overboard with both hands.

Another raider charged him armed with a falchion but a bolt pierced the back of his skull and popped out his mouth before he got within five feet of Ash. The raider fell at his feet and Ash grabbed his thick sword just in time to fend off a blow from another of the raiders. Ash swung at the man's exposed torso and caught his elbow square with the falchion, now wedged into the small man's bone. Ash yanked on it but it wouldn't come loose fast enough so he grabbed the man by his neck and hip and tossed him over the side. They all look the same. Thin, weak, small. I feel like a giant. The heavily-muscled oarsman sliced open another nearby raider from shoulder to waist and a grey mass of intestine spilled onto the deck. The oarsman shuddered and opened his mouth to scream as an axe blade cut deep into his collarbone. He collapsed onto the blood-and-intestine-soaked plank floor. The Red Minotaur advanced towards Ash, a single handaxe raised above his head.

Shit. He's coming.

They stood at roughly equal height at the shoulder. Ash had no weapon and would be chopped by the minotaur's handaxe if he made a move for the oarsman's sword. The Red Minotaur, bleeding heavily from several wounds, rushed at him but stepped in a glob of guts, lost his footing and fell flat on his back.

Now! Ash leapt and landed with his knee on the minotaur's exposed stomach to knock the wind out of him. He pressed into the beast-man while he grabbed the pirate's axe-arm with both of his. The minotaur belted Ash in the face with his other fist, once, then twice, then a third time, while Ash tried to wrest control of the axe.

He's too strong. Not like his little soldiers. Ash's strength started to fail him. He kneed the pirate in his mask with a loud clang. Ash yelled as his kneecap bit into painted metal. The pain was excruciating, but the beast was stunned for a second and Ash punched his wrist to free the axe. The minotaur's grip loosened and the axe slid across the bloodsludge and behind a mute's corpse. Ash turned to see if he could find the straps on the helmet but was met with a heavy fist across his cheekbones which sent him stumbling backwards.

His mouth was filling with blood and his right eye was closing. Ash stood up and looked around for a real weapon. The Red Minotaur did the same, using the dead oarsman as a crutch to get up. The minotaur grabbed the oarsman's sword while Ash frantically looked for a weapon, any weapon, but all he could see out of his one good eye was blood, grey ooze and corpses.

His right eye was swelling up and would soon be useless. He staggered backwards into the thick of the fray, trying to keep his one good eye on the approaching minotaur when he heard the beast-man shriek. A terrible sound, a primal, metallic wail burst from the bull's nostrils. Black smoke began to pour from the beast's eyes and nose as the huge pirate dropped his weapon and fell to his knees. The rest of the raiders paused and watched their leader writhe on the deck.

In two breaths the black smoke turned to jet-black flame. The screams disgusted Ash to his core. Bile rose in the back of his throat. He gritted his teeth and covered his ears. The minotaur's entire body distorted into deformed shapes as his hands fumbled for the metal mask's straps. The man rolled over on his stomach through a pile of intestine and Ash saw a gaping hole in the back of the beast's head issuing black smoke and flames. Simon was standing behind the thrashing form, reloading Ash's crossbow, a small purple vial attached to the bolt.

Simon took aim at the minotaur, but the screams had begun to fade as the metal mask began to melt. A nearby raider threw down his weapon. Simon stared blankly at the unarmed little man, then his eyes widened with a wicked frenzy and he pointed the crossbow at another, who quickly tossed down his dirk. A large purple and black stain spread along the side of the fallen minotaur's face as it liquified into a deformed horror. Silence soon ruled both ships.

### Chapter 20 – The Pale Man

The grey, featureless skyline of Spellguard was a welcome sight after the Red Minotaur's attack. The Heron's Wrath had lost over half its men, and Captain Labeen had insisted on seizing the pirates' ship to make up for his losses. Two skeleton crews manned both boats, comprised of mutes, repentant raiders and two or three guards to oversee the prisoners. Ash was in charge of the raiding galley as the captain's regular right-hand man fell in the battle.

A two-day voyage doubled, then tripled. The wind died down to a standstill and both ships were in desperate need of oarsmen. The captain complained incessantly of the difficulty of finding strong-backed mutes, and grumbled about the extra pay he'd demand from his mysterious employer. Ash still could not get a name out of him, although he did find out that they were headed to Spellguard, the capital city —if it could be called that— of the strange, isolated land of Xor.

Ash hated running the raiding galley, especially with just three armed guards to help him, but Simon's presence on the other boat made maintaining order easy. The raiders lost their will to fight once their legendary beast-commander died, the victim of Simon's borrowed sorcery. Captain Labeen wisely ordered Simon to stay below deck for the remainder of the voyage. They couldn't have the raiders see him take a piss like a normal man.

Ash had little contact with the other boat, and their supplies were limited. The raiders had almost no food or clean water to speak of, living off rats and insects they caught in the spacious holds. The Heron's Wrath had rations enough for their own purposes, for a much shorter trip, with far fewer mouths to feed. In some ways, the heavy casualties saved us, Ash reasoned as he rationed out meager portions to the oarsmen. What will happen to them when we reach Spellguard? Will they be sold as slaves, or executed as criminals? He had no knowledge of Xor's customs and laws. Though they had tried to kill him in the raid, as he lead them and fed them he began to feel pity for these starving wretches. Let's see if Xor's king is capable of mercy.

He was far more worried about Steed. The big man was not getting better. Simon was with him all day and night, but Simon never trained in the healing arts at the Abbey. Nor would the Driftpriest's arcane, nonsensical notes be of any use to him, although Simon claimed to have discovered important passages on some pages. The vial of purple-black liquid that killed the Red Minotaur, for example, was revealed to him the night before the battle. Ash once forced himself to look over the pale man's notes, but it made no logical sense to him, as if it were in some sort of one-off cipher. Hopefully the Driftpriest was as good a healer as he was a cultic murderer.

At least Ash had Ziggy at his side aboard the pirate vessel. The girl had proved herself more-than-capable with the bow, claiming to have slain seven raiders in the battle and injuring eleven more. She had taken to wearing her broken bowstrings in her long dark hair. Ash thought it made her look even more feminine, but he couldn't tell her that.

Ziggy took an especially perverse pride in constantly reminding Ash that she had saved his life twice during the melee, shooting down charging pirates that Ash never saw. Naturally, Ash had to accept Ziggy's version of her story, as the mutes would not support her tales of bravery with tales of their own. Nevertheless, Ash was starting to feel a brotherly sort of affection for the little green-eyed girl, despite her constant boasts and unnatural desire to disguise herself as a man. Ziggy easily got along with the captured raiders, exchanging trinkets she had stolen along the Wild Ink for their clothes and jewelry, proudly wearing one of their tasseled vests around the ship. If she isn't careful, the garrison at Xor will mistake her for a pirate too.

Spellguard was located at the southern tip of the Saltwalk, its bland uniformity visible miles away. Unlike the mage-stuffed cities of the Empire, there was not a single tower to be seen. Every visible building seemed to be of the exact same height and color, a drab grey-brown that forced the eyes to look elsewhere for visual sustenance. Like Helios, the city had no walls other than the small portion of the city that jutted out into the sea. From the shape of the docks, Ash calculated that the entire city was as close to a perfect circle as possible, with no hills, rivers or other geographic landmarks to break the monotony. Tall black mountains loomed up some miles behind it, a natural barrier that discouraged curiosity from neighboring Thanelaw. Zirev was right. He was beyond right. This entire city is designed to be ignored and forgotten. Ash wondered what sort of people would go to such great lengths to be ignored. But Zirev had been here, at least once. Zirev, the keeper of secrets.

The Heron's Wrath and the pirate ship were the two largest vessels in the dock when they arrived. A company of nine grey-mailed, visored soldiers were waiting for them. Labeen hurriedly left his ship to speak with them as Ash ordered the raiders to pull in and tie up, and after a brief conversation the nine soldiers left, marching in a three-by-three formation down a wide street located in the direct center of the port. By the time Ash jumped down to the dock, other soldiers were organizing the captured raiders into small, orderly groups of ten. The soldiers' armor was the same shade of drab grey-brown as the rest of the city.

"Ash! We're here! What now?" Ash looked up and saw Simon coming down the plank from the Wrath. Steed shuffled behind him, his head, torso and arm wrapped in fresh white linens and his head hung low. Still, he's walking.

"Simon, you're a miracle worker!" Ash ran to greet them. It had only been four days, but the lack of rations, the uncertainty and the once-hostile crew had made it seem more like four weeks. Steed's eyes were closed and he was grimacing, but he was alive.

"I-I didn't really do much of anything," Simon said, the captive raiders staring at him with naked fear. "Just changed the bandages, and cleaned the wounds twice a day. Steed's body did the rest."

Steed's eyes were still closed when Ash gave him a gentle hug. "Get off me, cockrub," Steed said weakly. "I know how your type gets when they're lonely."

"We'll get you to a healer once we figure out who wanted us to escape," Ash replied, smiling.

The burly captain came to them once he'd finished some business with the soldiers, a huge smile parting his thick black beard. "The Isogoge has decided to reward me handsomely for these pirates, it would seem. Slaying the Red Minotaur is even more profitable than rescuing hardened criminals like you," the captain laughed. "The Isogoge will see to it that you receive your share for the part you played. His Leniency's quarters are in the direct center of the city. You should go to him now."

"The Isogoge?" Ash asked. "Is this our secret patron as well?"

"Yes, yes," snorted the captain. "I do believe you have something that he wants. Good day to you, lads, I'm off to get drunk, if there's a tavern anywhere to be found in this cursed town."

"But what about the captives? Are they to be killed?"

"Who knows? There are no criminals in Xor. What happens to them is none of your concern. Farewell!" The captain gaily sauntered off down the dock towards the soldiers, one of whom gave him a sack bulging with coin. The strange way the soldier handed him the bag —as if he were ridding himself of a leaky sack of month-old garbage— intrigued Ash. The captain's laugh carried over the din of the port, and they last saw him wandering up the dock looking for a place to burn through his blood-begotten winnings.

The four collected what few possessions they had —Simon now lugged around the Driftpriest's case of vials like it was his own, despite its heavy weight— and set off for the large central street that split the port in two halves. From here, the four passed through the grey, bleak city in awkward silence, marveling at the complete lack of color, movement or diversity. The city was a system of perfect grids, interlocked to each other with unlabeled cross-streets and intersections that looked the same. The buildings were all of uniform height, just as Ash had noticed from the ship, but upon closer inspection even the windows and doors were of the same height, width and depth. The familiar chaos, odors and noises of Helios and Bonewits were absent in Spellguard.

The eerie lack of citizenry made the grey stone structures seem like massive tombstones. Despite it being the middle afternoon, the four never saw more than a single straggler or two anywhere on the streets. Ash spotted several pale faces in the windows staring down at them, but when he looked up the faces quickly disappeared. The few people they did see were clad in the same somber grey clothing as the buildings and scurried about their business like two-legged rats, avoiding eye contact as they passed.

Most unsettling of all was the sky above the city. When they had sailed into port, the late morning sky had been a gorgeous blue. Looking up at the undeviating heights of the rectangular buildings, Ash and Simon both noticed that a vast chunk of atmosphere above Spellguard seemed to be missing. Just like at the Wall. What the nine hells is wrong with this city?

"Let's make this as quick as possible and get out of here," Ash said under his breath. Simon and Ziggy nodded. Steed's eyes were still closed.

As they neared the center of the city, Ziggy's head popped up. Ash heard it too. Music. It was coming from a nearby side street, unlabeled and unremarkable. They started down an alley. The music grew louder, a distant lute and whistle that echoed off the flat surfaces of the gloomy grey buildings around them. Soon they came to a small store painted in bright pink and orange pastels, with a glossy red front door wide open to the street. A sign, the first they had seen since leaving Helios, was swinging on hinges above the door: 'Happy Deaths Poison Shoppe.' Ziggy clapped in excitement and hastily skipped inside, and the others followed.

Inside was a cacophony of sound, sight, and smell. This was no ordinary supplier of poisons. One wall featured nothing but color-coded jars of herbs and spices, the opposite wall containing small books on a completely random assortment of subjects. At a glance, Ash saw a title debating the practicalities of keeping scorpions as pets, an annotated history of weather patterns in Wyvernlaw and a third book, a treatise on indexing theory, written by an anonymous military officer that went by 'Major A.X.'

The books were not nearly as random as the curios, trinkets and personal affects behind the counter. There were shocks of multicolored dyed wools, miniature models of exotic animals Ash had never seen, a dark red brick labeled 'Three Sisters,' the skull of some unknown, man-sized bird-lizard. Ash never saw so many completely useless items in one place. Ziggy was there, chatting amiably with a tall, lean, clean-shaven man with a pronounced Adam's apple leaning lazily behind the counter, as well as a sturdy young woman with a large, flat nose and the biggest breasts he had ever seen. Ash met the man's gaze —taking special care to avoid looking at the woman's bosom— and the man lazily stood up and extended his right hand.

"Hello, strangers," the man said in a cottony drawl. "Name's Stang. Welcome to the Happy Deaths."

"Ash. This is Simon, you've met Ziggy already, and this is... his brother Steed, who suffered some injuries before we got here."

"Charmed. Can I interest you boys in some rare oddities? You name it, I've got something closely related to it. This is just my best stuff, I've got even more in the back."

"Healing herbs!" Simon blurted, before collecting himself. "For our friend."

Stang looked Steed over, then picked his teeth with a sharpened rib bone he took off the shelf. "I've got some herbs, but for real healing, and I mean real healing, you'd best be seeing the Isogoge."

"Yeeaaaaah, your big friend over there looks pretty hurt," the woman said in a dry, monotone voice. "We've got herbs that'll keep him fresh 'til he gets there, though. Chase the pain away for a few moments."

"Who is the Isogoge?" Ash asked, focusing his gaze on the tall man. "A great wizard? A rich merchant?"

"Just ignore me, you tall asshole," the woman said directly to Ash, with no hint of emotion in her voice.

Ash turned toward her, eyes firmly locked on her own dark black orbs. He flushed with anger and embarrassment. "I'm sorry, I'm not from here, you have to understan–"

"I'm fucking with you," the girl said, a toothy grin expanding behind her nose. "I'm Maja. Thanks for not staring at my tits like your friend over there."

Ash glanced over at Simon, whose face was now beet-red. "Pleased to meet you, Maja. Name's Ashley."

Maja giggled. "Oh, please," she pleaded, as she threw a wadded-up piece of parchment at Simon, who had made a show of bending over to look at some curio near the ground. "You guys are hopeless." Simon still pretended not to notice, and she retired to a back room, giggling and sighing.

Stang's eyes slowly drank in Ash's face for a few seconds. "The Isogoge, he's our lord, of sorts. At least, he founded this land. Before my time, as it was a couple hundred years ago or so. You can ask him, he's very approachable. Just in the center of the city."

"The founder? How is it— I mean, this city, with its buildings, er, the people..." Ash fumbled for words. "It's just that, your shop was the only.."

"Only thing in the city worth looking at twice? Yeah, I know. Painted it myself with dyes I got off an ore merchant from Seawall, to draw in travelers like yourself. Very few ever come by, though, so most of my trade is in barter, by law. If you've got anything interesting, or unique, I'll gladly take it off your hands in exchange for something off my shelves."

"..By law?" Ash was confused. "We can pay you for your healing herbs..."

"No need, no need. I'm a citizen of Spellguard. We've no coin here, we're all provided for. Works out well for most of us. Everybody, really. Your handsome friend here was telling me about a black bone mask you have, I'd like to take a look at it–"

"No," said Steed, weakly. "No."

An awkward silence fell over the shop. Stang studied the men closely, then interrupted the lull with his slow, lilting drawl. "Well, I'm sure you boys have urgent business elsewhere. I won't stop you from it. Before you leave, make sure to bring the big fella down to the Isogoge, to heal what's ailing him. If I'm half the judge of character I think I am, I figure you're on your way to him anyhow. Best of luck to you. Just don't take anything the Isogoge says too personally. He doesn't much care for the courtesies and customs of your home countries. He wasn't exactly raised around us... regular folk."

The Isogoge's palace was a modest rectangular dwelling, windowless and grey, located in the middle of a large open area where hundreds of small children were playing, screaming and yelling. Ash did not see any mothers in the area, nor any soldiers defending the palace. The four walked carefully through the crowd of children to the open door of the Isogoge's building and walked in.

The interior of the dwelling was just as bleak as the rest of the city. They were in a large, triangular entryway with no furnishings, paintings or decorations to speak of, and just one solid steel door on the far end of the room where the points of the walls met. Not a soul was in the room. Ash wondered if the other three doors all led to exactly similar rooms on the other sides of the building.

The steel door opened when they approached. Inside was a dimly-lit square room, with black felt-covered walls and a tall, thin, white-haired man sitting on a dais in the center. As they walked nearer, the man appeared quite young despite his bone-white hair and skin. The man wore a black cloak over his black leather doublet, with fine black gloves and boots, both with lush black fur trim. He waved them to a circular wooden bench near the foot of the dais, and sat down on the bench facing them. Ash felt a surge of electricity ripple through the air every time the thin man moved or gestured

"I am the Isogoge, founder and facilitator of the proud realm of Xor," the man said in a soft but confident voice once they had been seated. "I am sorry for your losses."

"Why did you rescue us?" Ash decided he wasn't going to waste a moment of this ruler's time. "What is going on?"

The white man showed a courteous smile. "My enemies would have you tried and executed for a crime you did not commit. That is not just. If the Empire is to make any real progress in the next few millenia, it must start with a foundation of absolute justice."

Of all the hundreds of times he had run this conversation through in his mind while he was on the boats, Ash had not expected their rescuer to answer like this. "Who are these enemies? Glassbeard? The wizards?"

The man's smug smile returned. "Yes, I suppose so, now. With the Empress dead, the mage guilds and merchant guilds will soon be in an all-out war. The spotless golden streets of Helios will run red with blood, I'm afraid," the man whispered. "Two thousand years ago, corpses would clog the streets over perceived slights between the mages. The air itself smelled charred, from summoned flame, and deranged spirits that had escaped from their loose bonds ran wild through the unlit streets. Those were dark times. The Empress' methods were... brutal. But they paved the way for two eons of relative peace. Gone, now. Gone. Wiped out in an instant."

Every answer leads to a thousand more questions. "So she is dead?"

"Was she ever alive?"

Ash stuttered. "I-I don't..." Zirev said she had last visited the Abbey some two hundred years ago. A lot can happen in that time.

"Not anymore," the man interrupted. "Although I can't figure out how they did it. Or who they must have hired to do the deed for them. Was it you?"

Ash was shocked. "Surely, you.. we were locked in the dungeon, there was..."

"No way you could have done it? Perhaps that box you gave her carried an asp, or some other poisonous device. Or vials of acid that exploded when you spoke the word from your cell," the man's smug smile returned. "No, of course not. That's preposterous. You are all obviously innocent of the crimes you were found guilty of. I'm certain of that much. But why were you there at all?"

"Zirev sent us. A white demon attacked Exmortus Abbey, destroying everything." The fire and death flashed through Ash's mind like a bolt of malignant black lightning. "Listen, I just need to know if Zirev..."

"I'm not answering your questions to your satisfaction. I apologize. I know of Exmortus. Zirev once worked for me. I am not just the founder of this idyllic little hidden realm. I have also founded a number of... organizations... over the last few hundred years. Most have failed, and had to be erased from history. This current one was working quite well until the business at your Abbey started. My associates call it the Vessel, I refer to it as the Vessel of the Broken God. You've met Fitz, and obviously you know Zirev, both of whom were in my employ. The Vessel ensures that the realms of men experience peace, prosperity, and absolute justice."

"Zirev?" Ash shouted, "Zirev was a man of Torain!"

The white man shrugged. "Yes, he was. And a man of mine, a man with no fealty to any alleged god. He was a bright student, and when I sent him to Exmortus, I never expected him to stay long. A curious sort, always challenging my authority. One of my favorite pupils of the last three hundred years."

What is this horseshit? I can't believe this. "I prayed with the man daily for twelve years. He taught me some of the finer points of theology, Torain's holy scripture, and..."

"He should not have filled your young brain with such nonsense. Torain is a weak god, like all the gods. Man is strong. You are strong. Many of my pupils have become more powerful than the gods themselves. Two of them can defend this city from an army of thousands. Three can obliterate any army, and four working together can overthrow a kingdom in a day." The man got to his feet, his anger rising. Ash felt every hair on his body stand straight up. His temples started throbbing with a dull ache. The grey pupils of the pale man's eyes were turning white as he spoke, "I fought for my freedom from the weak, simpering fools you sheep call the gods. I offer that gift of freedom to each and every worthy man. Those that accept my teachings, that live them, become demigods in their own way. I call them the Hansas."

There was something terrifying about the white man's anger. Let me humor his inflated ego, and get the answers I need. "I apologize, my lord. I.. I did not know. Is Zirev a Hansa, then?"

The man calmed down in a breath and returned to his seat on the circular bench. The pain in Ash's temples ceased instantly. "No. There was one in your area, but not him. No, he left to join the Vessel, my ring of knowledge gatherers. He was never one for conflict, for fighting." The man looked at Steed, who had not opened his eyes once since entering the palace. "Pacifism can be a trait of greatness in a man."

"But why did he send us? Who are these enemies?"

"Unfortunately, I have no idea why he sent you, and with what. Have you opened the box yet?"

"No," Ash replied. "We don't have the key. We hoped the Empress might."

The white man pondered for a moment, then showed his wispy smile. "Show it to me."

Ash hesitated. "I-I don't know you. I don't understand anything you've said to us. Who are your enemies? Torain? The Abbot? The Empress?"

"No, no, of course not," the white man said. "The Abbot, Torain, they don't concern me at all. Not in the least. Or maybe they do, or will soon, depending on that object in your pack. My enemies are the guilds. Specifically, the Golden Dukes. I suspect it was they who ordered the assassination, and imprisoned you. I don't know this 'Glassbeard' —if that is his real name— but I also suspect he was looking for likely prey, and found you."

"Or," Simon interrupted, "He was waiting for us."

"Impossible," Ash replied. "No one but Zirev.."

For a moment, no one spoke. "He sent you to Helios," the white man said. "But he likely wasn't the only one who knew about the object you're holding. Show it to me."

"Show me you're a friend, first, show me I can trust you," Ash countered. "I owe it to the man."

The white man paused thoughtfully for a moment, then looked toward Steed. "I see your friend is ailing, and not from any battle."

"We think he was poisoned," Ash said. "On the way here, there was–"

"His veins course with the shadows of that blind idiot squid-god. Your friend is stronger than they are, but they will drain him bit by bit until he is nothing more than a shriveled shell." The man walked over to Steed, stood straight up, put his feet together and extended his arms to form a cross. "Very well. I might have need of the four of you, soon, and in your strongest condition." He tilted his head back, opened his mouth and made a piercing shriek that echoed loudly off the walls. As Ash covered his ears he saw the man's skin begin to burn brightly. The man's clothes fell limp on the ground beneath him, passing through his body as if he were nothing more than a mirage.

Soon the once-dark room was awash in rays of white light bursting from every pore in the man's body. Brighter than a sun, the man began to grow. First eight feet, then ten, then twenty. Massive membranous wings sprouted from his back, a huge bright white sword formed in one hand, a colossal bow of blinding white light in the other.

Ash's heart froze. The white demon. We've been tricked. He couldn't find his way over the Wall, so he helped us 'escape' and lured us into his lair.

Ash tried to run but his legs had turned to stone. Simon was screaming and covering his head, while Ziggy had drawn, then dropped, her bow. Steed was crouched over, oblivious to everything around him.

The white light demon stood above Steed, raised his sword and bow and bellowed in a booming bass that sounded like the crumbling of a titanic mountain range.

"OCTO TSEBOTH ASOD THAYGOROTH. NEPENTHE OLEAHM HUNGIR. HEZOG OLEAHM HUNGIR."

Steed's body went limp and crashed to the floor, then violently convulsed as one, then two, then three black shadows slithered from the wounds in his arm and nipple and scuttled down the edge of the wall as fast as mice. The white demon slew them with three rapid swings of his huge sword, each one creating a sludgy explosion. The third explosion filled the bright white room with a momentary burst of pitch black darkness that sounded like an avalanche of metal crunching and rending into metal. Ash covered his eyes.

A breath later all was silent, save for Steed's heavy breathing.

Ash looked up and saw the white man, naked, putting on his black leather clothes. Tears streamed down Simon and Ziggy's faces, while Steed muttered an incoherent string of profanities under his breath. Ash's limbs twitched spasmodically for a few breaths as waves of invisible energy coursed through them, until he finally regained control of his muscles.

The Isogoge finished putting on his cloak and gloves, then smiled that tiny, wispy smile. "As I said, the gods are weak. Men are strong. You are strong. Someday, if you wish, you will also be able to exterminate the most vile gods as you would a common wharf rat. But first you must leave here on the morrow. I need you to go somewhere immediately."

"Where?" Ash said weakly, "Where will we go?"

"Exmortus."

### Chapter 21 – The Dark Star

"Impossible."

"I beg you."

"No. Absolutely not. Never."

"Then what else will do you with your life? You are all wanted men."

"I'll find a way. We'll find a way. We'll go someplace. Somewhere. But not there. Send one of your mensas."

"Hansas."

"Whatever. Send one of them. They're demigods, they can handle the white demon. We can't. We simply can't."

"I only teach and guide their paths. I no more control them than I control you. Men are given the gift of freedom, though so few actuall–"

"I don't want to hear anymore of this," Ash turned toward the door. "We're leaving."

Neither Simon nor Ziggy moved.

"Come on," Ash pleaded. "We're wasting our time here."

Simon and Ziggy looked at each other nervously.

"What? What is it?" Ash did not understand. "Why are you..."

"I think he can help us, Ash," Simon replied. "He knows more about this than we do. We're dead men anywhere in the Empire. Wanted."

"I kind of like this city," Ziggy quipped, smiling. "Plus, I want to be a Hansa!"

"Me too," said Simon, smiling at the girl.

Ash's face was red with rage. "No. No. I won't allow it. Torain is our god, not this blasphemer. This demon. Did neither of you just see him for what he really is?"

Ziggy and Simon stared at Ash, saying nothing. The white man chuckled.

Ash was on the verge of tears. "You people are sick. You.. sick.. you sick fucks. Take your fucking box. Take it, morons. Ungrateful assholes. Go fuck yourselves." Ash hurriedly walked out before they could see his eyes.

More dark magic. He's ensnared them both. Ensorceled them. Ungrateful fools. Ash walked out into the plaza, full of hundreds of tiny voices shouting with innocence and joy. Future sacrifices for his dark rites. His evil, soulless, hateful city.

Ash began walking back the way they came but decided there was nothing he wanted any part of in that direction, so he headed to his right. After a few blocks, it all began to look the same to him. He doubled back to the plaza. I'll go the other direction in case they look for me. They'll never see me again. He reached the plaza and looked around momentarily for anyone taller than a ten-year old, but saw no one and went onward. They're still in there with him. With it. The white demon. Possibly the same one that burnt down the Abbey. Fools. Dead men. Heretics.

Ash walked to the east, intent on walking up into the tall, dark grey mountains buttressing against the city. After a few minutes of walking past featureless grey buildings, he stopped again. No, there's nothing for me on that mountain. There's nothing for me in this entire city. I need to get out as quickly as possible. To the docks.

Ash doubled back the way he came and was soon back at the plaza. He hid near the corner of a nearby building and looked around. They're still in there. Waiting for me to come back. Conspiring against me. What else did the demon know? Idiot! I can't think of that now. Zirev. Exmor– the docks. I can't believe they would stay in there with him. I'll catch Labeen before he sets sail. That could be a few days, but I'll stay on the boat, below deck. They abandoned me. Unless he's hired by... damn it. Ash nearly stumbled over two small girls playing, then tripped and fell headlong over a young boy as he apologized. This is ridiculous. What am I doing?

Ash laid face-down on the pavement for a moment, feeling the cold stone and the confused stares of the group of children surrounding him. One of them asked if he was alright. Another said something to the rest of the group in a language Ash did not understand. A tiny pair of hands grabbed his elbow, tugging at it in a futile attempt to lift him up. Then another at the other elbow. Soon a half-dozen more. Ash rolled over to his back and looked up at the unbroken circle of children towering over him. Some were smiling. Others looked worried. There's so many. And not a parent to be found. I could seriously harm this city if I were that type of man. The evil man. Ash looked at their tiny pink and white faces. He reached up to his face. The tip of his nose was scraped. I must look like a fool to them. And I am. They don't know to mistrust me. A small girl of six or seven dabbed his face with a small white cloth, and smiled at him with huge blue-green eyes.

I'm an idiot. I'm the moron. Ash would have punched himself had he not been surrounded by the children, some of whom had already lost interest in the clumsy giant. I need to go back in there. To my friends. The only people I have in the world. Labeen is nothing to me, and I am nothing to him other than a walking bad luck charm. My friends, my real friends, my brothers, my family. They're in there.

With that demon.

Ash struggled to his feet, and shuffled back inside the palace.

He found the Isogoge sitting cross-legged, chatting amiably with Simon and Ziggy as Steed lay sprawled out on the floor, his snores echoing across the walls.

"Aha! My young friend!" The Isogoge greeted him with a genuine smile. Genuine enough for a shapeshifter. "So glad you came back."

"We're working out the details of our mission," Simon said breathlessly.

Ash sat down. Angry. Determined. Using his commander voice, he began to take stock of their situation. "First, I need to know some things. Important things. I want clear answers. No more esoteric bullshit. Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly."

"Fine. First, I need to know what you really are. I saw a... creature... that was remarkably similar to you, your other form, that is, and it was laying waste to the Abbey. Are you a demon?"

"Not exactly. You see–"

"NO," Ash shouted. "I said I want clear answers. No 'not exactlys,' no more mysteries. What are you?"

The white man's smile vanished. His eyes locked onto Ash's. "I am a former solar, an avenging angel. I left the gods to their games thousands of years ago, and settled here. I carved this city from the stone myself, then invited all men who wanted freedom to come join me here. I am the Isogoge."

Ash weighed each of his words heavily. "A deserter. Why did you abandon the gods?"

A flicker of red fire cut across the Isogoge's pale eyes. Ash felt a stab of pain in the back of his head. "Before the Empress, before the Norlords, this land was populated by the Aamu. The fey, the dwarves, the citizens of Fairie... and primitive tribes of men. The land was bountiful, the peoples peaceful —for the most part— and my abilities were rarely tested. Things were good. But then..."

"Fey? Dwarves?" Ash did not believe the man. "Fables. Children's tales."

"The children outside this chamber could tell you many stories about how one lives a good life, Ashley Xavier."

Ash's face fell. "Go on."

"Thank you. The land was a good one, with few problems, until the Dark Star fell from the sky. It landed far, far to the east of here, very near the legendary dwarven mountain-city of Kha-Luz, the Mother of Light. The explosion was terrible. Tens of thousands died instantly. More were burned to death in the fires. A gaping hole in Kha-Luz was opened by the force of the impact, which flattened a hundred miles of towering mountains."

Simon's probably loving this, an arcane history lesson from someone who claims to have been there. Ash glanced at Simon. Simon was staring directly at Ash. Ah. He's already heard this part. Of course. Of course he would have asked this question already.

"But that was nothing compared to what crawled out of the dark star. Terrible, tentacled insects and beasts, creatures unheard of and unimaginable in this world. Monstrosities, nothing remotely familiar to us. Some were mindless, slavering beasts. Others had unspeakably vast intelligences. Those were the worst. They brought fire, and lightning, and death to everyone and everything in their paths. Nothing was safe, nothing was left alive. Plants, animals, everything. The Aamu were almost exterminated overnight, the men were chased to the coasts, and the dwarves fled deep into the earth."

The white man paused for a moment to collect himself. Ash had his doubts but chose not to interrupt.

"My brothers and I were summoned by those we had sworn to assist, but we were helpless. We did not know what we were going up against. To make matters worse, the terrible beasts, the intelligent ones, they brought their own gods."

Ash was startled to see a flush of red creep across the Isogoge's pale face. Is he capable of emotion? Of fear?

"We fought them as we had fought other threats. All our efforts failed. Angels died by the dozens. We pleaded with our masters to intercede. We begged them. We broke our vows and visited them in their luxurious palaces. But... they turned us away. Some said they would never be harmed. Others said they would attend to it later. Still others ignored us outright, offering us no reason, no explanation for their cowardice. So I left, I left and came here, where some of the last remaining survivors were huddling before death arrived to claim them. I took them on as my own children. And when the brave heroes of Norwald came from across the sea to fight the beasts, I warned them. And these men, these short-lived mortals, they listened."

"What did Torain do?" Ash interrupted. "Did He listen?"

The white man paused. "I could tell you, Ash, but you would not hear it."

"I've listened to your drivel this far haven't I?"

"Yes, but you are a self-proclaimed man of Torain. The truth would wear on your ears like hot coals."

"I know what the truth is. I've studied the holy scriptures."

"Exactly."

Ash's face turned purple. "See? See? You spout esoteric nonsense instead of cold, hard facts. You–"

"Fine, Ashley of House Xavier. I will tell you this: Torain had not yet come from across the sea. But he did, when all seemed lost, in order to save his own son from a fate worse than death. He fail–"

"Liar! You obviously know nothing! Torain has no son!" Ash gestured to Simon, who was looking back at him with a worried face. "Do you really expect us to believe such drivel?"

"I warned you you would not like it."

"Why should I be compelled to 'like' these lies?"

"Lies? I was there. I saw these things happen eons before the grandfathers of the fools that wrote your holy scriptures had been weaned off their mother's teat."

Ash bit his tongue. The holy scriptures say otherwise. I am no fool. But this demon is not budging. Let him finish, so we can move on to more important matters. He held his breath and counted to ten, then gestured weakly with a wave.

"Go on."

"Thank you. The men from Norwald suffered heavy losses at first. Staggering losses. But they had numbers, and discipline, and steel, and they did not waver. They were outmatched at first, but they had unyielding determination and purpose. One by one, the alien beasts fell to their swords, arrows and wizardry. One by one, the creatures of vast intelligence were slain in the night. The beasts were isolated, then cornered, then destroyed. The Norlords found new ways to combat their fire, lightning and death, methods that have long since been lost to time. They safeguarded the coasts, then beat them back across the riverlands, to where the Red Wall now stands. With each small victory, their confidence and ability grew. Within a century the darkworld beasts were driven back past the Towers of Dawn. The men built massive fortresses there to protect what they had won. Men from the far east, the exotic sorcerers of Teng, began to win their own battles and push their creatures west. After hundreds of years, generations of the men of Norwald did what the gods refused to do. They drove the remaining darkworld creatures into the long-abandoned halls of Kha-Luz, the Mother of Light, and entombed them there forever, re-naming it the Dark Mother in their own tongue. I returned to my place here, and have offered my knowledge to brave and determined men ever since."

Ash usually enjoyed a good story, but this one posed some unnerving questions. "So... these darkworlders, they're... they're... still here?"

"I suspect so."

"But far away from here."

"Yes. Buried underneath a mountain."

"Buried."

"Imprisoned. Just as you were, but without much in the way of allies."

"No allies?" Ash blurted, "Then what about their gods? Are they also imprisoned in the Dark Mother?"

The white man paused for a moment. "No," he said, weakly.

The room was completely silent but for Steed's snoring. Ash had not noticed the Empress' box lying shattered on the ground until then.

"What was in the box?"

"Just this," Simon said, "We think it's a key."

### Chapter 22 – Heart's Desire

Ash turned the object over in his hand. While it looked like a key, it was completely unlike any key he had ever seen. The key was made of a hard, smooth, silver metal, the blade molded seamlessly with glass. The glass blade had gold-inscribed lines and geometric patterns that neither he nor Simon understood. Even the Isogoge claimed no knowledge of the inscriptions, or the lightweight but surprisingly durable metal it was made of.

Ash often stared at it during the long hours on board the Caribou Queen, a simple fishing vessel that was taking them to the eel-fishing port town of Fishstink. From there they would travel on horseback through the foothills of the Mountains of Madness until they reached Skyforge, which —according to the Isogoge— was one of the last, lost enclaves of the Aamu. The Aamu would lead them through the secret passes in the peaks to avoid the imperial garrison at Greywatch, and from there it was a straight shot across the deadlands of the Kingdom of Shells and back to Exmortus.

Such a perfect plan. Only a thousand or so miles of prime ambush territory, relying on people who may not exist, from a half-demon I cannot trust. Simon and Ziggy were thrilled at the prospect of seeing a city few humans even suspected existed. Ash wasn't so sure. We need to find an isolated hiding spot and lay low for a few years. What the Golden Dukes plot is no concern of mine. Other than revenge.

Ash wasn't going to let his stint in chains go unpunished. Steed, when he finally came to, wanted nothing more than to storm back into Helios and slaughter anyone with a coinpurse and a trinket for sale. Not because of the unjust imprisonment and sham trial, but because they had taken his two most prized possessions, the Ugly Stick and his piglet Boob.

"Boob could still be alive somewhere down in those cells. We need to go back and get him."

"The Isogoge needs us to slip into Exmortus first," cautioned Ash, "and find out what we can about this object, what it does and why the white demon came after it."

The veins in Steed's thick neck were bulging and purple. "Boob doesn't have that kind of time."

"We owe it to the Isogoge. He rescued us. Cured you of your demons."

"I shit darker demons that than every morning. I owe him nothing."

Steed had stormed off that afternoon, but by later that evening he was as excited as Ziggy to get out of Spellguard. The four were outfitted in the mail and leather armor of the soldiers of Xor and given their choice of weapons from the little-used armory. Ash selected a fine piece of long steel with a shark's head hilt which the Isogoge claimed had come over from ancient Norwald before the fall. Simon selected a good quality morningstar and a light crossbow. Ziggy chose a beautifully crafted yew longbow with elder runes inscribed on the shaft, as well as a half-dozen razor-sharp daggers of dark grey steel which she strapped into a bright red leather vest she had acquired from the raiders.

Steed, however, vowed to use his bare fists until he regained his old scythe. Only after much coaxing did the ogre relent, selecting a giant maul that even Ash had trouble wielding. Mandax, the keeper of the armory, suggested it to him, as it was the heaviest weapon in the arsenal. Once Steed had practiced with it on a few pumpkins, he was sold.

"This will do until I get a real weapon. I'll call it the Empress Splatter."

Ash nearly choked. "Please don't call it that. We're wanted throughout the Empire for her assassination."

"So?"

"So... it's best not to make our mission any harder. We need to keep a low profile until we know more."

"Hiding is for cowards. Fear will scatter our enemies before us. Fear and splattered heads."

"Then name it the Duke Splatter. Or Dukeslayer. Just leave the Empress out of it."

Steed thought on this for a while, then nodded. "You're right, Ashy. There's no honor in decapitating old women. The Dukeskewer it is."

"But that's a maul. It doesn't 'skew' anything."

"So?"

That was almost two weeks ago, before they set out on the inconspicuous Caribou Queen. The ship was slow, but drew no attention. Especially not from imperial patrol boats, of which they passed several without incident.

They avoided docking in the major ports along the way. They passed the tiny city of Kronos, similar in every way to Spellguard; the city of Freebos, a small but bustling port city and local stronghold of the Golden Dukes; and Cordagar, a heavily-fortified town that was little more than a fishing village.

After three weeks of deliberately slow sailing, Ash finally spotted their planned destination. Fishstink was just a dozen half-rotted shacks along a rickety wharf. There was plenty of activity ashore, which didn't bode well for their chances of remaining anonymous. Two fairly large vessels were docked there, forcing several smaller fishing skiffs to tie up elsewhere along the shore. A relatively large crowd was gathered near the small fishmarket along with a dozen or more wagons.

With no place to tie up, the four were led out to the wharf on a cramped rowboat. They carried only what they had on them, their dull grey mail hidden beneath the nondescript grey-brown cloaks of the soldiers of Xor. Simon had his case of potions, and Ziggy carried the coins the Isogoge had given them to purchase bribes, horses and shelter. The silver-glass key was safely tucked away in a hidden pocket sewn into Ash's leather jerkin, and Ash felt it press up against his chest with each stroke of the oars. As they approached the wharf, Ash saw that a handful of people were speaking to the crowd in front of the fishmarket as sailors loaded and unloaded the wagons.

After they had reached shore and tied the boat up, Ziggy and Simon went off to find the stables while Ash and Steed cautiously skirted past the large crowd towards the village's only inn. Three grizzled sailors were preaching to the crowd. One demanded angrily that they atone for their sins against the gods. A second invited whoever would come to sail with them to a utopian paradise across the sea. The third sailor was ordering supplies from the wagons to be loaded aboard the two large vessels for the long voyage ahead. None of the three seemed to heed the other two, even though they were all standing together on the same overturned crate, and it was difficult for Ash to make out the exact words. Still, many in the crowd were nodding their heads in agreement. A select few had thrown their hands up in the air in exhilaration, then walked past the ranting sailors and onto the ships.

What insanity is this? Does anyone truly take these fools for— at that moment, Ash saw her. She was tall, almost his height, with stringy blonde hair that came down to her shoulders, clad in a brown woolen shift tied at the waist with a hemp belt. She was standing close to the speakers but was not paying attention: her grey-green eyes were focused squarely on Ash as he walked past. Is this a dream? She looks just like—oof! Ash barreled into the back of a short, bald, bearded man whose left and right eyes were looking in opposite directions.

"Watchaley, yad dunkin' hose!" the man yelled.

"I'm sorry," Ash said as he looked for the girl in the crowd, "I'm sorry." He cringed. She was gone.

The inn was surprisingly empty. The Dripping Snake Inn was never much to begin with, but long years of sea storms, salty air and general neglect had reduced it to a shell of a building, just barely better than a stable. Smoke and shouting blew out of the kitchen while four men with hard faces played dice on a table in a far corner. Ash and Steed walked up to the bar and waited.

After a few minutes of yelling and a few crashing noises in the back, a large man with close-cropped blonde hair emerged from the kitchen. He was a fat man, taller than Steed, every inch of his thick arms covered in tattoos. He stood with his head swung back and looked down his nose at the two with his beady blue eyes.

"You guys with the island cult?" The big man had a high-pitched, raspy voice.

"No. Just travelers heading north," Ash replied. "Do you have rooms for the night?"

"No rooms. Those assholes from the boats bought them all up," the barkeep said as he glared at the four men in the corner. "I can put you two up in the stables."

"We have two more, trying to find horses."

"Good luck with that. The only horses in this sack of shit town are hitched to those wagons outside. They're going to be loaded up with fish and sent north to Mosstone in the morning."

"You have no stables here?"

"We've got eels. And ass-holes," he said loudly, again looking at the four men in the corner. One of them looked up, then muttered something to the others. "They're as fresh as you'll find them. To-night's dinner is eel soup, with eel stuffed with beets."

Steed perked up. "What kind of beets?"

The door swung open and Ash lost all interest in the conversation. The girl walked in, holding the arm of a much older woman and flanked by one of the preaching sailors. Outside, the crowd had dispersed for the day as sailors and eel merchants quickly walked to and fro. The three took a table near the door and sat there grimly. The girl had noticed him when she came in —Ash was sure of it— but she now seemed to be ignoring him as she held the old woman's fingers in silence.

Steed slapped him on the back. "Can you believe what this fat fucker just said? Tell him, Hoss, tell him what you just told me."

"Hold on. I'll be right back," Ash said as he stood up and walked to her table.

It had been too long since Ash had seen a woman. A real woman. Women had been absolutely forbidden on the grounds of the Abbey, to ensure that the priests and knights remained pure, their vows of abstinence unsullied. And Galena had been just a girl. This blonde is a woman grown, perhaps of a similar age... as he drew closer, the girl's cheeks blushed red and her eyes studied the scratched wooden surface of the empty table in front of her. She wore the same unflattering shift she had outside, her cloak held by a silver clasp of a flame inside a triangle. The old woman's eyes were closed tightly as she muttered to herself in prayer, while the preaching sailor's eyes locked on Ash like a coiling snake. Ash decided it best to address the man first.

"I saw you speaking on that crate earlier to-day, " Ash said, not quite remembering which one of the three crate-preachers this one had been. "I was quite impressed."

"Aye, lad, these are dark times grown darker," the man replied. "The Empire is being punished for two thousand years of sin and depravity. This will not be a place for godly men, lad, not for a long while."

"No sir, it won't." Ash was trying desperately to focus his gaze on the man. He chose a large red pimple just above his right eyebrow, and concentrated as best he could.

"Not when assassins walk the streets and demons walk the Wall!" the man shouted as he slammed his fist down on the table. "It's best to leave the wicked to their ill fortune, and collect those wise in the ways of Tyvan, the Lord of All Light, the Stroker of the Hearthfire, the Savior from the Flame. All godly men must heed His call, and sail at once for the golden lands He promised us across the sea."

Ash snuck a sideways glance at the girl, who was still staring down. "Oh, absolutely, sir. Where are these lands?"

The man clenched his teeth together and jabbed his meaty finger into Ash's chest. "You a heathen, boy?"

"N-n-no, sir," Ash stuttered. "Not at all."

The man sat back in his chair, staring with naked suspicion into Ash's eyes. "Maybe you is and maybe you ain't a heathen. Tyvan claims his own, either way. Where do you come from, son?"

Ash glanced sideways. The girl's head was still down, but the old woman was now staring at him with wide, fixated eyes. "I come from a small fishing village on the coast. Of Xor."

The old woman gasped and the man looked down and slowly shook his head. "Xor? Xor? You best get up from this table, boy, and don't ever speak to us again."

"But I–"

"GET!" The man stood up, baring his fists, scarred and bruised across the knuckles. Ash slumped back to the bar, where Steed and the fat barkeep had taken a break from an arm wrestling contest to see what the commotion was.

"Ale, please. With no eels in it."

Steed grabbed Ash's shoulder and squeezed it hard. "Don't look so glum, Ashy. We've got a plan. Foolproof. Hoss and I will beat up her old man, and you can take her in the stables. Just say the word."

Ash brushed his hand away. "No, just a tank of ale, and maybe a little eel soup. I'll eat it in the stables. I don't want to be in here for another minute. Hopefully Simon and Zig got us some horses for tomorrow." Ash stood up, looking lost.

"There's a back door through the kitchen," Hoss said. "Straight through. I'll send my idiot nephew out with your food."

Ash stared at the big man for a moment. "Thanks, friend," and walked out through the back. Despite his burning curiosity, he did not dare look behind him.

Simon was there with four of the sorriest looking nags Ash had ever seen. "Got four packhorses for our journey tomorrow. Used up almost all of our gold, though."

"How much?"

"All of it."

Ash settled down in the straw. The winter had not quite hit Fishstink yet and the fire Simon had started filled him with warmth. Stroker of the Hearthfire. Ash closed his eyes, thinking of the quiet blonde girl. In the morrow, he would be heading north on a packhorse, while she and her holy crusaders would be sailing across some ocean looking for a land that never existed. Someday, Ash... someday...

When he opened his eyes, it was dawn. A half-empty tankard of ale and some cold stuffed eels lay on a plate near his feet, and a small silver clasp of a flame within a triangle rested on his chest.

### Chapter 23 – The Mountains of Madness

"Do I really look like that? That doesn't look like me. Does that look like me?"

Steed studied the poster intently, while Ziggy laughed at him. This was the second poster they'd found since leaving Fishstink.

"They got your hair wrong," Ash said sullenly. "Let's go. Best not to hang around our own arrest warrants."

"Those pimply fucks got my hair wrong," Steed said. "The only one they got right was Simon."

"C'mon, let's go. Now."

"I'm not that short, either," said Ziggy. "I look like a dwarf compared to the rest of you. Does it call me a dwarf?"

"No, no it doesn't. Let's go."

"What does it say about me? Does it mention all the–"

"NOW!"

Steed ripped the poster down and stuffed it in to his pack, just like the last one they'd found, and the four clopped ahead.

"According to Hoss' instructions, the game trail should be a half mile up ahead," Ash said, though he still had his doubts. Nothing about the fat barkeep exactly inspired trust. Steed was foolish enough to ask him the route to Greywatch, but had also asked about the fabled city of Skyforge. Hoss had looked at them like they were the biggest idiots in the world. Maybe that's not a bad thing.

They had followed a caravan of eel wagons up the road to Mosstone for two days, then lingered at camp in the morning to make sure the merchants left without seeing where they got off the road. The Isogoge had told them never to trust any merchants, no matter how small their carts, no matter how sorry their horses. Any one of them could be an informant for the Golden Dukes. And Hoss had given them disturbing news at the Dripping Snake: the Dukes had decided to police the Empire until a successor could be named. A pair of mages from the Clockwatchers Guild had already been murdered in the streets, and imperial soldiers were being bought by the Dukes. Hoss even implied that the Dukes had been buying up imperial troops for almost a year now.

A year.

The thought made Ash shudder.

As they took a noontime meal at another inn along the road, two heavily-armed soldiers told Ash that the Empress' own guild, the Lady's Academy of Music, had already sent outriders across the Empire and beyond calling for mercenaries and sellswords to come to Helios. The other competing guilds had done the same shortly afterward. Four lonely riders in the foothills may escape notice if there's civil war in the streets. The news comforted Ash, though he knew it shouldn't. The two mercs were excited to get to Helios and see where the bidding war started. And when the bidding war ends, the real one begins. Steed argued that the real money would be made after the war started, when the casualties started mounting and fresh fighters were needed. Simon had countered that by then, most of the treasuries would be used up. Maybe they could melt down their towers and rip up the gold bricks from their streets, if they can find them under the piles of corpses.

Ash did not know why he was so morbid. They were just days away from seeing the magical, enchanted secret city of Skyforge. The Isogoge described Skyforge as one of the great wonders of the universe, a place where all the old races of mortals lived in harmony, combining magic, science and reason to forge the perfect society. Simon and Ziggy couldn't contain their excitement and talked about it endlessly. Steed didn't care for it, and as for Ash, he wouldn't mind if they avoided it completely. Which may be easy to do, considering it probably doesn't even exist.

Beyond that, the whole notion made Ash uneasy. They were to look for a crumbling stone archway on a high foothill across from a section of ancient, tar-black trees in the Sharpwood. They were to wait there until someone –anyone– arrived, tell them the password, and then be whisked off to la-la fairy perfect world, where the Aamu would show them a secret pass through the mountains to sneak past Greywatch.

And after that —Exmortus.

The Isogoge insisted that the white demon —the other white demon— was not in the Abbey. But how could he be so certain? Even worse, the Isogoge asked three times to 'hold' the silver-glass key for 'safekeeping.' Ash had not liked that at all, but he was at least thankful that the Demon of Spellguard didn't just slay them outright and take it from them by force. Ash had no doubts that the Isogoge could have wiped them out quickly and efficiently in that dull grey chamber of his. And he still might, once we return with the information he seeks.

Simon told him that when the Isogoge broke the box and saw the key, the pale man was visibly disappointed. Was he expecting something else? Is that why we're heading back to the Abbey? The idea of the Isogoge not getting what he wanted made Ash smile from ear to ear.

A teeth-chilling wind came down off the mountains. Ash wrapped himself in his cloak. It was thick and warm enough, but it couldn't cover up his doubts. If I'd not said I was from Xor, I would be on a boat with Lara right now. He did not know the blonde girl's real name, but had gone over a huge list of potential names in his head until he found the one that sounded right. It was Lara today. It had been Luna the day before, Danya the day before that. Once or twice he had thought of her as an older version of Galena. They would be about the same age, if it were possible...?

The game trail was easy enough to find, a well-worn path through the pine forests that had been used for hundreds of years by hunters, trappers and scouts. The trees here were sparse and relatively far-apart compared to the dark, brooding, ancient forests of the Sharpwood looming to their left. Simon told him that at one point in time, the entire continent of Loross was covered in a single forest as old as creation itself, but that it was decimated by the ravages of civilization until the Sharpwood was all that was left. It looked small and insignificant on a map, but from the crests of the foothills the Sharpwood was of impressive size. The trees were taller and stouter than any Ash had ever seen. The pine forests around the Abbey looked like scrubgrass by comparison.

Ziggy couldn't take her eyes off of the ancient trees. She's strangely silent when she stares at the Sharpwood. Almost reverent.

They rode slowly, as their packhorses were not equipped for the the hills. The peaks of the Mountains of Madness formed an unbroken wall to their right, while the baleful Sharpwood extended as far as the eye could see to their left. The Isogoge said that the Mountains of Madness were once called the Mountains of Mind by the Aamu, as they had a transformative effect on anyone foolish enough to try and pass through them. Hoss, who lived in the shadow of the mountain range, told him in no uncertain terms that anyone stupid enough to climb up was not going to climb down. Ash had felt an evil presence when he first laid eyes on them from the Caribou Queen. Unless they were being pursued, nothing would convince him to take his chances in those black peaks.

Minutes turned into hours, hours into days. The game trail wound north into the thick of the Sharpwood, just as Hoss had warned. From that point the four of them were on their own. Ash fought the biting cold by thinking of Lara, trying to avoid any memories of the Abbey, Clearstone, or Panax. Only Steed seemed to be enjoying himself, happily muttering profanities to anyone who would listen, loudly relishing exactly how he would maim and murder the first Golden Duke they came across. Ash often saw him fingering the leather grip on his maul, or inspecting the battle horn they had won from the Red Minotaur.

Ziggy rode quiet and subdued, lost for days at a time in her own thoughts. Ash twice caught her staring at him, and when he returned her gaze she quickly looked to the ground. Why is she acting like this? Haven't we been venturing together for months now? Why the shyness, now? What the hell is wrong with that girl?

Simon spent the time jotting notes into a journal he had started when they left Spellguard. He was also fond of playing with his Deck of Wonder, a parting gift from Stang's shop of curios. Stang had told him how to use the cards to predict the future and learn hidden truths, but thus far, when Ash asked him what the cards said about their journey back to Exmortus, Simon had looked ashamed and said that his readings didn't make any sense. I could have told him that without using a magician's deck.

After the first week's riding the rains started in. They watched the dark grey clouds form over the mountains, and for days listened to the deep rumble of thunder over those ominous black slopes. When the clouds finally reached them it was unbearable at first, then got progressively worse. The rain turned the cold winds into freezing tornadoes, once nearly knocking Simon off his horse. The rain transformed the ground into impassable mud and made the rocks slippery, wearing their horses out. Each day they traveled less.

It wasn't long before one of the horses gave out. They made camp and slaughtered it, having run out of all but hardtack two days earlier. Although they had all agreed not to light any fires until they got past Greywatch, their resolve eroded under the barrage of freezing rain, wind and ice. They found a small alcove under an overhang and made a small fire. Ash felt cold water sloshing around in his bones and welcomed the warmth of the fire, as well as the taste of roast horseflesh. What we don't eat should hold us over until we reach Skyforge. If not, we'll likely lose another horse or three on the way.

The slow going got even worse after that night. The rains turned into lightning storms, the flashes spooking man and beast. Sheets of ice battered their faces and hands, and the ground became treacherous. After Steed and Ziggy were thrown from their horse when it slipped on a patch of black ice, the four decided to drive the remaining horses on foot and keep their surplus stores of meat slung across the mounts' backs. Within minutes, they were drenched and miserable. Simon, especially, seemed to be walking in a daze, often stumbling over stones and exposed roots. I've never seen him look like this. Perhaps he's thinking of Dinsdale, and the promise I made that I may never fulfill.

Every day and every night the lightning storms came, pounding them like the bright white fists of an angry storm god.

They trudged on for days without speaking a word. Often Ash thought that they were lost. It looked so easy on the map —mountains to the right, forests to the left, just keep going straight— but in the twists and turns of the foothills the simplest tasks often became impossible quests. Several times a day they found the mountains looming to their left and they would send Ziggy up a hill to scout, often forced to turn back the way they came. Unique landmarks were difficult to distinguish in the pounding storm, which gave them just a few precious hours of daylight. Once they spent over two hours trying to light a fire under an overhang, only to have the rain blow sideways into their camp and put it out. They laughed then, but after it happened a dozen or more times Ash was close to madness.

This is no ordinary storm. These are signs. We should not be doing this.

Finally, he made his decision.

They found a small cave, deep enough but no taller than four foot high. Ziggy had gotten the fire started relatively easily using some dry twigs she found in the cave. They were wordlessly enjoying the treat of a warm fire when Ash spoke.

"Torain is telling us to go back. This... this is madness."

The camp fell silent save for the constant hiss of the downpour.

"Then where would we go?" Ziggy asked, a little annoyed. "Fishstink? Spellguard? Your stupid dad's city?"

"No. What? No. I don't know. Just not this way."

"I just want to get this over with so I can fucking kill some Dukes and get my shit back," Steed replied. "I miss Boob. Another baby boar just wouldn't be the same. And won't taste as good when I kill it and eat it. Fucking Dukes." He tossed a stone into the fire, kicking up some small embers.

The camp was silent for a time until Simon nervously spoke up. "I can try and change the weather. If that helps, I mean."

The others stared at Simon in disbelief. And just how does he intend to do that?

"No? Nevermind, it was just a–"

"No!? Yes! Do it!" Steed bellowed, "I didn't know you could do that! Do it! Now!"

Ziggy bounced up and down in her cross-legged stance, giggling for the first time in days. Simon's eyes were now quietly smiling as they darted from Steed to Ash to Ziggy to Steed and back to Ash.

"Are you all mad? Are you out of your fucking minds? You can't change the weather!" Ash tried standing up and knocked his head hard against the stone roof of the cave. "AGGH! Damnit! No. No. I won't allow it. It can't, you can't, just —just don't. You can't." He knew the bump had robbed him of his moment as he rubbed the welt under his hair.

Steed reached over the fire and grabbed at Simon's arm. "Do it, Simon. Sunshine. Warmth. No more wind. Hot weather. And girls, too, if you can make it rain girls. I mean it."

Simon looked at Ash guiltily, but Ash did not say another word. Simon crawled over to his case and drew out a few vials of some unknown substances, the Driftpriest's diary and an unlit torch. Ash glared daggers at Simon while he fussed with the powders, liquids and torch. How dare he. A supposed man of Torain. We were training to become warrior-priests. Together. Torain will not let this go unpunished. Ash nearly grabbed Simon's torch and threw it into the rain, but the others might never forgive him if he did. Go ahead, try and change the weather. Your failure should put an end to this new-found interest in sorcery. Not a moment too soon.

When Simon finally finished his preparations, he opened the Driftpriest's diary to a specific page, closed his eyes tightly and started humming. Steed and Ziggy sat in rapt expectation, and Ash smirked when he saw Steed peer out of the cave to see if the rain had started letting up. Simon's humming soon turned to chanting in a language Ash had never heard. Or... have I? The words did sound horrifyingly familiar, but where... below deck, in the Heron's Wrath. Simon, no. No. Don't do it. Simon's normally sweet voice had turned harsh and guttural as he dug deep into his vocal chords to strain for the correct pronunciations of the squid-god's eldritch language.

Ash's right arm bolted up to stop him, but Steed's glare stayed his hand. Fools! There's no Isogoge out here to drive out Hezog's shadows this time. We're dabbling in knowledge man was never meant to know. Simon held the torch over the fire and spoke, then shouted, the same words over and over again: "SHTYAYAH VAH DVOR RZHIKH! SHTYAYAH VAH DVOR RZHIKH! SHTYAYAH VAH DVOR RZHIKH!"

Ash's eyes were transfixed on the campfire, now spewing purple and black flames. The air in the cave had an acidic taste and Steed and Ziggy were quietly mouthing the words alongside Simon. This is some truly evil shit. I need to leave. Now.

Ash pulled his cloak around him and ran from the cave into the rain. The downpour was brutally cold, but Ash found a tree barren of leaves and held it tightly. The rain drowned out the chanting. For that much, Ash was glad. How could I have hoped to fight and live alongside these people? This is madness, and if I don't take a horse and leave right now they're going to take me down to hell with them. Damn you, Simon. Damn you and your squid god, and damn the Isogoge for putting that priest on our boat.

At once Ash heard a high-pitched scream coming from the cave. He rushed back.

"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!" Simon was screaming, his face contorted beyond recognition. Where Simon had been sitting was now a man forty years older, haggard and drawn. Steed and Ziggy were frozen in place. The torch had disappeared. Ash rushed up behind Simon and grabbed his shoulders. They felt like ice. The skin on the back of Simon's neck was cold and slimy.

"Simon! Simon!" Ash shook him but the thing that once was Simon was as solid and unmovable as the cave walls. The screaming continued.

"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!" Ash ran outside, then back inside. Tears welled up in his eyes. I've lost Simon. I've lost my friend. I've lost him. Torain, please. Please help us. Help Simon. He took off his cloak and covered Simon's body, shielding it from the purple-black fiery haze glowing in the center of the cave.

At that moment a huge CRACK exploded outside the cave. Night turned into day. The ground trembled beneath Ash's soaked boots and the vibrations crept up his legs, his groin and his torso before the daylight outside vanished.

He looked around. The cave was at peace, no one was screaming, and the fire was burning orange again. The only sound was the hiss of the heavy downpour outside. The form under the cloak squirmed as Steed and Ziggy got up off of their backs.

Ash pulled off the cloak and saw Simon whimpering, his eyes closed. His face was considerably paler but otherwise back to normal. Ash put his arms around the boy and hugged him tightly.

"It's gone. It's over, Simon. It's over." Ash squeezed him harder. "I thought I had lost you. Never. Never again."

"It's over alright," Steed said, pointing outside the cave. Ash followed his hands and saw that the rain had subsided down to a barely perceptible drizzle. Simon opened his eyes.

"I'm... weak, Ash." The horses neighed outside. "I didn't say the words right. It was too hard. I should have eaten first, should have practiced my voice."

"No, Simon, no. You're fine now," Ash said. "We're fine. The rain is gone. I can't believe it, I can't fucking believe it, but the rain, it's gone. I want to leave now, this second. We'll find Skyforge, and meet the old races, and eat their wonderful food, and..." Ash stopped as he saw a dozen or more high boots appear at the mouth of the cave. Six men, armored in mail and leather and with bows drawn, bent down to peer at them. The shortest of the men, a thin man with a tightly-cropped goatee and piercing black eyes, smiled at the four boys in the cave.

"Ah, perfect timing! You four are under arrest for the assassination of the Empress."

### Chapter 24 – The Night Terrors

The Sharpwood Rose, as he preferred to be called, was not altogether an unpleasant man. Unlike their previous gaoler beneath Clearstone Keep, the Rose was a well-educated, amiable fellow, well-liked by the rare passersby they met on the road and loved by his motley group of men, who referred to themselves as the Night Terrors. Although they called themselves vigilantes, Ash figured them for little more than common brigands. The other five men were unkempt, surly and foul-mouthed when the Rose was out of earshot. They had a variety of weapons, but all had at least a shortbow and a sword. The Rose himself wielded a beautifully-crafted gleaming black longbow and an ornately-inscribed longsword on each hip. The man reeked of strong perfume, a scent of spiced leather and roses that Ash could smell from inside their cage. The Rose is noble-born, no doubt.

For all that, it was difficult getting any sort of information from the man. All Ash knew was that the Night Terrors were leading them up a little-used supply road through the foothills towards Greywatch, where a man named 'Sharky' would meet them and take the captives into imperial custody. The Rose had sent two 'lieutenants' ahead to reach Sharky and negotiate terms.

Although they were captives once again, it was not nearly so bad as the cells below Clearstone. They were bound by the ankles at first, but once they had been escorted from the cave to the cage-wagon their iron shackles were removed. The cage was low, just four foot high, but wide enough for the four of them to lay out. The wood below the cage was splintered in parts and warped from the recent rains in others, making deep sleep impossible. They were well-fed, better than when they were eating their own fallen horses, and the rest was a welcome respite from the grueling riding they had been subjected to for the last two weeks.

Even Simon regained some of his color, which had drained from his face following that night in the cave. For the first two days Simon did nothing but shiver and sob quietly in a corner of the cage, unresponsive to both Ash's kind words of comfort and Steed's endless pleas for additional spells. Now the boy was silent but otherwise normal.

The big man was relentless, but Ash could hardly blame him. Following those dark rites in the cave the weather had cleared up to an unnatural degree. The air was still cold but the rain and lightning storms had been replaced by crisp blue skies and the sun's rays gave the prisoners a small amount of warmth during the daylight hours. The nights were much the same, with gentle breezes displacing the previous week's frigid arctic blasts. It's too bad we don't have the freedom to enjoy this strange change of fortune. Was it mere coincidence, the work of the squid-god... or did Torain hear my prayers? Was our imprisonment our payment for the weather, some sort of divine joke?

Once at Greywatch, they would be handed over to rougher, less genteel captors, an inevitability that Ash was not looking forward to. Steed whispered that he had a plan, but when pressed he just mumbled about waiting until the time was ripe. They had been captives for three days and Steed had not made so much as a single move. The big man spent all of his time snoring loudly in the corner of the cage where they all took their piss breaks, making irritating scratching sounds in the wood at night and trying to start up conversations with their captors.

In that regard, he had made some progress. At first the Night Terrors refused to engage the big man in small talk, using code names that they would change every night when within earshot of the cage. Three days of Steed's profane charm later, and the two vigilantes who rode most often alongside the cage had revealed themselves as Ill Jack and Cody Sallos.

Ill Jack was the quiet one, a thin, humorless, anemic man who rarely said much more to the captives than "Shut up," or "Silence!" Cody Sallos was a much friendlier sort, red-faced and somewhat plump, a young man in his early twenties who had once been a farmer, a soldier and a mercenary-for-hire before the Rose discovered his talents with the sword and the bow and enlisted him into his service. Cody often laughed at Steed's jokes —the more perverted, the better— although he admitted that he did not have enough of a sense of humor to make up jokes himself. The corn-fed country boy was quickly becoming one of Ash's favorite companions, and he looked forward to those times when Cody would replace one of the more dour-faced riders alongside their cage.

It was Cody who told them some details of how they were captured. Although the four had a few days' head start on the Night Terrors, during the final three days when they were on foot they had done nothing but go in circles, giving away their position every night with their fires and smoke. Still, Cody had expressed that it was a pleasant surprise to catch them unawares, especially after seeing the size and feeling the heft and weight of Steed's massive maul propped up against a tree outside the cave. Steed replied that he had an even heftier maul swinging between his legs, which had Cody giggling with high-pitched laughter for half a day.

Midway through the fourth day Ash glanced outside their cage and saw that they were passing near a patch of the Sharpwood that had ancient, huge trees, pitch-black in color. Scurrying quickly to the other side of the cage, Ash saw that far up on a high hill was the dilapidated ruins of a once-great stone archway.

"Cody! That archway! Those trees! They're... black!"

Cody, who had been giggling quietly to himself all morning, suddenly lost his sense of humor. "Yessir, the old arch. The Rose doesn't go near it. Says it's swarming with ghosts, and not even the human kind."

Ash stared at the archway and got a slight chill on the back of his neck. Ziggy felt it, too.

"We heard that was a secret gateway to the fabled city of Skyforge," Ziggy blurted. "If we tell you the password, will you let us free?"

Cody's laugh returned. "No. Skywhat? Never heard of it. Now keep quiet before you get me in trouble again. I'm not supposed to be talking to you anymore, you know."

Ash fell silent as he watched the black, mossy trees grow smaller and smaller in the distance. He never believed the Isogoge's tales of the legendary Aamu city, but here, so close to those two landmarks, the idea of a hidden city suddenly seemed real. He toyed with the idea of telling an officer at Greywatch about it, but quickly decided that it would not benefit him and his comrades in any real way. Still, the Empire could benefit even if we could not...

Day turned into night and back to day again, but they had no word from Sharky or the garrison at Greywatch. Cody told them that Greywatch was the tallest tower in the world, made by an ancient empire of men on an unassailable rock with a view for a hundred miles in every direction. Ash wondered if the makers were also from Norwald and whether it really was taller than the Tower of the Host, which Cody had never heard of. Too bad. There's a great big world for this farm boy turned outlaw to see, but he will probably waste his life in the Sharpwood while he's hanging with this surly crowd. The thought depressed him, and he tried whittling down the hours thinking of Lara, of Galena, of his Heart's Desire. Unless my judge and executioner is female, I will never see another woman in my life.

As dusk began to turn sky tan-gray they heard a cry, and the cage-wagon came to an abrupt halt. Cody and Ill Jack calmed their horses and exchanged worried glances as the familiar sounds of hooves thundered off into the distance. The other three riders went over a ridge in the road. Ash could not see what was happening, but did watch two dark shapes falling from a small cliff up ahead. Cody and Ill Jack saw the shapes too and drew their bows. Steed bolted to the right side of their cage alongside Ill Jack.

"What's going on up there?" Steed said in a friendly tone. "I want to see."

"Shut up," replied Ill Jack, ice and fear in his voice.

"Is it Sharky? Tell me. Are we finally there?"

Ill Jack shielded his eyes from the setting sun in the west but remained silent. Cody did the same, but after a minute the sounds of a skirmish ahead were impossible to ignore. A man screamed in the distance, and another made a deep, alien growling noise soon afterward.

"That doesn't sound good. Jacky, you need to get us out of here. Give us our weapons, and we'll help you out of this mess."

"Shut up."

"Your friends are hopelessly outnumbered. Didn't you hear that noise? Sounded like a lion, or an ogre."

"Quiet!"

"...or possibly even a troll. Give me my maul and get me out of here, and I promise I'll come back inside the cage when we're all done here."

Ill Jack did not say a word, noisily fumbling with his bow and quiver. Cody had drawn his sword, then sheathed it, then drew it again.

"Jack, we need to go up there," Cody muttered.

"We have orders."

"Listen to Cody! He speaks the truth. Your friends need you up there. They're getting slaughtered. Fuck your orders!"

"I said shut.. up," Ill Jack said as he banged the butt of his spear against the bars near Steed's face. The noises ahead were getting even more disturbing, with men's screams mingled with lower noises that almost resembled barking.

"Jacky, if you don't go up there, the Rose is going to die. You'll be on your own with no boss, and nothing but my smiling face and hairy ass to keep you company." Steed fluffed his train of blonde hair in a gruffly feminine way and blinked his eyes.

Ill Jack's horse was restless. Finally he rode over to Cody and handed him his spear. "Stay here with them. I'll be right back."

Cody sheathed his sword again and fumbled nervously with the spear. As Ill Jack's horse disappeared over the ridge Ash heard a loud crack from right behind him. Turning around, he saw Steed bracing himself against the top of the cage and kicking down on the floor of the cage's piss-corner with all the force in his heavily muscled legs. Crack.

Cody wheeled his horse around. "Hey!"

Crack.

"Hey! Steed! You! Stop that!"

Steed reared up and threw the entire force of his body behind his kick. Crack. Splinters flew towards Ash. He ducked, then noticed a sharpened spoon in Steed's right hand. What the? We had gruel four days ago, but...

Crack. This time part of a wooden slat snapped in two and splinters flew everywhere. Cody was yelling at Steed while hurriedly dismounting. Ash looked over his shoulder at the road ahead but heard nothing more than the clash of steel on steel and a deep, pitiful groan.

Crack. Steed's legs were covered in huge gashes but the big man was smiling from ear to ear. His face was purple, his eyes wide and manic. With a huge heave and an inhuman roar Steed reared up and CRACK! The wooden floor beneath him exploded. Splinters and bits of urine-soaked wood flew across the rest of the cage, and Steed had disappeared.

Cody quickly ran around to the back of the cage. "Hey! I'm going to get in troub–"

In a flash Steed was on him, barreling into Cody's chest and knocking the air out of him as they slammed to the ground. In one fluid motion Steed shoved the spoon deep into Cody's gaping mouth while grabbing the farm boy's neck with his other hand. Cody's hands went for the spoon lodged deep in his throat. Steed slipped Cody's dagger out of its hilt and thrust it into the boy's Adam's apple, twisting it back and forth. As Cody's face turned dark purple he reached for the dagger but Steed now held it with both hands, crouched atop Cody's chest, driving the full weight of his body through the dagger and into the man's thick neck. A geyser of blood shot straight up into Steed's face, filling his mouth. He smiled and spit out a mouthful of dark red liquid, then smiled and spit again, twisting Cody's neck to one side, then the other. The farm boy ceased to struggle after a few seconds and Steed got to his feet, stumbling backwards.

"C'mon, Ashy, time to leave."

Ash was horrified, but he scrambled after Ziggy and through the hole, getting scrapes across his arms and face. He helped Simon through next and emerged onto the dusty road, his muscles and back aching from the cramped quarters. Ziggy had already grabbed the bag holding their possessions and thrust a sword into Ash's chafed hands.

A horse neighed in front of the wagon. Ash wheeled around and saw Steed trotting fast towards another horse coming slowly towards them. It was Ill Jack's horse, but the Sharpwood Rose was riding it. The Rose had never worn a helmet, and his face was covered in dark red and black splotches on the right side. His left eye and temple were swollen from the terrible impact of some sort of blunt object. Behind him, slung over the back of the horse like a saddlebag, was another one of the Night Terrors. Steed spurred Cody's horse on toward the Rose.

As he heard the sound of the horse approaching, the Rose halted.

"...Cody?"

The Rose's skull exploded with a thick splorft as Steed's heavy maul slammed into his face. He slowed his horse and wheeled it around, raised his maul over the other rider for an instant before gently lowering it, poking the man indifferently until he slumped off the horse and fell to the dust like a man-sized sack of grain. Steed looked out ahead, then put his hands behind his head to catch his breath.

Ash and Simon walked up the road, trying to avoid looking at the carnage. Up on the road a half-dozen or more corpses were strewn along the dust, along with two dead horses. A third horse was standing off to the side of the road chewing on some grass.

Ash shielded his eyes from the setting sun to his left. Some of the corpses were unusually large.

"What do you make of those, Simon?" The thought of talking to Steed made him physically ill. "The big ones?"

"I don't know," Simon whispered, looking at the ground. The two walked ahead to take a closer look while Ziggy looted the Night Terrors' corpses behind them. As they approached the scene of the battle, the two held their breath. Of the seven dead bodies only three were definitively human. The other five were much larger, as thickly-built and well-muscled as Steed but with sickening grey skin. Most were wearing crude leather armor, metal helms, and had been carrying falchions, spiked clubs and maces. The nearest one was laying on is back, his stomach rising and falling as its lungs strained to push and pull, two gaping slash wounds exposing raw muscle and intestine. Ash could feel his own heartbeat pounding as he inched near the creature, trying outwardly to appear calm as he examined its wide face, its huge canines protruding from its lower jaw and its twitching, heavily-muscled shoulder.

I did this. A welling of emotion rose up in his throat. I brought this here. His heart could handle being accused of assassinating the Empress. He had not done it and had never intended to, even accidentally. But this was different. Yount and Markov had told him stories. Old stories. Markov once whispered that he had seen the things himself down south in the desert, where even the hardiest traders never traveled. Has it already begun? Has the Empire already started to crumble at its borders? Yount said that these things had never been able to get over the Wall and had not threatened the Empire in almost a thousand years. Yet here they are. Ash glanced up at the rocky cliffs above them, where he had spied the two dark shapes drop on his captors just a few minutes earlier. Simon followed his glance.

"What are they, Ash?"

"We... we brought them here. We caused this. The Empire, it's..." The words lodged in his throat.

"What is it? What did we do?" Simon looked worried, and was no longer whispering. "What are these things?"

Ash focused his eyes on the sky as it was turning a grayish-tan in the approaching dusk. He made to spit but his mouth was as dry as bone. He took a deep breath, then tried to remember in an instant everything Yount and Markov had ever told him about these creatures. He grabbed Simon by the shoulders and gazed deeply at his colorless, innocent face.

"Ash? What is it? What are they?"

"Orcs."

### Chapter 25 – The Tower of the Dead

The signs of battle were scattered across the hillside, and it looked decidedly one-sided. The corpses of the imperial soldiers heavily outnumbered those of the grey-skinned orcs, unless the orcs had taken some of their own to be buried elsewhere. But then why would they leave any of their own behind at all? Ash scanned the wreckage for more clues.

In the shadow of the great tower of Greywatch, Ash was worried. They had seen the black wisps of smoke coming from the top of the tower for three days now, although recent light rains that morning had finally put out the fires inside the structure. From Ash's perspective the tower looked absolutely impregnable. Sitting high on a solid rectangular jetty of rock with no visible access point other than a single staircase with multiple switchbacks, even a small garrison of a few dozen defenders could hold off an army of thousands. Greywatch itself was a monumental piece of architecture, just like its twin sister, the Tower of the Host, only the men of Norwald had used light grey granite to construct this one rather than the shimmering blue of the Host. In the midday sun, small flecks in the stone made Greywatch glisten as if it were a thin grey spear fresh from the sea. Not terribly intimidating, but beautiful. A reminder in these dry, parched lands of the seafaring life they'd left behind. The men of Norwald were peerless artists as much as they were conquerors.

From the looks of it the siege had not lasted long. The garrison had mounted a sortie down the switchback, where they were filled with arrows, and onto the hillside where an unknown number of orcs slaughtered them wholesale. How could they have been so idiotic? Ash recalled his short conversation with Lord Commander Molt at the White Castle, and wondered if all of the Empire's frontier garrisons were led by bumbling morons.

"So, Ashy, what's the difference between suicide and glory again?" Steed was behind him, chortling at the imperial corpses. The orcs had looted anything and everything of value so there was little left for him and Ziggy to do. "I reckon a lot of these naked dead guys were knights like yourself."

"I was never knighted," Ash replied curtly. "Nor would I have ever left the safety of those walls. See? Up there?" Ash pointed at the door to the tower, which had been broken off its hinges. "They made quick work of the garrison down here, then met with little to no resistance up there. Then they lit the place on fire."

"So you would have stayed in the tower, then."

"Of course. Coming out like this was suicide."

"What if your commander was a dipshit and ordered you outside?"

Ash absent-mindedly stared at the maggot-white corpse of a soldier twenty feet away. "Let's go up there and see what we can find."

Simon was still too weak to make the climb up to the top, so Ash assigned Ziggy to stay with him in case more orcs were hiding in the cliffs nearby. Ziggy agreed, scouting around for unlooted food stores the tower's base. Ash doubted the orcs would leave any provisions in the castle, but then again, their ways were foreign to him. Do they eat and drink like us? Shit like us? He wished Yount were here to give him the answers he needed. Yount would never have ordered his men to their deaths.

The stone steps of the switchbacks were littered with broken arrows, some snapped in half, others with the arrowheads lodged deep in crevices in the granite wall. With no exceptions the pale white corpses they found were all as naked as the day they were born, with gaping puncture wounds from the hail of arrows that met them as they charged down the steps. Such idiocy. Would I have charged down this steps if Yount had ordered me to? Perhaps I underestimate the love these men here had for their commander...

"Only sheep do what they're told," Steed said as he kicked the corpse of an obese soldier off the steps. "I'll fight alongside you, Ash, but I'll be damned if you're going to sit in your tall tower and tell me to go down and die. What a bunch of fucktards. I bet they were virgins, too."

"I'd never ask you to do that. Never." Ash felt comforted by the big man's words, despite the sick feeling he got when he pictured how Cody died. Steed never once mentioned it during the week's ride up the foothills and seemed to have completely forgotten about the whole incident. The man is two hundred and fifty pounds of hot murder. And I'm his accomplice. Another glorious crime on my growing list of heroic deeds.

At the base of the tower, the heavy iron door had been battered off its hinges, with no evidence of the battering ram they'd used. They pick their victims clean, like well-trained scavengers. He made mental notes regarding any information he could find regarding these orcs, as they could still be within the area. The corpses on the hillside below were still relatively ripe, no older than a week or two at the most. Ash dreaded what he might find in the upper levels of the tower.

As the two pushed past the remnants of the door the odor of wet ash hit their nostrils like a face full of ditchwater. The interior of Greywatch was exactly the same as the Tower of the Host, but here, the floor was littered with empty sacks, smashed furniture and scorch-marks across every stone surface. The orcs had tried to put the tower to the torch but the ancient granite had thwarted their plans. A shame the imperial garrison could not have done the same. A quick peek into the barracks revealed much of the same. The familiar odor of rotting corpses was surprisingly absent on the lower levels.

The two climbed the stairs as quickly as they could, toward the busted trapdoor in the ceiling above them. It too had been battered, although Ash could not imagine how even orcs were strong enough to haul a ram up these winding steps and exert enough force on the door to leave it swinging from a single hinge. I'm missing something important. Something else was happening here. But what?

The first landing was much like they had expected. The room was torched and all the trappings burnt or scavenged. No corpses, but Ash noticed the invaders had chipped off some of the stones on a huge mosaic along the northern wall. One of the beasts had smashed it in several places with a large blunt weapon, possibly the same miniature battering ram that they had used to access the upper levels.

The two climbed up each level in silence, every floor marked by charred, empty rooms, free of both corpses and loot. At long last, near the top of the tower they smelled the recognizable stench of dead human. Up a flight of stone steps, through a stone doorway and past another stone archway, they finally came upon the appalling scene their nostrils warned them about. Many of the fine trappings and furnishings were still present, although shredded beyond recognition. A large pile of charred sticks was in the center of the room near a blackened skeleton clutching a handful of snow-white ash in its bony fingers. Two bloated corpses, once women, were laying on a bed near a window, causing the roast rabbit they had cooked for breakfast to rise up into Ash's throat.

"You think this guy ran the place?" Steed asked, "Also, those two over there on the bed? More rotten than the others."

Ash choked down some vomit and studied the two cadavers on the bed. Steed was right. These two were in a far more advanced stage of decay than the soldiers on the hillside.

"But —but that doesn't make any sense."

"The truth doesn't have to make no sense," Steed replied. The big man walked over to the two corpses and started playing one of their distended bellies like a drum.

How can this moron be my own brother? "Knock it off, asshole. Have some respect for the dead."

"Why? They don't give a shit. Listen!" Steed's smile grew wilder as he sped up the beat, until the corpse he was thumping on let loose the most noxious odor Ash had ever smelt. Steed burst out laughing, and his solo abruptly stopped.

"Torain's tits, that is foul. I'm going up to the observation deck."

Ash covered his nose with his cloak and followed him up. The wooden roof had been burned away in some places. The sky was overcast but Ash could still see for miles in every direction. Greywatch was positioned perfectly at the upper reaches of the Mountains of Mind, with the endless Hor Desert to the east, Sharpwood to the west, and the Lake of Dyes shimmering in the north. He squinted his eyes to the northeast, over the rocky badlands of the Kingdom of Shells, the cursed ground of the long-dead ancient empire of Dregloth. Had it been a clearer day, he might have been able to see the foreboding peaks of the Towers of Dawn, and the huge castles the men of Norwald had built there to safeguard their peoples.

Ash peered out, straining to see any sign of the white demon but there was nothing. How would I even know what to look for? The Isogoge is a white demon himself —yet he can assume the shape and mannerisms of a young man. If he can do that, what's to say the demon that destroyed Exmortus couldn't assume the shape of a man? What would he even look like? Ash recalled the old trader at the crossroads and his lack of concern when Ash warned him. Could that old man Bill have been the white demon, testing us?

Ash went around the deck to each window, trying to spot the orc army. It wasn't hard. Not far to the southeast, where the sheer cliff faces of the mountains buttressed up against the flat desert, a dozen wisps of smoke and a hundred or more tiny white dots could be seen, looking like a rash against grey-brown skin. South. If they continue to move south, we could escape the notice of their scouts and outriders. Provided these primitive animals have even heard of scouts.

Gusts of wind swirled around the tower like aerial serpents, wafting the stench of the two corpses into his nostrils. The damp, cold air danced with the stench, and as Ash looked over the battlements toward the orc army he felt like a true lord. The lord I was meant to be. Growing up in Boarsky, he and his brothers had often claimed House Xavier's ties to ancient Norwald blood —even though their nobility was won with longships less than a half-century earlier, the boys could still dream. And who could say definitively that we were not? Few cities were closer to old Norwald geographically, it would not be such a stretch to assume... Standing here, I know now how my ancestors must have felt when they built this tower. I know now the troubles they faced, both before them and behind them. With Greywatch abandoned, there was no natural defense, no large garrison, nothing to prevent a marauding army from marching straight down the Golden Run River to the Empire's soft underbelly and the gold-plated cities of the west. Especially now, now that every available sword in the land was heading for civil war in the cities. Helios, Apollon, Nyth, the riverlands... If the orcs knew this, they would not have headed south, back into the desert. Unless I'm missing something.

Ash looked over his shoulder at Steed, who was pissing over the edge of the wall.

"I hope I hit that little shit Zig, or one of those corpses. Does piss fall heavier from up here? Could I make one of those fuckers explode?"

"Steed, do you see any soldiers to the west? In the Sharpwood, or near the lake?"

Steed continued his aerial assault, peering over the edge intently. "A few. Ants. Fleas. Ticks caught in my tangled ass-hair. Nothing to be worried about. I'll drown 'em for you."

Ash walked over to see Steed's ants. Miles away, he could see microscopic dots in the Sharpwood, dozens of them, appear and disappear in the trees. On the trail through the foothills, a dozen or so tiny dark shapes were heading in their direction. They must have found the Night Terrors' corpses we left behind. More shapes, even smaller, could be seen approaching from the north.

"Horses? Do those look like horses to you, Steed?"

Steed shook the last few droplets from his member and laughed. "The flies saw the smoke and came running. There are worse things than horses in that camp down south. Bigger things."

"Bigger things," Ash was surprised. "I didn't see anything but smoke and tents. What sort of 'bigger' things?"

"Hell if I know," Steed smiled. "Bigger things. Bigger than horses. Way bigger."

### Chapter 26 – Twice-Dead

"Tell me what you know."

"About this place?"

"Yes."

"There's not much to tell, really."

"Well, tell what you know."

"All of it?"

"We've got nothing but time."

"Would you two shut the fuck up?"

Ash knew next to nothing of the desolate, broken lands known as the Kingdom of Shells. The ground was an ill mixture of razor-sharp volcanic glass and toxic soil.

The made Steed uneasy. He squirmed in his seat ever since they'd lost sight of Greywatch and often stared blankly straight up into the gray, overcast sky.

"Well, there's Cinspire, and the Towers of Dawn, which are the mountains, er, the mountain range, where, well..."

"Where the men of Norwald built their castles, I know, I know," Ash said curtly. "Why didn't we ever study this area in our history lessons at the Abbey?"

"Well... Brother Gregg used a textbook that specifically never mentioned anything to the east of the Abbey. I asked him why once, and he said that barbaric lands have no history or culture worth studying. Zirev said he was an idiot and showed me another tome, one with a false cover. But I never got past the first few pages before the tome disappeared from the library."

"Disappeared?" Ash's eyes widened.

"Zirev said he didn't take it. I don't know," Simon pulled his cloak tight around his shoulders. "Maybe someone took it out and forgot to put it back?"

Wishful thinking. "Well, tell me what you learned in the first thirty pages then." Ash was desperate for any conversation to take his mind off of the cold, damp badlands around them.

Simon thought for a moment, adjusting himself in his saddle as his horse neighed softly. "From the beginning?"

"I don't care," Ash said. "From the end going backwards if you'd like."

"Backwards? Well, let's see, from where I left off, the, uh, two tribes, I mean the one tribe, the Dregloth, but they weren't called that yet, hold on, the men of Norwald left, and there was two tribes, one, just one of them here, though, and they learned the forbidden–"

"SHHHH!!" Steed halted ahead and looked into the sky. Ash followed his gaze but saw nothing other than the same dreary, grey clouds that they'd been trudging under for two days. Steed had demanded that they abruptly stop a dozen or more times a day, and it was always nothing. Ash pulled his cloak around him tighter and looked at the hoof prints Steed's horse Sex Legs —formerly the black stallion belonging to the Sharpwood Rose— had left in the dirt. The ground here was dusty and dry, with no plant life. The horses would quickly run out of food if the land didn't liven up soon. They had run across the mostly-eaten corpse of a big warhorse the day before.

"Well, what is it?" Ziggy was bringing up the rear, which she despised. Ash had insisted on it after the girl had wandered off for over four hours on another 'scouting' mission the day before. "Another sky phantom?"

"Shut up. It's come back. It's here, up there, it's coming again," Steed said grimly. "Let's move faster, toward those hills up there."

The four moved on without a word for another three hours. The hills were like the rest of the Kingdom of Shells. Rocky, barren. Devoid of water, grass, animals. Ash remembered Yount saying that nothing natural could ever grow here due to the sins of the evil men that once ruled over this land. Those men died some eight hundred years ago, however. Ash wondered if that was the real reason this land was so dead.

"Twice-dead," Yount had called it, frowning. "And thrice-damned."

"Twice-dead," Ash said aloud, breaking the icy stillness. Rocking slowly in his saddle, he could almost see the old knight again with his sandy blonde mustache and his wise, smiling eyes.

"What's that?" Simon blurted.

"Twice-dead. That's how Yount described this land. And thrice-damned, whatever that means."

"That's interesting," Simon pondered for a moment. "Twice-dead."

The four rode on for another hour before they came upon a small stream, the first body of water they had encountered in two full days. Where there's water, there's life. They decided to make camp. Steed was still uneasy and set up his tent on the other side of the stream. By then Simon and Ash had already put up their own tents and Ziggy had started searching for enough dry brush to make a fire. After their tents were set up, horses tied and saddle bags unpacked, Ash bent down over the stream for a drink. He cupped his hands in the sparkling cold water and raised them to his mouth, when he felt an intense chill dripping down his arms and an overpowering odor of rotten eggs. He let the icewater drop back into the stream, but his hands and wrists were still painful to the touch where they'd come in contact with the foul-smelling water.

"Water's rancid," Ash shouted back. "Don't drink it."

Must be a corpse upstream. Not a good sign. Ash studied the water and saw tiny, slow-moving minnows and one frog. Both the little fishes and the frog were of the same pale grey color and were moving slowly, almost lethargically, around in random patterns. Ash got down on his knees to see the frog —they'd taken rations from the Night Terrors, but nothing especially tasty— and noticed after a few seconds that the frog's skin seemed to be stretched over its nearly transparent frame. The minnows moved clumsily in the water, their scales flicking off into the current as they sluggishly swam to one side of the stream and back.

Ash got a stick and poked the frog gently. A huge chunk of the frog's back came off on the stick exposing the skeleton underneath, but the frog continued to move, making short, exhausted hops toward Ash's knees. Ash stared at it in wonder, then poked it again after it had hopped clear out of the stream. This time the frog's back leg and part of its hindquarters stuck to the stick, but the frog continued hopping in a pronounced curve, still in Ash's general direction. As it got to his knee it stopped momentarily, hissed, and tried to bite him through his pants. So pathetic. It must be starving to death. Just as we will be if we linger long in this place. Ash felt a tiny speck of chill in his knee and scooted back a few feet to see what it would do. Same as before the frog struggled toward Ash, intent on his annihilation. He took the stick and jabbed it right through the frog's head and into the soft sand beneath. The frog opened its mouth and made a wet hiss, then tried to rip free of the stick. Ash looked toward the stream and saw that the half-dozen sluggish minnows were all clustered near the bank where the frog had escaped the water, flicking their tails furiously and poking their tiny heads up onto the sand.

"Come look at this, Simon!" Ash stood up now, watching the impaled frog strain against its own body, pressing its front legs deep into the sand. By the time Simon came over a small gash had opened on the frog's remaining back.

"This little shit wants to eat me," Ash chuckled. "And so do those minnows."

He laughed and looked at Simon, whose face had gone ashy white. Simon took the stick from Ash's hand and jogged back to the tents.

"What? What is it? Don't have the stomach for biology? What do you think we've been eating all this time? Pigs and cows don't just jump up an–"

Simon came back with a small torch and jabbed it at the struggling frog. The frog croaked loudly, then hissed, then dissolved into nothing. Simon waved the torch at the minnows, which clumsily dispersed.

"Where did the frog... what is going on?"

Simon squeezed Ash by the shoulder and led him to the campfire. Ziggy was there, spinning Ash's stick over the flames. The leg and other pieces of the gray-skinned frog were still writhing and twitching on the end of it. Grinning, Ziggy tossed the stick into the fire, and the frog remnants hissed, then dissolved.

"Simon..?"

"Twice-dead, Ash. Twice-dead."

The stars came out in full force that night and the clouds cleared up to reveal more stars than Ash had seen in his life. As he lay next to the smoldering fire eating his broth he could make out the Mermaid, the Ice Crown and the Fire Crown, the Dragonship and the White Whale, all of the constellations he remembered from childhood. His father taught him more, perhaps dozens more, but after long years at the Abbey those formations and the mythologies behind them had become less and less important. Still, he felt a pang of pride when he picked out the Fire Crown, five bright stars arranged in a zig-zag pattern. That was always his favorite, the easiest one to spot in a crowded nighttime sky. A few of the stars rapidly blinked in and out. His father had said something about that as well, but he couldn't remember exactly what. Was it that the stars were looking back at you? I can't recall.

"Did you see that? Did you guys see that?" Steed bolted up, pointing at the stars. "Right there, up there. A black shadow."

"That's just the stars looking back at you," Ash laughed. "Or something like that."

Steed's face was dour. "I believe it. It was looking back at me. I could feel it, see it." Steed laid back down. "We're not alone here."

"We haven't seen a human or any other animal, except for that crazy frog a few hours ago," Ash chuckled. "There's nothing out here. Literally, nothing whatsoever." Another batch of stars blinked, this time over that one peculiar constellation Ash remembered was either a queen or a princess.

"There! Another one!" Steed jumped to his feet. "You saw it, you were staring straight at it!"

"Would you shut up?" Ziggy groaned. "I can't wait to get out of these badlands, if only so you would shut the hell up."

Ash quietly looked to where the stars had winked in and out but they were still there, unmoving. He thought back to the day in the Abbey observatory when Zirev had shown him the demon star, and shivered. There was very little wind in these parts, but the cold sunk deep into your bones all the same.

Steed went into his tent across the stream and returned with his maul and a chain shirt and saw the other three lying around slurping their soup.

"What the fuck is wrong with you crapshits? There's something out there! Up there!"

Steed pointed at the top of a small ridge near Ziggy's tent. There was nothing there save Steed's own shadow against the campfire, gesturing wildly. Steed slipped the chain shirt over his chest, braced his feet into the ground and readied his maul. He nodded toward the ridge once again. "There."

Suddenly, Ash saw it. The shadow behind the tent was gesturing wildly, throwing its chest out and slapping its biceps. Yet Steed is barely breathing. Ash jumped up and grabbed his scabbard, unsheathed his sword and stood back-to-back with Steed, peering around the camp. His own shadow did the same, alongside Steed's rogue darkness. Simon and Ziggy just stared at the two of them with perplexed, amused faces.

Ash turned to the ridge wall. His shadow did the same. Then it slowly, deliberately lifted its sword... and slashed at Steed's shadow. A thin red line appeared on Steed's right forearm. The shadow made another slash. Another red line appeared across his thigh. Steed moved away from Ash but his shadow did not. Ash's shadow sliced across its belly. Ash stared at Steed, who looked down at his stomach. A red dot blossomed on his shirt. Then another, then three more.

Before that moment Ash had never seen Steed show fear. The big man's eyes were wide and red as he met Ash's gaze. He closed them tightly, then ran with frightening speed toward the ridge wall behind the tent. With a thunderous roar Steed charged the wall and smashed a huge hole in the dirt. His own shadow, now as large as he was, held its ground, then grabbed his sides and appeared to... laugh. Ash's shadow did the same before an arrow lodged into the wall where its head was. The shadow shook its head from side to side, then swung its sword at the small, thin shadow that appeared near him. Ziggy cried out in pain as a dark red line manifested on her left bicep.

"What the fuck do we do?!" Steed bellowed.

"I don't fucking know!" Ash screamed as he felt a large pain in the back of his neck. Steed's shadow had clobbered his own with the maul.

"Put our weapons away! They can't hurt us without our weapons!" Ziggy tossed her bow to the ground ten feet away. Her shadow did not.

"Simon!" Steed shrieked as a small red blotch appeared on his shoulder under his intact mail shirt. "Do something!"

Simon rummaged in his tent and emerged with his pack. He ran to the campfire and pulled out a blanket. With a few deft moves, the fire was reduced to smoldering embers and the four were once again in complete darkness save for the starlight. A dead silence hung over the camp.

After a long moment, Ash turned to Steed. "Anything?"

"No. You?"

"Nothing. Zig?"

"Nope. It's very cold, though."

Ziggy was right. Where they were standing near the ridge wall, the temperature was getting significantly colder. Of course the fire is out, but still...

"How's your cuts?"

Steed sighed heavily. "Not deep. Good thing you can't hit shit with a sword."

"My bleeding's stopped," piped in Ziggy, who was on her hands and knees searching for her bow in the dark.

"I think I'll be fine, too, but..." Ash felt the back of his neck. It was sore, but not as life-threatening as it had felt just minutes before. He started to walk back to Simon when he felt something thud against the top of his head.

"Ouch," said Steed. "Knock it off."

"I just got hit on the top of my head."

"And I'm bleeding from mine."

Ash looked up at the stars. Many of them were blinking on and off now, and he felt something sharp scrape across his face.

"I knew it! They're up there! In the air!" Steed swung his maul wildly through the dark sky above him. "I told you assholes!"

Ash could see them now. Black shadows flew across the sea of stars, blotting them out and swooping down to deliver more attacks. One of them flew ten feet over Steed's outstretched maul, then grew larger and larger until...

"OWW!!" A sharp talon flicked across Ash's neck and the hairs on his head stood straight up. "Simon! They're diving down on us!"

Simon was fiddling with his case, trying to find some vial or potion but failing in the dark. "I, I, I don't know aaAAaggh!" Ash could see Simon's dark figure clutching the back of his head. A tiny voice in the wind said something angrily, but Ash could not make it out.

"The shadows, they're cursing us!" Ash heard the distant voice again, slightly higher-pitched than before but again full of anger. "Simon, they're going to kill us!" He felt a hard slap against his shoulder blade that nearly knocked him to his knees. "What do we do?"

"Tell them to fuck the fuck off!" Steed bellowed, his neck and arms covered in thin red cuts. Ash heard the voice again but this time it sounded like distant barking, a staccato woof-woof-woof that sent shivers down his limbs. The demon whispers. The dark creatures from the Beastwood... they're here.

Ash looked around for any sign of the demon star, whipping his sword around him helplessly. He swung his sword over his head and looked up. The shadows were now moving in a single direction. North. Ash watched as they curved around only to blink in and out and head back north across the stream. The horses had bolted out into the night. The barking sound was not so distant now, and coming from the south. Even the shadows fear the beasts.

"They're coming from the south, now, lads!" Ash bellowed, bracing his feet against the cold stony ground. "Let's kill as many of these fuckers as we can, and send them back to hell!" His baritone voice boomed across the camp and for that lone moment Ash felt like a man. Steed ran to his side with his maul and Ziggy bent low, her longbow drawn taut. Simon continued to fuss with his case, making an annoying jumble of clinks. The other three braced themselves in total silence, staring towards the southern night sky.

Within minutes, a small light appeared. A torch light. Ash exhaled deeply. Better a torch than a star. He lifted his blade high, his eyes tearing up as he stared at the tiny orange light bob up and down in the black night. They heard hoof steps, and two mounted shadows emerged from the darkness.

Ash lowered his sword. Atop two tan geldings were a pair of black-haired, half-naked women clad in furs, strings of bone and little else. The two looked so similar —deep brown eyes, a mass of curly black hair cascading down past their rounded shoulders, the same honey-brown skin— that they might have been twins. The two trotted right up to the men and turned their horses to face each other. Ash found his heart racing and his groin tingling when he spotted their bare legs and feet, thick and voluptuous, pressed up against the sides of their horses.

The two women gave each other a knowing glance, then focused back on the four, who had lowered their weapons and were simply staring. One of the women laughed with her eyes, then parted her ample red lips in a smile. Ash was transfixed, unable to move, his mouth wide open.

"You warriors do not belong here. You will follow us to safety." Her lips mouthed words slow and silent, and Ash's eyelids felt heavy. He closed his eyes and drifted into sweet, delicious sleep.

### Chapter 27 – Third Blood

The dung-covered heel of a boot ground deep into Ash's gaping mouth. Another sharp pain in his ribs snapped him out of his sleep at once. He had been enjoying an extremely pleasurable dream, and had not wanted it to end.

He tried to focus on the large figures standing above him, but the sun flowing through the door-flaps behind them was too bright. He held up his hand to shield the sunlight and slowly realized that four huge, well-armed and disproportionately muscled ogres were standing over him, grunting in a language that he could not understand.

Another swift kick to the ribs and Ash suddenly tasted the foul stench of hay and dung in his mouth. He started up in a flash. Orcs. He was clad in his smallclothes, with no weapons or armor. He was in a messy, chaotic tent full of burnt-out candles, furs along the walls and with pots, jars and other curios covering the floor. Outside, he heard the sounds of metal scraping against stone, deep bass voices yelling, guttural grunting and the bellowing of some massive oxen.

The sounds of an army.

Shit.

The four orcs stood there staring at him until one thrust some clothes and boots into Ash's chest. My own clothes. My lucky day. The four watched him carefully as he dressed, then when he finished he followed them out into the bright sunlight.

Ash had never seen the insides of an army encampment before, but it was immediately clear that this one was the most chaotic the world had ever known. Orcs were everywhere, some clad in heavy plate mail, others wearing absolutely nothing. Women and children outnumbered the males, assuming that those orcs with slightly larger breasts and slightly smaller builds were females. Livestock roamed the camp freely and poultry scattered under every footstep. Rats the size of small dogs scurried about without fear, and nearby huge oxen groaned. Many of the orcs towered over their man-sized brethren, sometimes eight, nine, or even ten foot tall, armed with tree trunks, massive morningstars and mauls three times the size of Steed's.

How did I get here? Where is everybody else? Did those two women... Ash couldn't remember anything after the women had driven the shadows away. Everything since had seemed a dream. Dreams of travel, dreams of warfare, and some dreams of an uncomfortably erotic nature. He had always been attracted to tall, slender, fair-haired and fair-skinned maidens like the ones in the tales of knights and heroes that he had read in the Abbey. Like Galena, had she grown, or like Lara, the Quiet Maiden of Fishstink. He had always told himself that this was so.

But he had never had that physical reaction to the female form in a dream before. Not once. Just knowing that these four orcs saw me naked, and not just naked but...

He looked at his captors. Do they feel shame, too? Somehow, I doubt it. They take what they will, kill who they want, and never feel guilty. Like Steed. Just a step up from the beasts.

The orcs led him to a clearing where a large crowd of the ugly brutes had formed a circle. Steed, Ziggy and Simon were all there as well. Thank god. At least we'll all die together. As brothers. Fear was written in solid black ink across Simon's eyes, but the others' faces were covered in childlike, wide-eyed amusement. Directly across the clearing, a particularly ugly orc sat on a raised wooden chair and was flanked by two massive warriors, each wielding an eight-foot blade of crudely serrated steel. The rest of the crowd was a chaotic mess of hideous faces, naked violence and odors that would curdle glass.

"I'm so glad to see you guys," Ash said, meaning every word.

"I hate this place," Simon whimpered. "I think we're about to die."

"Ah, shut your slurphole," laughed Steed. "These orcs aren't so bad as they look."

With a gesture the seated orc silenced the crowd. The orc stood up, his dark red breastplate gleaming in the noonday sun. He had deep gouges and scars all across his arms and neck.

"Prisoners," the orc started in a harsh, unmistakably commanding tone, "My band here is a simple people, trying our best to survive in a world that seeks to destroy us. We have no quarrel with the warriors among you, but we have evidence that one of you is our sworn enemy." The orc glared toward Simon, who was shivering with fear. "A wizard."

The orc leader spat on the ground and shook his head, then motioned to someone behind him with a firm gesture. Another orc armored in heavy plate came forward with Simon's case.

"The owner of this case is a vile creature that flaunts the Earth Mother and the Sky Father, and shall be destroyed, burnt, and have his ashes obliterated. Orlac!"

Behind him a ten-foot tall behemoth emerged carrying a colossal war hammer. It's skull was grossly misshapen on one side and its mouth a disordered anarchy of tooth, fang, purple gums and tongue. With its coat of light gray hair and misshapen body it looked like a massive boulder come to life. It walked up to Simon's case, lifted its gargantuan stone hammer, and dropped it with a resounding slam. Shattered vials, liquids and wooden splinters shot off in all directions. Simon gasped, clutching Ash's elbow with a pincer-like grip.

The giant moved back behind the orc leader, who walked over to the pile of crushed glass, picked up an intact glass vial and held it between his fingers. "We are not cowards who hide behind paid executioners here. Whichever one of you four is the offending party will get to fight for your life against my chosen champion. The mage will now step forward and meet his doom."

Ash felt Simon's hand let go, and he turned to look at his friend. The color had drained from his face and he was biting through his lip. He is nothing more than a frightened boy, full of regret for his insane curiosity. Ash glanced at Steed and Ziggy, who were no longer smiling. They care for him, too. They did not listen to me when I said No to Exmortus. When I said No to the squid-god's dark rites in the cave. I let them lead us this far. Ash stepped into center of the clearing. But now it is time for me to do what I can for them.

The orc leader looked surprised. "You? The tall one?"

"Yes. That's my case you just smashed."

The orc held up the unmarked vial of clear liquid. "Then what does this infernal potion do, wizard?"

Ash lowered his voice and stared directly into the orc's black eyes. "It cures orcs of the burden of life. I call it Vengeance Water. If you don't believe me, drink it right now."

The orc looked confused, glanced at Simon, then at Ash. He pried open his fang-lined mouth and smiled. "So be it. Bring this wizard's armor and weapons, now. And prepare the Nard."

The orc leader returned to his seat and within a few minutes a trio of hulking ogres were helping Ash into his armor. They have surprisingly deft hands. Ash double-checked his straps, buckles and layers, patted his steel shield and unsheathed his sword to study its edge. It seems to have been sharpened recently.

To the side of the orc leader's wooden chair two massive eight-foot brutes were clearing a path through the crowd. Ash padded the dirt below with his boots, then turned to look at his brothers for the last time. That warhammer is as big as I am, and probably twice as heavy. One solid blow and I'm dead. He opened and closed his sword hand over the fine leather on the shark's head hilt of his blade. If this beast's thick hide is as tough as its plate metal, this could be over quickly. Too quickly. For a moment, Ash remembered the way he sprinted to the Red Wall, the joy and freedom and purpose he felt then, the relief when it seemed to be all over. I do not regret this. I do not regret this. Simon, live a long and prosperous life, far away from here. Become the greatest scholar Loross has ever seen. Become an adviser to a great lord, one who will sift through the chaos of the Empire's destruction, and bring peace and order to a land red with blood. Become a father, a proud father of many sons. He closed his eyes tightly as a wave of emotion swept up his neck, through his jaw and up against the backs of his eyes. Whatever you do, Simon, don't die. Just don't die to-day.

A loud cry came from the assembled crowd, and Ash opened his eyes. Fifteen feet in front of him stood a small, thin orc, its ribs jutting out from its bright orange, form-fitting silk shirt. The orc's face was gaunt and emaciated, covered entirely in white powder save for the mouth, which was clumsily colored with red dye, and the eyes and cheeks, which were garishly decorated in sky-blue paint. The orc wore no armor save for metal arm greaves and wielded nothing more than a short, razor-thin blade that looked more like a large needle than a sword. The orc was standing jauntily to one side, favoring his left hip.

Are these monsters serious? Ash looked toward the seated orc but the look of amusement was gone from its face. The crowd was chanting "Nard! Nard! Nard!," hooting and hollering and throwing rotten fruit at the ground around Ash. With another gesture the orc leader silenced the crowd.

"Wizard, you will defend your honor here against my champion, The Nard. The winner will be he who draws third blood. If first or second blood should prove fatal, that will also end this contest. Do you have any last words, mage?" The orc emphasized that last word as if it were the most revolting name for vermin imaginable.

"If I win, I demand that we be set free. If I lose, the others must be allowed to leave freely."

The orc leader looked at him for a moment, then proclaimed loudly, "Of course. No one is here against their own will. And if you win, you are free to go whenever you please. Suboq has spoken!"

Two huge bass drums exploded behind him, shaking the earth beneath his feet. The crowd let up a thunderous roar. The thin, painted orc stood like a stone, grinning slightly out of one side of its mouth at Ash. Ash raised his shield between them and readied his sword, waiting.

Remember your training in the yard. Remember what Yount said: study your enemy. Act, then react. Hold the middle ground, and let your enemy tire himself out trying to find your weakness. But always, always, always, overestimate your opponent's ability in a fight, and overestimate it ten times in a battle to the death. Ash slowly approached the painted orc, who did not move an inch nor raise his needle-like sword. As Ash crept closer the crowd grew quieter. This cannot be an ordinary orc. They could have sent the giant with the boulder-hammer against me, but they chose him. I must know why. Ash swung at the orc, purposefully cutting it short a foot and a half to push him back. The painted orc did not budge an inch. He's studying me as well. Time to play. Ash took a real swing straight for the creature's neck but as steel flew to meet flesh the powdered-white orc bent backward and Ash felt a sharp pain on the outer edge of his knee. He hopped back on the other foot and looked down. First blood. The crowd erupted in approval. A half-eaten apple core pelted Ash on the side of his face.

He's fast. He's not armored and his sword is built for speed. Built for drawing blood, but not for dealing death. The thought gave him courage. I may lose, yet still survive. Ash blinked his eyes repeatedly, then steeled them wide open, raising his shield and charging the orc at full-speed. The orc stood his ground —he had not, in fact, moved either of his feet so much as an inch since Ash first saw him— and as Ash's sword neared his exposed belly the orc contorted his body into a grotesque shape, grabbed Ash's sword arm at the elbow with his free arm and spun them both around in a tight circle. Ash felt his balance being thrown off, then felt his own shield smash him in the face as the ground shot up to meet him. The painted orc danced away, prancing and skipping in front of the hysterical mob.

Ash's lip was bleeding and beginning to swell, and then he felt something tickle the back of his neck. He put his hand behind his head and when he pulled his glove back it was covered in blood. Second blood. An intense pain was pulsing through his spine now, as the puncture wound just below his skull began to take effect. His knee was starting to stiffen, and he suddenly found it difficult to walk in a straight line.

The painted orc was still leaping around in front of the crowd, dragging his left-side limp directly in front of Steed, Simon and Ziggy. Ziggy was watching the Nard and smiling.

Smiling!

Simon was shaking nervously, but Steed stared straight at Ash, ignoring the prancing jester in front of him. His eyes darted to the orc and back, then rapidly up-and-down, up-and-down. He's telling me something. Ash felt a buzzing in his skull. The second blow had been expertly placed for maximum nonlethal effect. This dancing killer is toying with me. He knows my weak spots better than I know myself.

Third blood will kill me.

Ash looked at Steed, who stared back at him. What would Steed do? Whatever else he may be, he's an instinctual killer who uses every advantage he has...

Ash's back began to stiffen up, his armor becoming ill-fitting and uncomfortable. I'm taller than he is by a foot. I've got longer reach. I'm stronger physically. The painted orc ceased his crowd-pleasing and turned his attention back to Ash. I'm armored across most of my body. My sword is stronger. My shield protects me. Ash swung his sword through the empty air as if to prepare for a killing blow. But my biggest advantage is my opponent. He thinks I'm a clumsy oaf with a bad knee and a tight back. Ash began to heavily favor his other knee, hoping to draw more attention to it. He rubbed his lower back with his sword hand, even though it was his upper back that was in pain. I may not kill him, but I can win this fight. He clenched his sword hand tightly around the hilt of his blade, then relaxed his grip and exhaled.

Ash scowled at the orc, trying to make his face flush with anger. He should be the one exhausted, he's just spent two minutes dancing and jumping like a freak. Ash slowly approached, limping heavily. The painted orc stood his ground as before, a crooked grin escaping from one side of his mouth. When he got to within eight feet of the orc, Ash stooped down to pick up a rotten apple with the fingers of his sword hand and in a single motion whipped it at the orc's face. The thin orc, surprised, ducked early and Ash was on him as his head bobbed back up. The two tumbled to the ground, Ash pressing the full weight of his body and his armor against the orc and pinning their sword hands between them. The orc drew his double-jointed legs around Ash's torso and tried to pry him to one side but Ash kneed him in his exposed groin then thrust the lip of his steel shield square in the orc's jaw. The orc's eyes glazed for an instant and Ash freed his other hand and brought his mailed fist into his rival's nose with a sickening crunch. The orc's face spasmed as a stream of blood shot out of his nostrils. Ash quickly leapt backwards into the dirt, but the orc did not get up to take a rapid swipe. Ash stumbled to his feet in front of the quieted crowd, then smiled at the stream of dark red blood covering the painted orc's nose, mouth and chin. The Nard kicked off Ash's shield from his body in disgust, then turned away from the crowd to wipe the blood off his face.

"Third Blood!" cried the orc leader behind him, his deep bass voice cutting over the stunned silence of the crowd. "Guards, take him to the Mithras. They'll know what to do with him."

### Chapter 28 – Choices, Choices

The tent was dark inside, similar in appearance to the tent he had woken up in earlier that morning. It was located a fair distance from the army's camp, some two hundred or more yards up a lonely slope on the ashy grey mountainside. The guards shoved him in and closed the flap behind him.

The bright noonday sun combined with the wound to his neck dizzied him for a moment. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the only source of light in the tent was from a small opening near the top. A black shape brushed past him, then another in the opposite direction. What is this sorcery?

"Show yourselves, cowards, and let's be done with this." Of course the orcs were going to kill me anyway. The beasts have no honor, no discipline. Only brute strength. And stupidity in abundance.

Ash drew his sword and raised his shield but a small, soft hand brushed his cheek, its delicate fingers tracing a line down his jaw and around his neck to where the Nard had injured him. Ash froze in place as he felt something soft and wet dab lightly at his wound.

"Please, sir, have a seat," a woman's voice said. I have heard that voice before, in my dreams.

One lamp was lit, then another, as a pair of hands gently led his shoulders down into a cushioned chair. Ash felt a strange buzzing sensation on the back of his neck as the light filtered through the tent. One by one the lamps revealed a lavish living space, with fringed pillows scattered freely across the carpeted floor, bowls of ripe fresh fruit and hundreds of tiny totems of headless female figurines sporting huge hips and tiny breasts.

Two women moved about the tent, sporting huge hips and large, plump breasts. The two had massive manes of hair in thousands of tiny black ringlets that overflowed their rounded shoulders. They had dark brown eyes and honey-brown skin, their full lips were as red as dark wine and they were wearing even less than when he had seen them in the broken lands.

"You?" Ash tried to shout, betrayed by a crack in his voice.

"Yes, sir. We heard you had quite a battle. Suboq sends us warriors in need of... healing," one of the women said, smiling at him with her eyes.

"I'll be fine," Ash said curtly. I need to get out of here. These witches cannot be trusted.

"You will be fine, sweetie," the other one said as she put her bare foot down on the chair near his groin. "First, let me help you with this." She bent over him and started removing his mail shirt, her breasts lightly grazing his cheek and nose. Her toes were only just barely touching his groin, which had started tingling. Already? This is not going well.

The other woman bent down between his legs and started removing his leg greaves and pants. "Your knee will need some attending too, sir," she said, the fullness of her ample bosom and thighs fully visible in the dim lamplight.

Ash stirred nervously and adjusted himself in his chair so as to avoid their unwelcome contact. I must be strong. Think of castle maps. Of historic battles. The yearning in his loins grew even more intense. This is not working. Clearstone Keep. Glassbeard. Revenge. The white demon. Lara's face. The dead frog. Lara's eyes. Cody's throat. Cody's thick legs. Thick, voluptuous legs. Blood, spurting from ample breasts, giant brown nipples, the Empress, these Empresses, please, Torain, don't let me falter, I am stronger than this...

Before he realized what was happening he had been stripped naked and the two women were gently caressing his hairy chest and broad shoulders with their delicate fingers. "Only one of us may heal you at a time," one of them purred lazily, eyeing him with a longing, pregnant gaze. "You must choose."

"No," Ash said weakly. "Give me my clothes, I'm leaving. I'm free to go."

"You will not choose one of us?" the other said, parting her plump lips in a pouting smile.

"No."

The two gave each other a fierce, knowing look. "Then we will choose for you."

They tenderly pushed Ash down into his cushioned chair and sauntered to opposite sides of the tent, dropping the tiny amount of clothing they had onto the rich carpet as they walked. Ash felt a lump in his throat as he stared at their wide hips and voluptuous derrieres swinging from side to side. The two women turned to face each other, then locked eyes as they slowly crouched down onto their hands and knees. The twins circled, crawling along the ground on all fours, staring down the other, both mouthing silent curses at her enemy. Ash wanted to look away but the sight froze him to his chair, his member the only part of his entire body that could move.

The two women circled, each insulting the other with dismissive glances and angry whispers, until the agreed-upon moment arrived. The women lunged at each other. Their naked bodies collided together with a soft, hungry slap, and each woman began to strain against her rival. The two women's breasts pressed together, their strong thighs grinding into the other's in a sensual struggle for physical superiority. Muscles rippled across their glistening backs as their arms strained against each other, their fingers locked together, their hips gyrating from one side to the other to seize the most minute advantage. Ash could barely hear their heavy breathing over his own thundering heartbeat.

The two women pressed together on their knees for some time, sweat dripping from their faces, their thick red lips nearly kissing as they pressed their foreheads together and stared daggers into the other's eyes. In a breath the two had tumbled to the floor, rolling around amidst the luxurious cushions and pillows. Their fingers released and they began to tightly hug each other, their erect nipples thrusting deep into their rival's soft breasts. The two women's legs entwined like vines, their thighs locked and their bare feet rubbed against bare feet as their voluptuous bodies melted into a tangled knot of female flesh. Their heavy breathing was spiced first by small grunts, then quiet yelps as they lightly bit each other's necks.

The sweet scent of girls grappling filled the tent, and every cell in Ash's body was soon overflowing in savage, insatiable lust.

Ash could not tell where one woman ended and the other began. Their thick masses of hair glistened in the dim light as the two bodies coiled around each other in a carnal mass of skin and sweat. Both women were soon grunting and panting loudly, bucking their hips against each other as their arms squeezed harder and harder, inner thigh squeezing against inner thigh. Their sexes came together, battled, then retreated, causing both women to shudder and moan before renewing the attack with ferocious intensity.

Ash nursed his erection with one hand and felt his heart racing with the other. They're enjoying this. They've done this before. The thought made him even harder, his member swelling beyond anything he had ever thought possible.

Suddenly both twins released their tight bearhugs and the lavish carpets were soon covered in a sweaty, chaotic tangle of two bodies writhing on the floor. One woman wrapped her fleshy thighs around her rival's waist and the other replied by playfully biting an exposed buttock. The first one grabbed a handful of disheveled hair and roughly shoved her full breast into the other's mouth, but not before the second had moved her dainty fingers into the other's sex and started rubbing sensually. The two fought back-and-forth for a short breath of eternity, matching each other in an erotic dance of perfect symmetry.

The two women struggled against each other on the ground, moaning louder and louder as they wrestled, neither twin getting the best of her rival and neither one giving in. Finally Ash could not contain it any longer and released. At that same moment one of the women rolled on top of the other and pinned her exhausted foe to the ground, the full weight of her body pressed against her panting adversary. The two women stopped their fight at once, each breathing heavily, until the victor lazily straddled her conquest's glistening chest with her amply-curved derriere. Out of breath herself, she turned toward Ash and smiled an evil grin.

"You're next."

Two hours later Ash emerged from the tent drenched with sweat and parched to the bone. He left the twin sisters lying on the floor, sleeping off their fourth and final bout, though which of the twins had 'won' each of their fights —and the exhausting, insanely erotic episodes that resulted— he could not say. Ash had always pictured this moment, his long-awaited passage into manhood, quite differently. His hips felt as if they had been ground to fine powder and his member was rubbed red-raw, but the wounds in his neck and knee had completely disappeared. He put on his clothes, collected his weapons and armor and quietly stepped outside.

His two orc guards were waiting a few yards away. As he approached, they stood to attention. "Suboq will see you now."

"Suboq said I was free to go as I please if I won the fight." Although, it would be nice to stay in that tent for a few more days... if it doesn't kill me first. A most gruesome and enjoyable form of assassination, those two. Another hour and I might never walk again.

"That's right. He still want to see you, to give you something before you leave," one orc snarled.

Ash eyed him curiously. What was all that business in the tent about, then, if they just plan on killing me now? Is this an orc's idea of a cruel joke? He was not fully dressed, but grudgingly decided to accompany them to the leader's tent.

Inside the command tent were the familiar trappings of any central command post: neatly-ordered piles of weapons and water, soldiers going to and fro and a weary-looking general gazing at large maps of the region. As he approached Suboq, several of the orc soldiers eyed him with cold, guarded faces.

"Ah, my friend. Wizard. Do sit down. I trust the Mithras healed your wounds?"

Is he serious? The orc's face was stern but thoughtful, without a hint of a smile. "Yes, they did. Thank you," Ash said, glancing sideways at the other orc soldiers standing nearby. "It was amazing."

"Amazing?" Suboq looked confused. "As you wish. You have done well today. What is your name?"

"Wizard."

Suboq laughed. "I'm not going to call you that again, you understand," the orc said as he waved his hand at the other soldiers. "Leave us." Once the tent was empty, Suboq continued, "I know what you did for your friend."

Ash gulped. What did they do with Simon? "No, no, you can't, he's not–"

"Don't worry about him. I have plans for you all... if you would accept my proposal. What is your real name?"

"Ash."

"Ash. Well, Ash, I see you are a resourceful warrior. But as you know, I have plenty of those." He waved his scarred hand towards the opening, then continued. "But what I want, none of my warriors, brave and strong as they are, can give me."

"I thought I was free to go."

"You are. Everyone in this army is free to come and go as they please. That is my vow... one of my vows. The warriors you saw today, each one of them was once a slave, a creature bred to die in war, or both. Each and every one of them."

Ash fidgeted in his seat but said nothing. The holy scriptures of Torain specifically condemn slavery in all its forms.

"I too was once a slave, just like my father, and his father. Orcs were created by the wicked mages of Sheaim thousands of years ago for slavery. Forced labor, mining, farming, ranching, and... most brutally, as the fodder in their demonic armies."

Ash perked up. He might know something useful about the white demon. "So what, exactly, does this have to do with me? I own no slaves, and before today, I had never met an orc."

"That's too bad for you," Suboq laughed. "But I need you to help my people get revenge. What I saw from you today was good. Self-sacrifice, discipline and strength. But you are also human, and think like a human, on your feet. And that is what I need from you. Although we have orcs, giants, and other great warriors, the task I need the most must be done by someone who is not an orc."

"That's one of my best qualities."

"It is," Suboq said without a hint of smile on his face. "For over two decades, since I was left to die in the desert by my masters, I have vowed not only to survive, but to get revenge on those who would enslave my people. The nation of Sheaim is long gone, but two of their cities survive and thrive to this day. Magedoom in the north, and Blackspire, to the south, HERE." The orc stabbed a dagger into the map in front of Ash, directly onto the center of Blackspire. Ash saw that it was relatively close, assuming this was the same orc army he had seen from Greywatch.

"That is where I will strike. My warriors are hungry for conquest. The mages in Blackspire have enslaved orcs in their deep, dark mines at Raulag for over a thousand years. We are beaten, starved, tortured. Our young are ripped from their mothers at birth to destroy our families. They pit us against each other in brutal fights to the death, and sacrifice the victor to their infernal gods." Suboq paused for a moment, his eyes lost in thought. "They think that because they created us, that we are objects. Less than cattle."

"Created you?" Ash had to admit that he did not know anything about the orc life cycle. Dale once suggested that they spawn in pods, like peas. Yount had called him a fool.

"When the dark artisans of the Dregloth grew in power, the mages of the Sheaim grew jealous. They summoned mighty demons, straight from hell, and trapped them in their runed prisons until they obeyed. But demons are impossible to control, so they tried other experiments. Terrible experiments, spanning decades of forbidden research, until... they infused a man with a demon's blood. They had created an Orc: stronger and fiercer than a man, but lacking the wild willpower of the demons. They created thousands of us, tens of thousands, to fill their mines and armies. Finally the two empires of Dregloth and Sheaim went to war, dead against demon. We were only there to take all the casualties, to be in the front lines against the army of the dead, the infamous Legion of Bone."

"I've heard of that," Ash blurted, although once he did he felt stupid for interrupting.

Suboq stared quizzically at him for a moment, then continued. "The destruction was beyond description. The old castles the first men had built were destroyed, mountains flattened. The survivors returned home, having destroyed everything and solved nothing. It was not long before the demons rebelled against their weakened torturers in the mage cities of the Sheaim. Once we saw the demons revolt, we did the same. This was no clean war. The battle raged in every house, in the tops of crumbling towers, deep in the vaults and mines at the center of the earth. Orc, human, demon, we all exterminated ourselves. Out of the carnage, just two Sheaim cities survived, neither strong enough to do more than man its own city walls. Blackspire, however, brutally put down their orc rebellion, and enslaved us to work in the mines of Raulag, as they do to this day."

"So you want me to free your brothers in the mines?"

"No, I can do that myself. The orcs in Raulag already agreed to heed my call. Also, the orcs enslaved within the city gates of Blackspire. Each one has hidden a stash of weapons from their masters, ready to rise up at the sound of my warhorn outside their walls."

"Well, sounds like you don't need us, then." This was not Ash's war to fight, and he was getting impatient. He wanted to get this mission to Exmortus over with as quickly as possible. Of course, a few more days in that tent won't make much of a difference...

"I do, Ash. There is one tower, the central mage tower in Blackspire, that has powerful wards mixed into the masonry in the walls. No orc can enter this tower. Not even my strongest warriors. But I need to. My father, my own father, is imprisoned deep in Blackspire's dungeon. They perform their dark rites on him every night, keeping him alive so that they might torture him another day. He led a slave rebellion long ago. There is no worse crime in Blackspire than that."

Ash was beginning to understand, but still had no intention of putting himself at risk. "So you want me –you want us– to go in there and rescue your father?"

"Yes. Once that is done, the mage towers will fall, and you will be rewarded."

Ash thought about Greywatch. "Did you sack Greywatch over a week ago?"

"Yes," Suboq said thoughtfully. "But it did not burn. The grey tower was built by warriors, not wizards. I have sworn to pull down one mage tower for every lash of the whip I suffered in the mines of Raulag."

Ash remembered the clusters of towers in Helios and Bonewits. "And how many is that?"

The orc pulled off his shirt and exposed his back to Ash. Huge strips of skin had been carved away, and in some places the orc's ribcage seemed almost to jut out of his grey skin. Well over forty mage towers need to fall to sate this orc's vengeance.

"That is my vow. It's not yours, I know, so I am prepared to help you on your mission."

"Mission?" Ash asked, playing dumb. The last thing he needed was orcs following him to Exmortus.

"Yes, Ash. The Mithras, they know things. They informed me about your dreams, about the white demon, the burning of the Abbey. You must know by now that the dark mages of Blackspire are behind this, no?"

Ash had not known that at all. "No, I had no idea." Those twins read my mind? Was that why he sent me to their tent before coming here?

"Yes, they summoned your white demon, and destroyed those you loved. You will find the evidence you need when you return to the Abbey. If you help me, I will provide you with the power to safely pass through the Kingdom of Shells."

"We can do that ourselves," Ash said bluntly.

"You tried to hit a shadow with an arrow. You know nothing, Ash."

"That wasn't me." How did he know about that?

"I know much more than you think. I have traveled across the Hor Desert, to Maru-Qat and beyond, through the Demon Wastes, and, yes, I have walked over every inch of the Kingdom of Shells. I have collected this army from the dregs and forgotten corners of the earth, for this one purpose. I know what moves the universe, and why nature demands that all mages must die. You rescue my father and I will make sure that no orc, ever, anywhere, will ever harm you. I think you will be a great lord someday, Ash. But first you must take this simple step. You will be also rewarded in other ways, I promise you."

Ash pondered this for a moment before answering. "What I will be one day is of no concern to you. But I'll take this up with my friends. Whatever they decide, we'll do. But I don't think you'll be seeing much more of us after to-day."

"A wise orc trusts his friends' wisdom more than his own. Go, talk to your friends. You will find them in the green honor tent, near the site of your victory this morning. Tell them of my proposal, and when you decide, come back to me here. I will be waiting."

Ash nodded. "Then I'm free to go?"

"Yes."

"Very well," said Ash. As he opened the flaps of the command tent, he paused, then turned around. "Did you send the twins to follow us north?"

"Yes."

"And to bring us back here?"

"Yes."

"Good luck rescuing your fucking father."

### Chapter 29 – Blood of the Orcs

The walls of Blackspire were black, gnarled monstrosities encasing a tight cluster of twisted towers. Chief among them, the octagonal central tower dominated the rest of the city, a massive column of polished black volcanic glass that thrust violently into the sky. The walls ranged from between fifty to eighty feet in height, deformed and distorted to resemble glossy black waves and marked by hundred-foot towers sculpted in the shapes of colossal demons. Each demon-tower was remarkably different from the others. Some were of naked, emaciated long-limbed ghouls, while others looked like lean, armored guards with horrifying faces. Some towers were in the shapely form of seductive succubi, giving any approaching army a beckoning come-hither look that put Ash's nerves on edge. According to Tsarc, legend had it that the entire city was built from a solid piece of volcanic glass by an army of enslaved demons, the outer towers once powerful fiends in their own right that were turned to glass by the treacherous magic of the Sheaim mages.

Ash was beginning to grow fond of the old orc. Tsarc was not like the others. He was considerably older, possibly even in his mid-40s, an unheard-of age for an orc. Tsarc's shock of white hair, his world-weary eyes and his unusual ability to speak several different languages all made him easy for Ash to befriend. Suboq looked to Tsarc as his right-hand lieutenant and trusted him with the more important tasks that needed to get done quickly, quietly and efficiently. In the three weeks since their small party had left the main host behind at Raulag, Ash had spent more time with Tsarc than he had with his own species.

If I am to ever become a great lord, I must find my own Tsarc. Ash was not sure if he would find it among his three human friends, all of whom had spent the last month finding new ways to infuriate him. Steed had taken an immediate liking to their orc captors, drinking, boasting and brawling with them as if he was half-orc himself. Until they had left the main army Steed had been involved in a fistfight every single night —thankfully no steel had been drawn. The orcs often fought amongst themselves, frequently ending only when daggers, handaxes or larger weapons left their sheaths. Ash was horrified to find out that Suboq never punished the murderers. When he had asked Tsarc about it later, the old orc had laughed and said that Suboq commands an army of free orcs, not slaves. Their lack of discipline will doom them. No historical tome ever recorded a successful orc horde, and Ash was starting to think he understood why.

Ziggy was even worse. Before the blood on Ash's neck had even dried, Ziggy had sought out the Nard in his personal tent and struck up a friendship with him. The other orcs lived in fear of the Nard, but Ziggy had no reservations about playfully traipsing into the duelist's quarters immediately following his loss. The Nard seemed to enjoy her company, and the two spent day and night training together. Their training did not involve weapons: the two would go to some isolated spot on the mountainside and perform strange, exotic stretching and tumbling exercises amidst the rocks and thornshrubs. Since the Nard had remained back with the main army at Raulag, Ziggy had performed these odd drills for hours in hidden locales around their camps.

Ash had half-expected something of this sort from them, but he never expected Simon's reaction to the orcs. The vast majority of them ignored him completely, but a handful, including his constant companion Zombo, looked up to Simon with reverent awe. Zombo was a particularly dense brute with a protruding jaw and forehead that made him look stupid even by orc standards. But Zombo loved little Simon, the boy one-third his size who seemed to know the answers to every question Zombo could think of. "Where does rain go?" "What is tallest tower in world?" "Do they have orcs in ocean?" "What smell sea-orcs make?" When Simon didn't know the answer he made an educated guess. No matter what Simon responded, Zombo bellowed with laughter, slapping the little scholar hard on his shoulder and roughly shoving whatever foul substance he was drinking into Simon's mouth. Zombo was especially fond of any answer with the word 'gold' in it and often asked the same questions dozens of times over, responding to each answer with unabashed, primitive joy.

Zombo hated Ash –the 'wizard'– and when Ash made the mistake of correcting Simon's answer regarding the actual size of a female human's vagina, Zombo glared at Ash silently, drew his morningstar and smashed it into the table a foot from Ash's face. Ash never again spoke up during these questioning sessions, although hours or days afterward he would seek out Simon, alone, and lecture him on some of the things he might have missed.

Simon was the one who ultimately convinced Ash to accept Suboq's proposal. Steed and Ziggy had no problems avoiding the Kingdom of Shells —Ash recalled that look of real fear on Steed's face when he fought those shadows— but Ash had not expected Simon to weigh in as he did. The boy had remained studiously quiet during the discussion until the end, when Ash casually tossed out Suboq's promise of eternal peace between the orcs and Ash's future lordly endeavors. Simon latched onto that more than anything else Ash had said that night. The smart little shit is ultimately right. Our place is in the Empire, not out here. We left that chaos behind but we'll be back soon enough. We'll need as many allies as possible.

Suboq said they would find answers in Blackspire. He claimed that the white demon was summoned there. Then why did he come from the east? Perhaps Suboq was lying, desperate for Ash's assistance, but they would never know that for sure until they accomplished their task. But if he was not lying, Simon argued, they would have to come back to Blackspire later at any rate. And maybe they'd learn a thing to two about how to handle a demon in toe-to-toe combat. Logically, the boy made quite a bit of sense. But still...

Making matters worse were the Mithras, sequestered away behind their flimsy tent walls. Not an hour went by without Ash thinking of the two, tied together in knots of savage pleasure. He tried to push them out of his mind, but Galena's lovely face and Lara's demure mystery were growing fainter by the day. He wasn't alone. Twice before setting off from Raulag he had caught Steed staring blankly up the barren mountainside at their tent. Had they treated with him, too? Had he been awake when they put us into trance and led us out of the Kingdom of Shells? Steed grew uncharacteristically quiet when Ash had asked him these questions, looking at him sullenly before turning and walking away without uttering a word. Was that why he had argued with such intensity about staying with the orcs? The other orcs shunned the Mithras. Approaching their tent was by invitation-only, and those that violated that sacred rule were never heard, seen, or even talked about again. The puncture wound on Ash's neck had completely healed within a day after his encounter with them —clearly, those women knew how to take care of themselves. But knowing all that did not stop the frequent longings he had for the twins. Was I wrong about this all my life? Was I just fooling myself about Galena, about Lara? Is my body my master, or my will? Are these barbarian priestesses my true Heart's Desire?

"Tell me, Tsarc. How did you take Greywatch?" The question had been burning in Ash's mind ever since he saw those imperial corpses on the hillside. Staring at the grotesque demon-walls of Blackspire as the two perched at the edge of a large boulder that concealed their camp, Ash thought he would find no better time to ask. One or both of us may not be alive tomorrow. I need to know.

"It was easy," the old orc said, cutting an apple in half with his knife. He offered Ash one of the halves. "We outnumbered them twenty-to-one."

"Yes, but, they sortied out to meet you anyways," Ash replied. "They could have remained in the tower."

"Could have, but didn't. We drew them out. Easily," Tsarc wolfed down his half with a single solid gulp. "Their position was hopeless."

"Were they out of food? Water?"

"No, they had enough food to feed us for weeks. We live off of that bounty for past month now. And we found they had internal cistern from underground spring. They could have lived like kings in their tower for long, long time."

"Then why did they leave? Why did they come out to attack you?"

"Well," Tsarc laughed, "Just because someone puts spear in your hand and helmet on your head, doesn't mean you're warrior. Those humans, they... lacked. We penetrated their weak minds with fear. Took us less than half a day."

"How did you do that?"

Tsarc grinned. Ash preferred when he didn't; his grin was his single worst feature. It looked as if the maw of hell cracked open, with a score of rotten, twisted teeth, festering buboes and a sour stench oddly similar to the inside of the bag Ash wore in the dungeons of Clearstone Keep. Tsarc pointed his knife at the terrible walls of Blackspire.

"You will see. You do your job, and you will see us do ours. You will see what terrible things only the orcs can do."

Later that night the five of them emerged from the sewage tunnel covered in shit. Tsarc had been wise when he ordered them to fast for a day beforehand. Ash never wanted to retch so much in his life. Most of the feces, he knew, belonged to orcs —Blackspire's orcs outnumbered their slavemasters ten-to-one— and that made the stench somehow even worse. Orcs were known for their huge appetites, and the five of them had just spent the better part of two hours wading through the thick of it.

Raulag had been astoundingly easy to take. By the time the main host arrived the orc slaves had already strung up their masters on wooden stakes around the mine's entrance, their hands and tongues cut out, their torsos stuffed with jagged quartz. Blackspire's slaves were in a far more precarious situation. Despite their numerical advantage, they would need more than the promise of a nearby army to spur them to action.

Once they freed Suboq's father, they were to sound the great warhorn Steed carried around with him, the one they had taken from the Red Minotaur. Tsarc promised them no harm would come to them by orc hands, but to stay safely inside the tower until the city had been properly sacked just in case. Those gnarled, twisted walls won't fall as easily as he thinks. Ash made mental notes of the tunnels and passageways of the surprisingly intricate sewer system below the twisted city of mages, in case the siege turned against them in a hurry.

Their guide Trego was a skilled scout and impressed Ash with his knowledge of the tunnels. The orc was obviously once from here, a slave thirty feet above our heads, a free warrior down here. He doesn't even seem to notice the disgusting stench. Trego was to lead them to the postern door of Blackspire Tower, then return back to the host waiting outside the walls. With Suboq's army arrayed in siege position and each orc carrying a half-dozen torches apiece, the mage lords would be sending every available man to the walls.

Suboq was right about that much. When they emerged from the sewers they spotted only a single guard posted before the small door, fidgeting restlessly with his spear and shield. The guard was clad in glossy black armor and cloak, with huge, garish, polished black horns jutting from the top of his helmet. Ash could tell from his proper posture and thin build that he was a human, not an orc, and a quick, quiet thrum later the poor sap had an arrow lodged just below his Adam's apple. Steed sprinted to the door and finished the guard swiftly, then gestured that the course was clear. Trego handed Ash a single featureless iron key.

"Many slaves died to get us this key. Please," Trego implored, gazing directly into Ash's violet eyes, "Do not fail us."

"I won't," Ash replied. "Or we'll die trying." Do I really mean that? How did I end up pledging my life to a sewer orc?

Trego nodded silently and slipped back into the tunnels. Ash took another quick look around, then bolted for the door.

The door was a simple wooden back door for servants, located directly beneath a host of privy holes from the tower's upper reaches. From down here, the tower looks like it's about to topple over on top of you. Ash took a deep breath, turned the key and the door popped open with a loud creak. As they passed underneath Simon silently pointed at an inscription above the door, hidden when the door was closed. It was in a script that neither had ever seen before, an unnerving collection of hard-edged geometric sigils. For a split second Ash wished Trego had come with them at least this far, just to see what would happen if the orc scout tried to enter. He wouldn't have done it just to satisfy my curiosity. It would probably mean his death.

They entered a small room with archways leading off in all directions and a hole in the corner with a ladder to climb down. Tsarc had said to go down the ladder as far as it would go, then through two iron doors which may or may not be locked, follow a stone passageway that slopes gently to the south, then down a winding staircase to the third landing, which should be the deep prison. Steed sniffed at the hole before he went down, followed by Ziggy, then Simon, then Ash. The passage narrowed the deeper they went, until Steed's broad shoulders scraped up against the unworked granite on either side of them. About fifty feet down they crawled into an empty holding chamber, with a great archway opening to a staircase leading up. Must be the real entrance to the jail cells. The double iron doors were directly opposite. Fortunately they were not locked, only barred from their side of the doors. Steed and Ash heaved the heavy iron bar up and it clanged to the ground with an immense echo. Ash and Simon winced.

"Damnit! We need to be quiet!"

Steed just spit, and shrugged his shoulders with an evil grin. The idiot wants us to get caught. He's itching for a fight. Bloodthirsty imbecile.

On the other side of the doors they heard voices and quickly paired off on either side of the door, holding close to the wall. Damn it all, what the holy hell fuck am I doing down here?

The doors soon creaked inward. Two large men clad in the same polished black garb of the Blackspire garrison walked through.

"Ford—oottthhkkk," one of the guards choked as an arrow lodged in his jugular, his blood spraying across the tops of the iron doors as he twisted to the floor. The second guard hesitated momentarily, not understanding what had just happened. His eyes looked up just in time to see the broad side of an incoming maul. The man's dumbfounded look disappeared into his skull along with the rest of his face.

Ash glanced at the two as he passed, following Steed and Ziggy as they raced each other down the passageway. Poor saps. Thirty seconds ago, these men had lives, families, a solid position. And a fancy costume. Ash thought back to his gaoler in Clearstone, then to the tales Suboq had told him of what the mages of Blackspire were capable of. Perhaps they were as evil as their masters, and deserved to die like this. Simon disappeared from sight down the hall, so Ash quickly made a sign of Torain's blessings over the corpses —just in case they were good men— and sprinted to catch up.

The four met no other guards until they passed the third landing and entered the cells of the deep prison. All seemed empty save for the last one, where a single guard was sitting, either slumped over lost in thought or asleep. The passage was a straight tunnel and offered no cover of any kind, so Ziggy let loose an arrow from sixty feet away while Steed sprinted after it. The arrow struck the man's gleaming black boot, causing him to bolt up and yell in pain. A single moment of abject terror spread across the guard's pale face as Steed swung his maul into the center of the man's chest. The crunch of chainmail and bone echoed down the dark stone passageway, followed by a labored wheezing and gurgling. Steed slowly drew up the Dukeskewer with both hands and swung it cleanly into the man's jaw, and the wheezing noise stopped.

Ash and Simon caught up in a moment, out of breath. Ziggy was shaking her head at her poor shot and already rifling through the guard's pockets. Ash peered inside the unlit cell, but could see nothing.

"Hello?"

No answer came at first. As Ash strained his eyes to see inside Simon tossed in a lit torch through the bars, which reflected the firelight and momentarily dazed Ash's vision. The bars were made of the same shiny volcanic glass as the tower above them. As his eyes recovered, he thought he saw six small fires flicker for a moment in the pitch-black cell.

"Hello? Bhol? We've come from Suboq. We've come to save you."

A long, bony white arm picked up the torch inside the cell, placed it in a sconce on the wall and slinked off to an opposite corner. Inside was the poorest excuse for an orc Ash had ever seen. Though the Nard had been thin and emaciated, this ancient orc made the Nard look like a fat tub of soft cheese. The orc's shadowed form was unaccountably ancient, his torso so whisper-thin that the outlines of his ribs looked as if they were outside his skin. His intestines could be seen, vaguely, under the milk-white skin of his belly, and his arms and legs were nothing more than a hint of white skin tattooed to elongated bone. The old orc's arms were long enough to nearly reach his ankles. The orc had no genitalia to speak of. Sliced off and burnt in some devilish torture session. The sick spectacle made Ash nauseous, but he steeled his stomach and continued.

"Bhol? We come from Suboq. Your son. We are to rescue–"

"Yes," the ancient orc hissed, so weakly that Ash had to strain to hear. "Bhol. They once called me that. Bhol."

Ash looked at the bars to the cell but could not see a lock or hinges. "We've come from Suboq. He's outside the city walls with an army. He means to sack the city, once we free you from this place."

The old orc stayed at a distance, still shielded from Ash's view in the dim light. "Suboq? My son?" The orc seemed to cough violently. Ash heard a small splash of water and an eerie sucking sound. Suboq said he'd been trapped in here for decades. Would he even know his own son?

"Are you listening, Bhol? We need to get out of here, quickly... if only —where, how do you open this door?" Ash was confused. Ziggy and Simon were studying it, too.

"I didn't find a key on him," the girl said softly, motioning at the dead guard.

"Sir, we can help you get out, and we'll be on our way. You need to–"

"I need to get out of here," the old orc laughed in the darkness, his voice still grating and hoarse. "There is no key to this door. My tormentors are highly intelligent men. No key to this door, no."

Ash was perplexed. "Then how do we open it?"

The old orc paused for a moment, still hidden in the dark corner of his cell. "Which is the mage among you?"

Ash and Simon looked at each other. Steed, who was trying on the dead guard's black spiked helmet behind them, snickered loudly.

"I am," Ash said boldly. "What would you have of me?"

The ancient orc paused again, and Ash felt the hairs on his neck stand straight up. "You are no mage. The little one, the boy. Him."

Simon's jaw started shivering. "M-m-me?"

"Yes. You. You are quite powerful, you know. Tarnished, but only slightly. I need a drop of blood from your left palm."

Simon looked like he was about to faint. "A d-drop of blood? My blood?"

"Yes. Yes, just a single drop. A single drop from a human mage's left palm, right there on the bars."

Simon reached for his dagger but Ash grabbed his hand. "First, you tell us who you are. We're looking for Bhol, father of Suboq, imprisoned here over two decades ago." The choking sound erupted again from the corner of the cell. Ash continued, "You need to confirm your identity first."

"Yes. Yes, I'm Bhol, father of Suboq. Good son. Filial son. Now, that drop of blood..."

"You are in terrible shape, sir. Can you still walk?"

"Yes. Yes. I can walk just fine. I need to walk, to get out of here, stretch my limbs. Now."

Ash felt like he was missing something. He glanced at Simon, who returned his quizzical look.

"So how do we get him out of here? The tunnels?" Ziggy broke the awkward silence.

"You'll come with us once we release you. Once out, we'll alert the army outside with our warhorn. We know the sewage tunnels well, and can get you back to your son."

"No."

The word slapped Ash in the face with an almost physical force. "No?"

"No. I'll alert the army myself. I know secret ways up this tower. I know of a landing halfway up. I helped build it myself. I'll alert the army, you boys take care of yourselves, get yourself to a safe place."

Ash was confused. "You built this tower? How?"

"Built? With the lies I give them. When they torture me. Yes. I will alert them for you, you run to safety. After I am freed."

"But you'll be killed. You're as thin as a spearpoint."

"Yes, thin. Yes, but I know secrets. I can get up to the landing without them knowing. Hurry, before more guards come and trap us all down here forever."

Before Ash could ask another question Simon held out his hand. A single drop of dark red liquid glided down his palm and onto his wrist, and Simon flicked it off onto the volcanic glass bars. The drop made a tiny hiss where it hit, but other than that, Ash saw no physical change.

"Did it.. did it work?" Ash asked. Before anyone could answer two bony fingers grabbed one bar, then another pair of fingers latched onto the next. With an effortless tug the two hands ripped the door out of the stone. None of the four could remember how the old orc appeared behind them, naked and surprisingly tall, his back turned.

"Give me the horn."

Steed hesitated. Ash looked at Steed and followed his glance down to the orc's hand, which seemed to be missing three fingers. Both of his hands have just two long bony fingers. What the...

Steed gingerly dropped the warhorn into the orc's hand and took a step back. The old orc turned his head around and Ash felt his whole body freeze in terror. Three feet away from him, at his eye level, was a hairy head sporting six pitch-black eyes arranged in two curving lines, with four foot-long fangs dangling down underneath a gaping mouth. The face of a giant spider, impaled on a neck thinner than Ash's wrists. Purple-black saliva dripped from the mouth as it spoke.

"You freed me, and for that you will not be killed to-night. Leave the way you came. Do not look back. Bhol, yes. Yes. Bhol has work left undone." The creature turned away and loped as fast as a crossbow bolt down the passageway on four spindly legs. It was through the doors and up the winding stairs before Ash could take another breath.

The four stood there for an eternity, the faint sounds of terrible screams trickling down through the ancient stone walls.

### Chapter 30 – The Sack of Blackspire

An eternity of time passed before the last of the echoed screams faded away, the four scared teenagers physically paralyzed with fear. Ziggy finally broke the silence.

"What sort of an orc was that?"

No one answered.

Finally, Steed sighed heavily and grabbed the hilt of his maul from the cold stone floor.

"Well, we best get the fuck out of here before our skinny buddy comes back."

The four walked back down the passageway in quiet terror. They climbed up the winding stairs until they returned to the sloped passageway back up to the jail entrance. The torches there were out. An acrid odor crept into their nostrils as they walked toward the double iron doors and the two dead guards.

As the acidic stench grew stronger they saw that the iron doors were just as they had left them. The guards' bodies, however, were spread across the floor. Steed and Ash noticed it first as the jelly-like remains of the guards made their boots stick to the tiled stonework. A quick perusal by torchlight confirmed that the entire chamber was covered in multicolored sludge, with razor-sharp splinters of fragmented bone cresting over the syrupy corpse-jam like tiny skeletal shipwrecks. Six metal helmets were visible, with possibly more drowned in the bloody ooze. Slashed mail shirts and polished black bits of armor were scattered across the revolting lake, with shards of weapons and armor embedded in tiny holes in the walls.

Each step was hard work, and the four formed a human chain over solid bits of metal and bone to get across to the high stone archway that led to the upper levels. Halfway across and in dire need of new boots, they heard the chilling, drawn-out single note of the Red Minotaur's warhorn echo softly into the gruesome chamber.

"That's my horn!" Steed shouted. "Mission accomplished."

Our mission has just begun, you idiot. Ash knew that getting out of this tower was just the beginning of their problems. The attack would soon begin, and thousands of armed orcs in the streets looking for living humans would make their escape difficult. Suboq may have given his soldiers orders not to harm us –or not– but in the heat of battle, an undisciplined army is a danger to every living thing around it. Both Simon and Ziggy knew a smattering of Orcish dialect from the camps, but Ash wasn't sure if they could remember the linguistic intricacies of the guttural tongue when a mob of orcs was bearing down on them.

The warhorn stopped abruptly, and an eerie silence stalked the echoes down the stone hallways of Blackspire Tower. In the chamber the four worked hard to trudge through the ooze, their heavy breathing and muttered curses the only sounds bouncing off the prison walls. A few tireless minutes later and the four were slopping their way up the main steps as quickly as they could run.

At the top of the stone steps was another chamber, which an hour or a day ago might have been a guardpost. Now it was a liquid graveyard. Ziggy, the best of the four at physically navigating over the muck, light-stepped her way to a storeroom and bounded back with four fresh sets of shiny black boots.

Then the walls began to shake.

Subtly at first —a pinch of dust freeing itself from the loose masonry in the ceiling— but before long they wondered if the thousands of tons of volcanic glass above their heads would hold. The Red Minotaur's warhorn had been answered by a host of thundering bass drums, sending powerful vibrations into the ground and stone around them. Is this the secret weapon Tsarc had hinted at? Drums?

On a patch of stone steps free of human body parts, the four rapidly put on their new boots and ran through the shaking maze of tunnels, chambers and guardposts above them. They did not know where they were going, but the road of carnage was obvious enough to follow.

Finally, crawling through a closed portcullis that looked as if it had been sawed clean through, the four emerged into a large chamber that filled the base of Blackspire Tower. Four sets of winding staircases led up to the next level while a large piece of shredded red carpet led the way to a pair of giant double doors, an archway carved in the shape of two huge, shiny obsidian demons gouging out each others' eyes. A trickling waterfall of blood and small body parts cascaded down one of the staircases. The occasional inhuman shriek from upstairs punctuated the deafening bombardment of the drums outside the walls.

Ash and Steed strained against the demon-doors until they opened just wide enough for them to pass through. Outside, it was still night —they had been down in the cells for just a few hours— and the city's central street gave them a clear view of the chaos surrounding the city gates a few hundred yards away from the tower.

The massive reinforced-glass gates were still closed, but not for much longer. Everywhere swarms of soldiers dressed exactly alike were slaughtering each other like animals, from the tops of the demon towers to the corpse-strewn courtyard below. Ash saw that the orc slaves he had spotted manning the walls during his scouting missions had since abandoned their posts, massing against their human masters in the feral carnage at the main gates. Soldiers clad in shiny black armor hacked each other's limbs with melee weapons or shot each other's torsos with heavy crossbows from mere feet away. Through all of this the drums outside pummeled and shook the ground beneath them as other instruments, high-pitched and shrill, pierced the air with a teeeeeeeelikikikikikiteeeeeeeeeelikikikikiki sound that made Ash's head feel like his brain was being cooked inside its skull.

The shrill noise made Ash's head throb with pain, and he considered going back inside the tower until the tower walls shook once more. The four looked up and saw flashes of lightning and explosions of great fireballs rocking the topmost level of Blackspire. Simon ducked as half an eyeball fell at his feet, with the nerve still attached.

"I did this," Simon said softly.

Ash rested his hands on the boy's shoulders and looked deep into him, past his eyes, the way Yount had for him when he felt like giving up in his training. "No, they did this. They summoned him here, they tortured him, and now they must deal with the consequences of their sins. May Torain have mercy on their souls." Simon winced, and closed his eyes.

"So... what do we do now?" shouted Ziggy. Her bow was drawn, but there was no one on the streets between them and the city gates.

"We wait for Suboq," Ash replied, cupping his hands over his ears to muffle the sounds. "I don't want to go back inside, even for an instant. Close the door and keep as close to the walls as possible until this is all over." And it will be over soon, if my eyes aren't deceiving me. The orcs have won the gates.

Ash's eyes were spot-on, as a moment later the four heard a huge groan and a swarm of black-armored orcs forced open the gates. The drums and other instruments abruptly stopped, and the remaining human guards routed and scattered in all directions. As the gates swung open three huge mounted reptilian beasts plodded into the city, followed by a horde of frenzied, hysterical orcs leaping and cheering and swinging their weapons wildly through the air. The three reptiles charged forth through the clearing, the middle one skewering a hapless human soldier on one of its great horns. Behind its head was a wide, flat protective plate, and behind the plate was Suboq, clad in dark red plate mail molded in the shape of a terrifying demon. The orc wielded a massive greatsword and a helmet eerily similar to Steed's black bone mask. The chieftain spotted them, and spurred his beast on towards the tower.

By now an endless stream of orcs poured through the gates and into the city like a surging river of swirling grey chaos, slaughtering any small pockets of resistance that stood in their way. The huge orcs piloting the other two reptiles followed Suboq to the tower, flanking him. None of the fleeing black-clad human soldiers dared try and stop them.

Suboq hailed the four as he drew up to them on his massive beast. The great orc was beaming. Everything has gone according to plan. His plan. The lightning flashes in the topmost level of the tower had all but disappeared, making Ash extremely uneasy. Simon furtively glanced up as well.

"Well, my friends, a congratulations is in order!" the orc bellowed. "We have done in one night what no one else has been able to do in a thousand years! Blackspire," the orc paused to catch his breath, "Blackspire has fallen!"

The sounds and screams and smells of battle were all around them, but Ash knew it was only a matter of time before Suboq was proved right. Humans and orcs were still being cut down but the real battle had been won weeks earlier, when Ash had reluctantly gone back to the command tent to tell Suboq their response.

"You lied to us."

Suboq looked amused as he patted his great beast's head. "Oh? How so?"

Ash's face was flush with rage. "That thing down there, that... Bhol. He's not your father."

Suboq straightened up in his specially-crafted saddle, and the smile melted from his face. "Bhol's blood courses through the veins of every orc. He is the Father of the Orcs, although he may not know it, or care."

"That doesn't matter."

"That is the only thing that matters."

"You lied. You lied about Blackspire. About the white demon. You used us."

Suboq fingered the hilt of his runed greatsword, then stared into the back of Ash's skull. "This tower needed to fall. My army cannot enter this place. Your species can. You accomplished your mission and saved thousands of my soldiers. I did what any true commander would do to get the job done. Remember that, Ashley of House Xavier."

Ash hotly disagreed, but this was not the time for that. "So, what happens now?"

"You will all be rewarded. You may take whatever you wish from this city, and will forever have the power of the orcs on your side. Also, this," Suboq ripped a pendant off his neck and tossed it to Ash. "For your safe passage through the lands of the dead."

Ash caught it and turned it over. It was nothing more than a simple piece of wood the same size and shape as a coin. A rayed sun was carved on one side, while the other side was completely blank.

"What about Bhol? What about this tower?"

Suboq peered up at the top of the ominous spire. "The same wards that prevented us from entering prevent him from leaving. Most of the city's most powerful mages are in there, trapped with him. I plan to seal both entryways. Their ghosts can flee from him in those halls for all eternity."

"But," Ash grinned sarcastically, "he's your father."

"My true father was a cripple from birth who died a beggar's death," Suboq replied, "choking on a rotten scrap of fish his master had thrown to the dogs."

The orc slaves of the city were coming out of hiding now, armed with little more than homemade weapons and kitchen utensils. Many of them were already spattered with blood. The army had ceased pouring through the main gates, and the lawless sounds of pillage could be heard a thousand times over in every direction. Suboq shouted something in Orcish at a nearby mob of a dozen or so former slaves, and they replied with a lusty cheer.

"Enough talk, my friends. I have wealth and stores to collect. A city to destroy. These mage's towers won't come down easily, and I may be here for some time. You are free to do as you wish, but make sure to remove those hideous black boots before traveling about. You're likely to be mistaken for an enemy. After you are finished here, come see me at the main gatehouse at first light. HYAH!" Suboq spurred on his great lumbering beast, which had nearly fallen asleep from the exertion of the charge.

After the four had removed their boots Steed and Ziggy bounded off barefoot into the bowels of the city. Ash and Simon remained on the steps of the tower, trying not to look up whenever they heard a chilling scream pierce the night sky.

"Ash, I'm sorry."

"Don't be. We all did it. It's done."

"No, I mean, I, I'm the one that freed him. It. Him."

Ash examined him. Simon's face was shivering, ready to burst. Go on, say what you need to say. "Yes?"

"I, I.. I wanted to free him. I knew he wasn't an orc. I knew it. But I wanted to do it, badly."

"I know," Ash lied. "It's done. C'mon, let's head to the gatehouse for the night, and try and get some rest before we set out in the morning."

Simon's eyes welled up, but he did not cry. He followed Ash across the freezing desert ground, oblivious to the murderous mayhem around them.

That morning neither Suboq nor Tsarc came, but the Mithras did. They arrived just after the two red-eyed, blood-spattered and exhausted beet farmers did. One of the women handed Ash four hefty sacks of gold, food and water. The other led four strong warhorses behind her. Both women were clad in clothes designed for much warmer climes.

Ash, who had not seen them in the flesh since his visit to their tent, awoke with a pleasant but embarrassing surprise in his breeches. The women noticed, too, and one of them flashed a mischievous grin at him.

"You four should leave now. Your horses are ready and rested. Suboq has provided you food and water to last you for a month, and enough gold to suffice a modest man for thirty years," said one of the Mithras. She snuck a quick, flirtatious glance at Steed. Ash caught the glance, and felt his hands shaking with rage. He closed his eyes and took three deep breaths, trying to calm himself. Why am I so angry? They're not mine. These two don't belong to me. They are not my Heart's Desire. Why should I care?

Why do I care?

"And this charm," Ash held up the wooden disk, eager to bring the Mithras' attention back to himself. "This will protect us from those shadows?"

"That, and more."

Clumsily trying to avoid staring at their exposed flesh, Ash studied the disc in his hand. A child could carve this in an hour. He palmed it, then slipped it into the secret pocket in his shirt next to the silver-glass key and Lara's clasp.

The four mounted their horses as dawn broke over the smoking ruins of Blackspire. Behind them, whatever wooden structures once existed were now smoldering embers, and tireless teams of orcs were dragging naked human corpses into huge piles to be fired. Many of the slashed and burnt cadavers were women and children. Ash retched. A traitor to my own species. And an assassin, a horse thief, a craven, a fugitive. The history books will not be kind to me.

The Mithras watched as the four silently prepared their mounts for the journey ahead. Steed and Ziggy each had two extra sacks stuffed full of their personal winnings from the evening.

As they set off, Ash stole one last look at the twins. They were mounted on their familiar geldings, their thick bare legs and feet protruding from their fur cloaks. If the white demon is waiting for us at Exmortus, this will be the final time I will ever lay eyes on those legs, those divine instruments of erotic torture. Ash snuck one last, long look at the two before wheeling his mount around and turning north.

They watched him leave, neither waving nor smiling, only watching. Once Ash and his three companions had disappeared into the vast expanse of desert, the two women exchanged fierce glances, and gently rubbed their bellies.

### Chapter 31 – The Prodigal Son

They camped out on the ridge for a day and two nights, studying the charred outlines of the Abbey for any sign of activity. After finding a half-eaten corpse a few days' ride south, Ash insisted on approaching their former home with extreme caution. Steed and Ziggy had to be re-convinced every ten minutes to sit silent and watch —Ash made sure one or the other were down the hillside watching the horses at all times— but as dawn broke and they finished their meager meal of breadcrust and springwater, he knew this was the day they returned to Exmortus.

They returned up the slopes of Deaf Mountain, the way they had left so many months ago. The forested ridge offered an excellent view of all of the large buildings and a third of the Abbey's inner yard. From their high vantage point, the brewery seemed to have suffered the least damage, while the Snow Tower and the library were nothing more than piles of blackened rubble. Deep snowdrifts covered the part of the compound that they could see. There were no tracks or signs of habitation.

To survive against a demon, you must plan carefully. Ash reminded himself daily that he had now seen three demons —he was sure that the Isogoge had never really been in service to the gods— and lived. He survived the first by pure chance. The second, because he was momentarily useful, and the third because of someone else's meticulous planning. A fourth encounter could mean death. The mission in the prison cells beneath Blackspire gave him no special knowledge on how to defeat a demon.

They had strained their eyes in all directions for the last month searching the low horizon for a sign of the demon star, but they had seen nothing. Suboq's simple charm seemed to work well. They encountered no shadows nor any other living thing, not even an insect, while traveling through the Kingdom of Shells. Every night after his watch Ash touched his breast pocket with his three treasures: the silver-glass key, Lara's clasp, and Suboq's wooden disc. It may just be my imagination, but these inert, practically worthless objects warm a hole in my heart. Ash hoarded every moment of warmth he found in that cold and lifeless land, farther and farther north into the thick of winter, trudging toward the near-certainty of quick death.

Steed and Ziggy wolfed down their breakfast instantly while Simon made tiny nibbles, his eyes fixed on the crossroads down the hillside.

"Do you think the Wall is still there?"

"Of course," Ash replied, slowly chewing his crust. "I can't imagine why not."

"I can imagine my boot up your ass if you don't shut up and eat," Steed countered. He had already begun donning his mail shirt and rabbit-fur cloak. The Mithras had provided perfectly-sized winter clothing for all of them. Even though he knew all four of them had been given fine rabbit cloaks, Ash couldn't help but feel a twinge of anger every time he saw how well Steed's cloak fit him. This is insane. If anything, he should be jealous of me. I surrendered my virginity to them. His first was a fat middle-aged tavern wench with no teeth.

"Fine. Let's go," Ash stuffed the rest of his breakfast in his mouth, chewed it fast and stood up. "Simon, you stay with the horses."

"But..."

"Fine, stay in sight of the horses." Simon was as eager as the rest of them to explore the Abbey, but someone had to stay behind. They heard wolves in the forests every night since entering the Forest of Eversor.

While the other three prepared for battle, Simon made himself comfortable on a log and got out his book, a sinister-looking tome entitled The Book of Black Earth that Steed had plundered from the feeble arms of a near-dead mage in Blackspire. Steed hefted and spun his maul, carefully donned his black bone mask and studied the interior of the fine warhorn the orcs had given him to replace the one that Bhol had taken. It was nowhere near as powerful as the Red Minotaur's horn —an hour after leaving the gates of Blackspire they had all heard the Red Minotaur's metallic wail again, carried to the north by a strong desert breeze— but Steed had tried it out a few times in the empty wastes of the broken lands and liked it well enough. Simon was to wait for one blast if it was safe, two for danger, and three if they found the white demon. After that, Simon would lead the horses back onto the road and up to the mostly destroyed southern gate.

Ziggy had learned much from the Nard, including the unnerving art of painting her face. She had colored her face a chalky white, with thick black stripes under the eyes and swirls across both cheeks. Black lines around her mouth made it seem larger and more fierce; Ash didn't think it was as frightening as Steed's mask, but it did its job well. The little girl had also added a pair of broken bowstrings and a feather from some fallen hawk to the growing collection in her long thin hair.

Ash sheathed his fine grey longsword with the shark's head hilt, fingered the runed dagger Tsarc had given him as a gift and put on his armor. They left everything else on the horses and climbed up the western side of the ridge. Although he had been starving, bruised and on the brink of insanity back then, Ash recalled the landmarks with a certain sentimental fondness as he passed each one. Months ago, I passed that boulder, on my way to the crossroads to meet Bill. And that's where I emerged covered in scratches and bruises, with smoke in my hair and goat's shit on my face.

Once they reached the crest they stopped for a moment to take in the sight of the scorched shell of their former home once more. Most of the buildings survived intact, others were violently reduced to rubble. The goat pens and small beet farm were drowned underneath waves of smooth, rolling hills of pure white virginal snow.

Had this been another set of ruins, or another set of visitors, this picture might have been quite beautiful. As he looked down at the Abbey, each roofless building and pile of snow-covered rubble made Ash's stomach well up with raw emotion.

Home.

I'm home.

They waited and watched for half an hour, saw no movement and so climbed down the slope.

It was rough going through the deep snow, which often covered hidden patches of slick ice. Before long they were forced to use every limb available to cling to tree trunks and rocky outcroppings on the way down. There was no visible trail, but Steed led the way skillfully, sniffing out possible icetraps and keeping them moving quickly over difficult obstacles.

The sun was directly overhead by the time they made it to the hole in the fence where they had escaped during the siege. Only the tops of the posts were visible through the snowdrift. As the reached level ground, the cold white powder came up to Steed's chest. Ash feared that they would lose Ziggy, but the nimble little girl scampered onwards.

They had agreed the night before that the first structure they would investigate would be the tiny shack where the beet farmers had lived, but there was no trace of it. Steed removed his mask and dug around for a few minutes in the area it once was, but gave up after a few minutes.

"It's gone. Gone. Let's move."

"Want me to help you dig?"

"I said it's gone."

Once they got through the drifts and reached the sheep's gate, trudging through the snow drifts became easier, especially between the remaining buildings where only a light sprinkling coated the ground. They went north and tried the brewery first. Inside they found burst casks of ale and evidence of a small campfire. Further exploration turned up the campers. Their faces and hands had been chewed off. Their shabby clothes revealed that they were not from the Abbey.

"Squatters," Steed whispered angrily. "Freeloaders who got what's coming to them."

Ash was worried. If squatters have been here —the Empire has collapsed. Streams of desperate, hungry refugees will be on their way here, to these high, safe walls hundreds of miles from the war. Plus, there's still beer in these casks.

"Steed, the faces. Wolves? Bears?"

Steed studied the corpses, their wounds preserved in frozen agony. "Dogs? Big dogs."

The three said no more and quietly left the brewery. The armory was in much worse shape. Most of the weapons and armor were piled into the one corner that still had a semblance of a roof.

"Dogs don't do that," Ziggy mumbled.

"No, they don't." Squatters, again?

Across the yard the snow rose again. Ash cringed as he saw the bathhouse, which for one brief moment had been his own private refuge from those laughably minor problems once so crucial to him. The old building had been blown to smithereens by some blast from the north that had collapsed the upper half into the abandoned swimming pool in the center and thrust several tons of tiled rubble to the south. Why did the demon annihilate this empty building, and so violently? I was the only one with the key. Examining the wreckage, Ash noticed a faint outline of some unknown, far older structure that the bath house had been built over. Interesting. I'll have to investigate this later.

The rubble from the bath house and the neighboring monks' dormitory blocked passage to the northern end of the chapel from this side, so the three trudged through the snow drifts to the southern entrance. Ash knew that squatters would likely have stripped and melted the gold-leaf depiction of the Third Sacred Scroll, but he did not expect what he saw when they came to the once-ornate entryway. Much of the gold leaf was still present, save for the center of the double doors where it had melted away as the result of some terrible fire. Underneath was a half-burnt bas-relief of a tall, robed female figure, her arms raised to the sun, standing atop a mountain of dog-headed creatures. The woman's face was intentionally blank, in stark contrast to the finely-detailed hairy, slavering faces of the dog-men. Yount once mentioned something about dog-men... what was it? Who is this female figure? Why is she here, in Exmortus?

Walking through the scorched remains of the doors, Ash saw that the cathedral's majestic tapestries had been shredded, it seemed, by huge claws. Cold wind whistled through the jagged remains of the stained glass windows, and the polished marble tiles in the floor had been smashed and scratched at random. The great stone altar had been toppled over, and the gold and silver incense holders and reliquaries were gone. Maybe Steed was right about the squatters. Perhaps they were too lazy to properly steal the gold leaf on the doors. Only the weathered statue of Torain remained untouched, seeming almost at home amidst the swath of destruction surrounding it.

Turning to the north, Ash's eyes lit up.

"The Tome!"

Steed and Ziggy quietly followed his gaze —they had never been inside the chapel before. Ash ran to the Tome, the holy relic that had been a weekly privilege to kiss throughout his youth. The Abbot once told him that only the righteous, those with good souls and strong in Torain's favor could kiss it —those with evil in their hearts would be blasted if they so much as breathed on it. The other yardlings wouldn't go near it for that very reason, but Ash proudly placed his lips on it before every holy mass, just like Yount and Stratov and the rest. Come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing Zirev kiss it.

Next to the Tome was a visitor.

At first Ash had dismissed it as a statue that was out of place amidst the wreckage, but upon closer inspection, it seemed alien to any part of the Abbey he had known. The detail of the face was exquisitely carved, almost life-like. The sculptor was clearly an artisan of unsurpassed skill, as the expression on the sharp, pointed face conveyed sarcastic mockery while the eyes conveyed the shock of unimaginable horror. The statue was not dressed like a priest, or a knight, or a friar. He was luxuriously clad in expensive furs, every single hair on his jeweled cloak meticulously carved with single-minded precision. Around his neck were heavy chains decorated with large, multifaceted gems and the precious stones on his earrings were ridiculously large. The statue's right hand was hovering over the Tome, fingers outstretched.

"What is that, a book?" Steed grunted as he bumped into Ash from behind. "Think it's worth anything?"

"That, Steed, is the Tome of Sanctum, a holy relic of Torain. They say that only those with good in their hearts can touch it, and evil people are destroyed," Ash barely believed the words that were coming out of his mouth as he eyed the statue. "I used to kiss it every week, sometimes more, depending on the placement of the holy days."

"Blasts evildoers, huh? Keep it the hell away from me. Look what it did to him." Steed nudged the statue in its back with his elbow.

"That's just a statue."

"Looks pretty real to me," Steed snickered, studying the fine hairs on the statue's fur coat. "Let's open him up and find out."

Before Ash could react Steed delivered a brutal kick to the side of the statue, toppling it over. It hit the shattered marble floor with a crash and several pieces broke off, including the head. Ash couldn't believe what he then saw.

"See? I'm heading to the storeroom in the barracks. Might find some frozen bread there or something," Steed laughed as he walked off. "Don't go kissing that book, Ashy. You might have stepped in one of my evil shits."

Ash stared at the broken sculpture. What sort of a sculptor would go to such lengths to... He looked back at the Tome. I have done terrible things. Ash considered that for a moment. No, I have merely taken part in terrible acts, most of them beyond my control. I have looked away while my companions, my brothers, have murdered people in cold blood. I helped bring down a city, and betrayed my species. I broke my sacred vows, repeatedly, with two women... two witches. His eyes fixed on the familiar cover of the holy book. But I have done all I did with good intentions. For Torain, for Torain's servants. He saw Zirev's wry, sarcastic grin. For those I had mistakenly thought were Torain's servants. He remembered the small, thin raiders he had pushed off the boat, their little black heads bobbing in the water as it turned from blue to red. I did what I did in self-defense. Those men may have survived. They were strong swimmers. They had to be. That was the life they chose. Galena's face floated before him, the spray of the saltwater rising behind her. That never stopped me before. I am a man of Torain even now. I will be a great lord someday, and return to rebuild this holy place. Ash bent down over the book, inching his lips closer and closer to the leather cover.

He closed his eyes and sighed. He lifted his head and stepped back, heading to the sounds of his brothers' voices outside.

### Chapter 32 – Man Down

Zirev's bare, nondescript office was just as Ash remembered it. The desk was covered in several piles of neatly-stacked papers and a ledger open to that very day in late autumn when Ash escaped from the Abbey with his life. Ash tried each of the four drawers, and all but one were locked. The unlocked drawer was mostly empty save for spent ink pots and an orderly arrangement of writing quills.

Using his dirk and a little brute strength, Ash popped the small bolt on one of the drawers.

Empty.

Shit.

He knew he should be feeling guilty for transgressing on his friend's privacy like this, but felt nothing but a burning curiosity and vague anger at the man he thought he knew. The Isogoge had sent them here specifically to find out more about the strange key, and ash could think of no better place to hide secrets than right here. With another ten minutes of straining, he popped the second bolt.

Ah, now what's this..?

In the midst of a small collection of petrified starfish and sand dollars was a deep blue velvet bag. Ash picked it up, surprised by its lightness, and poured the contents out onto the ledger on the desk. A number of small wooden chips the size of a thumbnail spilled out, each with strange, individual markings on one side. Ash counted out twenty-three chips, all with different geometric symbols burnt or branded onto the soft wood.

For a few more minutes Ash toyed with the chips, collecting them all back into their bag, then pouring them out at random to see which ones he got, trying to discern any sort of pattern. One of the chips, which appeared to be a straight line with a triangle jutting out of the middle, seemed to come up more than the others. Ash put it down and tried the third and final lock.

With some difficulty Ash finally broke the bolt, chipping his dirk in the process. There, weighted down by a dagger and a key with matching dog-headed hilts was a small, thin tome. Ash opened it and saw right away that it could not be read. While it was clearly in Zirev's hand it was in a cipher that he did not recognize. I'll have to show this to Simon when he brings the horses around. Ash had sent Steed and Ziggy to scour the northern edges of the Abbey grounds, the area past the northern cistern which included the gatehouse, the abbot's lodgings, and the stables. Once they had secured the area, they were to blast the horn once to let Simon know the Abbey was safe.

Ash gathered the notebook, the bag of inscribed chips, the key and the dagger. The chip that had come up most often was still sitting on the ledger and Ash removed it as well, allowing his eyes to linger for just a moment on the page. The chip had been covering his name, indicating a morning appointment a few days before the white demon attacked. So thorough. As always. I should consider myself flattered to have been included in his recorded duties. There was only one more entry, immediately below it:

Valach - GD; Drane - GD, MGDM??

Ash stopped for a moment. GD? What does that mean? He thought back to that day Zirev assigned him the unenviable task of hunting that boar. GD. G.D. Huh. Those two men in the hallway? I remember one of them was wearing...

Ash bolted out of the office and down into the cloister. Ziggy and Steed, far from doing anything remotely useful, were engaged in a heated snowball fight near the snow-drenched ruins of the library. Ash sprung down into the yard and instantly made himself the target of choice for both.

"Stop –stop it! Stop it! Steed! I–I said knock it off! I found something in Zirev's desk!"

Steed stood up, and was pelted across his wide face by a fistful of packed snow.

"Knock it off you little shitlette, this could be important."

The two huddled around Ash as he trudged through a snowdrift towards the chapel.

"What is it, Ashy? You can tell us."

"I need to see something first, to make sure."

"Well, then can I blow the horn yet?"

"Go ahead. I want Simon to see this."

Steed beamed. "With gusto."

The big man sucked the icy air into his wide chest, then put the warhorn to his lips and let out one long, loud blast that echoed off the walls of the Abbey, through the cloisters and across the forests. Steed held the note until his face turned purple.

Ash looked up at the snow-covered ridge. With any luck, Simon would be down the hillside, along the road and through the gates before dusk. Ziggy was ready to go bounding on her way to the south gates to meet him half-way when they heard a deep, feral howl coming from the abbot's lodging, a small set of chambers in the far north corner of the compound that looked as if it had been completely ground into rubble.

Steed sniffed at the air. "What was that?"

Ash was fuming. "I thought you two scouted up there."

"There's no one here. We got distracted."

"There's obviously something here."

Steed opened his mouth to say something but the howling returned, far closer now. The three stood silent in the moment, their weapons drawn. If it's a hellbeast, we're as good as dead. Traveling through the Kingdom of Shells, Ash had expected to find the white demon waiting for them, sitting on a makeshift throne of bones while drinking blood from a priest's skull. When they had not seen the star —or any sign of activity from the ridge— part of Ash wanted the demon to show up then, to force them to leave. And return to... where? I could go south, to try and find Lara, but the others wouldn't come with me. We could return to Blackspire, to the Mithras, to their tent... Steed would like that very much. Too much. A small piece of the Moon Cloister came loose and collapsed to the ground with a thud. Why am I angry with them? They've probably had half the orcs in Loross inside them at some point. Ash felt his neck getting hot and his forehead tensing. I'm an idiot. Steed can have them, for all I should care. I can't even tell the difference between them. Idiot.

A brown-black beast crawled out from behind a pile of debris. Its head looked similar to a mastiff's, with a reddish glint to its empty black eyes. It was large, larger than any mastiff or hound Ash had ever seen, with tremendous shoulder muscles that made it seem more like a horse than a dog. If Steed could tame it, it would make a perfect mount for him.

The beast bared its teeth and growled. Ash raised his shield, Ziggy drew back her longbow and Steed chuckled beneath his black bone mask as he hefted his maul to his shoulder. Nothing but a few blocks of masonry and some waist-high snow drifts stood between them and the beast.

That thing is huge. A wave of guilt drenched Ash's chest. The beast eyed him and snarled, creeping toward them in a threatening crouch. I may have no other time to do this before I die. I must do this.

Now.

"Steed."

"Huh?"

"Steed... I'm sorry." The beast keenly swung its head between the three warriors, baring its fangs. "I'm–"

"Don't start with me now," Steed snapped. "I've got to maulfuck this thing or we're dead."

A thrum-thrum pierced the air, and two arrows hit the creature. One deflected off the beast's jaw and into the snow but the other lodged into its hulking shoulders. The great beast snapped at it with its teeth. Ziggy hit it again in the shoulder just under the neck but the arrow didn't stick.

A small trickle of black blood spurted from its shoulder. The beast snorted and charged.

Ziggy let loose a volley of arrows, scoring three more hits on the beast's hide. Ash moved next to Steed with his shield to help cover the charge but the big man pushed him away with the length of his maul.

"Let me just do this one fucking thing."

The creature was closing fast. Steed raced to meet him. Steed let out a thundering roar as he leapt up to meet the beast but a pocket of deep snow covering a patch of ice betrayed him. The big man slipped slightly off-balance to catch himself, his two-handed killshot flailing weakly into the beast's hide with a hollow thump. The creature knocked him to the ground, then pinned him and sank its teeth deep into Steed's shoulder, rending chainmail and boiled leather and muscle and bone.

Two arrows struck the monster in its thick neck, piercing through to the fletching. It held its death grip on the big man. Ash began hacking away at its eyes and ears but the beast snarled and bled, fighting with demonic ferocity.

Steed began to hyperventilate as he tried to wrench the beast off his shoulder. His muscles were failing him. The palms of his hands ripped to shreds in the beast's slavering mouth as he kept it off his neck. Blood from both man and beast was pouring into the snow like a dark red fountain. Both were rapidly losing their strength, and when the creature began to pant heavily Ash saw his chance. He sunk the longsword through the ear of the great beast, using the whole weight of his body to slide it deeper and deeper into the cavernous skull. The swordpoint found nothing but bone at first, but after a final push it glided through almost effortlessly, causing the beast to release its grip on Steed's shoulder and stagger backward. Ash saw then that a half-dozen daggers protruded from the beast's thick neck on the other side.

Ziggy was drenched in blood, shaking and sobbing, her powdered white face covered in steaming black liquid. Ash leveled his shield at the beast as it shook its head slowly from side to side and slammed into its forehead, nearly breaking his shield arm on impact. The beast, stunned, could barely stand on its own four legs and Ash reared back and charged again, driving the full weight of his shoulder straight into the monster's skull. The shield fell from his inert hand as his arm left his shoulder and Ash cried in pain as he fell to his knees. The beast fell quietly, collapsing into the crimson snow like a boulder, a sea of arrow shafts rising and falling with each ponderous, deliberate breath.

Ash looked back to Steed, who was twisting his legs in pain, his good hand clamped on his bleeding shoulder. Ziggy was kneeling over him, angrily packing snow into the wound and sniffling. Ash limped over to them, holding his arm up to his shoulder, a shock of intense pain coursing through every bone in his body with each step.

"What just happened?" Simon yelled coming up the cloister, leading four horses behind him. "What...?"

"Simon? Simon! How..?"

"I left when you did, but... holy.. !" He saw the hellhound, then Steed, then shrieked. He let loose of the reigns, grabbed his saddlepack and rushed to him.

"Here. Hold him here," Simon barked. "Ash, what's wrong? The chapel. It's here. Let's get him in the chapel."

Ash released his shoulder to use his good arm to help, and collapsed from the pain. With his good arm underneath him, he sank his bare hand deep into the snow and pushed up. He fell down again. He pushed up again, brought his knees under his body, drew his dagger and wedged it in his teeth. Letting his dislocated shoulder hang loose, he screamed into sharpened steel and staggered to Steed's prone body, steaming in the red iron snow.

The three of them dragged Steed's heavy body into the chapel. The big man's long mane of blonde hair was a dark red stain down his back drenched in gore. Simon quickly cleared away the snow from his shoulder. Ash saw it and nearly retched onto the floor, the color of the marble tiles matching Steed's cold white pallor. The beast had left a gnarled, twisted mass of metal, exposed muscle and bone. Simon instructed Ziggy to carefully lift the big man's chest while he quickly wrapped him in bandages soaked in a colorless fluid he had taken from his pack.

"Steed, just try and relax. It's not as bad as it looks," Simon said as he exchanged a worried glance with the girl. "Try to breathe."

"Is this the chapel? Shit." Steed's eyes beamed with deep laughter. "Keep that book away from me. No way my statue shows me dying like a little bitch." He wheezed heavily, the strength in his lungs fading.

"No more jokes," Simon scolded. "Just relax."

"Fuck. You."

This is not right. This is not happening. Ash's shoulder was aching, his arm numb. He felt helpless. I am to blame for this. Me and my idiotic apologies. I threw him off. My timing couldn't have been worse. Simon was humming something quietly, his eyes closed, his hands pressed down firmly over Steed's wounds. There has to be something I can do. Something more.

Ash turned toward the Tome. Perhaps..? He looked again toward Steed, laying on his back, breathing but motionless. Ziggy whispered to herself with her knees under Steed's head, staring up at a white sky where a beautiful mosaic once covered the ceiling. Ash looked again at the Tome. That which destroys, may also heal. He stepped toward it. But it can't be me. Simon. He's as pure as the snow. The white snow.

"Simon! Simon, the Tome, it... maybe?" He could not put his idea into words and pointed at the book.

Simon looked at him, at the book, then back.

"No, Ash, I-I can't. Not anymore, the things I've done...I, no."

Well, someone has to do this. I did this once for Simon, I can do it now for Steed. Ash strode confidently toward the Tome —then stopped as he heard a familiar voice, faintly, outside.

### Chapter 33 – The Prayer of Nemesis

Dark grey clouds were coming in from the north, presaging another brutally cold winter storm. The horses, which had not been tied up, had been spooked and fled to safety in different corners of the Abbey. The ice in the air slapped Ash in the face like a jilted frost demon, temporarily erasing the image of Steed's pale, white face from his eyes. A dark figure hobbled away from him into the rubble of the abbot's lodgings and disappeared.

Ash ran to catch up, the pain threatening to knock him unconscious with every step. I must get help. I have no idea if he can. But I have to try. Ash hoped that he would get back to Steed before the life in the big man drained away. I must tell him, before he dies. Tell him that he's my brother, my blood. Even if he doesn't believe me. He needs to know.

Behind the pile of scattered stones Ash saw that they had been mostly wrong about the abbot's lodgings. Other than a large hole in the wall and a portion of missing roof, most of the original stone building was intact. Ash walked through the gap and into the main entrance chamber, where his mentor had entertained him hundreds of times over the years.

Although it was less than half a year since the attack, nature had taken back what once belonged to it. Only the larger and sturdier pieces of furniture were still recognizable. Weeds grew up between the shattered tiles in the floor where snow didn't cover them, and in the corner where the Abbot had kept his basin of sacred water the signs of the dark beast were evident. Masses of animal hair clumped along the floor and both nearby walls. The cupboard where the Abbot kept his prized collection of ceremonial ale tankards was smashed, the tankards long gone and the sturdy oak door to the interior of the cupboard covered in giant scratch marks. The beast left a sizable amount of droppings near the cupboard door. That demon dog got its just reward for despoiling the sanctum of one of the world's last holy men. We are arbiters of Torain's justice.

Ash clenched his good fist to draw off some of the pain in his other arm and shouted. "Friend! We mean no harm! We are in desperate need of help! Hello!?"

No response. Check the living quarters, and quickly. Steed is running out of time. He had never been farther inside the Abbot's chambers than he was now, and felt a small pang of guilt as he strode to the door to the Abbot's simple bedchamber. The door had been ripped off its hinges. Ash cringed when he saw it laying there, shattered and inert. A few of the other yardlings were allowed to visit beyond this point, but never me.

The muffled echo of a sneeze behind him made his heart stop. Ash wheeled around.

"Who goes there? Please, good sir, help us! In the name of Torain and all that is holy!"

A faint, muted voice glided over to Ash from the cupboard. He opened the cupboard door. It had a lock on the inside. The small but thick door opened to a tiny secret room, with a narrow stone staircase leading down. Candlelight flickered from below. Ash doubled over, nearly crawling on his hands and knees, and squeezed through.

His was still partially snow-blind and in the dim light Ash could not discern much below him, but after a right-angle turn to the south he came face-to-face with the squatter. The stranger had a grotesque stoop and was clad in nothing more than singed rags. His face was gaunt, his arms and legs as thin as needles, his belly distended. The man's face was covered in scars, small irregular bits of scrubble and a manic look in his eyes. Behind him was a surprisingly spacious underground chamber, with barrels of wheat and giant casks of water strewn about. The man stared at Ash in silence.

Those casks of water may be helpful, but this drifter won't be. "Good sir. Friend. My name is Ash. I've got a very sick friend up in the chapel, and could use any help you could provide."

The man looked at Ash as if he was speaking in a foreign language.

"Please, sir. We need help. Help." Ash held his good hand over his heart as, he hoped, a universal gesture of good intent.

"Ash?" The old man gargled the name in his throat.

"Yes, sir. And what is your name?" I'm losing valuable time. "My name is Ash."

The old man's eyes lit up and for a split second, Ash thought it was a face he knew.

"Ash. Ash! It's me. Me."

"I-I don't recognize you. I'm sorry."

"You, you," the man hacked a glob of red mucous into the crook of his arm, "you visited mecough here severalcough times."

Ash now saw him. Haggard and thin, sickly beyond all belief, but it was him. Thank you Torain, for delivering this man to us now, in our hour of extreme need.

"Father!"

He lurched forward to embrace the man he had once loved. The man coiled back.

"Father?" Ash was confused. He's been through more than I can imagine, trapped in a storeroom for months by that beast. "I've returned. I desperately need your help right now. Or, not me, but my friend, he used to work here in the beet fields..."

The man was visibly shaking now. "Ashley, Ash, Ashley, you... you have no... no idea how long it's been. What things... what things... I've seen. It came in the night, it killed everyone... it took our prize... nothing remains..."

Perhaps if I slowly walk towards him, I can give him the courage he needs to help us. I'm probably the first human being he's talked to in half a year.

"Father, that's all done. The white demon, he's gone. We killed the beast that trapped you in here. Now come upstairs with me. You were once a great healer, and..."

"NO! Nothing remains, nothing but death!"

"Father, please come upstairs with me. I can help you with my good arm, this one. Not all is lost." Ash took the silver-glass key out of his breast pocket. "See? The white demon didn't get this. Now come upstairs with me, my friend–"

"What?! Where did you get that?!" The Abbot was pointing at Ash's face with his bony, bruised finger, but his eyes were fixed on the key. "Where?!"

"Zirev gave it to me, to deliver to the Empress," Ash said cautiously. Perhaps it unlocks a door around here? "But she's been assassinated, and I came back."

"The key! You have it! Oh, Ashley... and the Empress! Hah! Far from dead, young one!" The Abbot gargled in his throat, then attempted to laugh.

Ash winced at the old man's forced cackle. Whatever he's been eating all these months, I'd wager it was dead when he found it.

"Far from...? Come upstairs. Come upstairs, Father, and tell me more."

"No, not dead, Ashley," the Abbot said, not moving a muscle. "Not exactly. Alive, and well, in Exmortus, as she always has been. Give me the key. Give it to me now."

Ash looked up the narrow staircase. Very little light now streamed through the cupboard door and down the stairwell. This man is insane. I need to get Steed to shelter. The chapel has no roof. Perhaps if we rigged our tents to the altar... the headstone is toppled over, and some of the roof is still intact there. It might provide some defense from the elements, for a time... but very little, if the dark beasts return. Ash held the key firmly in his good hand.

"What does this key open? Does it have special powers? Can it help my friend?"

"That key is a gift from Torain, my young one! A gift! The Dukes offered to pay us for it, but once I had it... no, I decided. No. They would not get it from us. It's too powerful. They offered so much gold, Ashley! So much! But..." the man trailed off into silence.

"But what? What does it do?" Steed's time is running out. "What is this key?"

"That, young Ashley, is the Prayer of Nemesis! Archduke Flores himself asked us to retrieve it for him! Duke Valach and that strange man from out east told us where to find it, but... I tell you, Ashley, I was not going to part with it! With this key, Exmortus would gain the army that would help us rule this continent! The faith of Torain could be spread from sea to sea! Think of it, Ashley! Think of it!"

The lonely months have been hard on this man. "Father, I need to know just one question: can this key help my friend live?"

"Give that key to me."

"I will after you come upstairs and heal my friend. I love him as a brother."

"The key! I must have it!"

"My friend comes first."

The old man grabbed Ash's hand with a surprising burst of force, but his feeble strength left him in an instant. Ash didn't try to remove his good hand from the Abbot's grasp.

Then the Abbot bit him.

"What the fuck?" Ash kicked the Abbot square in the chest with the flat of his boot, sending the old man flying backward. He glanced up the stairs and saw a faint white light breaking through the darkness.

The Abbot landed on his back and didn't try to get up. "Ash. Ashley, please... please... I need that key. I need it. Zirev... he was wrong to give it... to give it to you."

"Zirev..." Ash thought back to what the Isogoge told him about the prior. No time for that now. "Listen, Father, listen. I'm giving you once last chance before I go back to my friends. Will you–"

"NO! You would let the key fall into the Dukes' hands! You are too weak, young one! We sacrificed many knights, too many, when we went down into the Hole to get it for them... but we can raise this Abbey back up to glory! You and I! You can be a great king, too, Ashley! A great lord! We can share power! I promise!"

Ash looked at the key in his hand. The white light upstairs was getting stronger.

"Ashley! Don't go! Don't leave me like this! I'm an old man, and weak!"

"I need to go speak with my friend for the last time, Father."

"Ashley! Don't go! Leave the key here with me!"

Ash looked up the stairs. The white light was growing stronger and stronger and somewhere outside, and the faint but unmistakable sound of a great beast baying drifted down to the stair. So the white demon has returned, and all is lost. Nothing else matters. Nothing more we can do.

"Ashley! I command you to give me that key! I am the Abbot of Exmortus Abbey! Together, we can defeat them! We can defeat those who would conspire against us! Give me that key!"

"No."

"No? No? I will excommunicate you, Ashley! The key!"

Ash looked at the key lying inert in his palm. It feels just like a normal key. Perhaps a bit lighter, but nothing extraordinary about it. The light coming through the crack in the open cupboard door upstairs was now a dazzling, blinding white.

This farce ends here. "No, I will not give you this key."

"No? Then what will you do with it? What?"

"I'm going upstairs, to speak one final time with my brother." He paused, the Abbot's stunned silence filling the stairwell. "...and give this key back to its rightful owner."

Ash ignored the old man's screams, walked up the steps and into the light.

End of Book One

About the Author: Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Todd studied Ancient Near Eastern religion and early Judeo-Christianity at the University of Chicago before heading into the real world. He has since worked as a ballroom dance instructor, bass player, mediator, credit specialist, art preparator, janitor, journalist, copy editor, armored car money counter, mambo dancer and satirist. He lives in Dallas, Texas with two tiny little terrors.

Questions? Comments? Confusion? Email me at tmaterno@yahoo.com with any suggestions, praise and/or well-earned scorn. Keep checking the official website at https://wild-ink.net/. And remember, if you enjoyed this book, spread the word! Indie authors like myself don't have the huge marketing budgets of the big boys and girls, so every little bit helps: an intelligent, heartfelt review for an indie book goes a lot father than one for Tolkien or Martin or King. Even if you didn't like this book —hey, I'm not one to judge, it's definitely not for everybody— support indie authors!
