Born Of Darkness (Book 7) (12 page)

So he had done forbidden things, broken taboos among the Eldrim. Perhaps that was the crime he had committed. The thought swirled away in the riptide of the old prisoner’s recollections.

He swam in human memories. Of a distant childhood. Of a strange religious education. Of bizarre untruths about the nature of the cosmos. He saw the faces of friends and betrayers. He saw accusations of heresy because of his misguided beliefs.

Vorkhul absorbed thoughts and memories and language. Some of the words he had heard made sense to him now.

Who’s there? What is it? Have you come to free me? Where has everyone gone?

He felt the last surge of pain and terror and then the ecstatic wave of sensation was gone, leaving Vorkhul replete. He settled down next to the corpse and started to sort through all the things he had learned.

It was time to see exactly how much the world had changed.

***

“Why did you visit the Lady Marketa?” Frater Jonas asked. He had been waiting in the room when Kormak returned. The servants must have let him in.

“I don’t recall inviting you here,” Kormak said.

“Forgive my rudeness. I thought the possibility of saving your life justified it.”

“In what way?”

“In what way am I saving your life? Or in what way is my rudeness justified?”

“What do you think?”

“I think it was most unwise to consult with the Selenean Ambassador without talking to me first.”

“I was invited to break bread.”

“And did not eat anything.”

“You seem particularly well-informed.”

“Little goes on in this palace that Prince Taran or his humble servant, myself, does not find out about.”

“Then you already know what we talked about.”

“Alas, no one was close enough to overhear. Your back was turned and the Lady Marketa spoke in an obscure variant of the Old Tongue. The garden was warded against any sorcerous form of eavesdropping. Not that the Prince would consider such a thing anyway, of course.”

“Of course.” Kormak thought about what the priest had said. His back was turned. The observer could not understand the language Marketa had used. That implied the spy was a lip-reader or that Jonas wanted him to think so. Did he have agents among the bodyguards or the servants? Most likely. There was little the King-Emperor could not afford to offer. No wonder the ambassador was worried about being overheard.

“So what did you talk about?”

“The Lady Marketa was curious about recent goings on in the catacombs.”

“You told her nothing, of course.”

“I told her about the coffin and the Old One.”

“What?”

“I do not doubt she already knew or has ways of finding out. I wanted to learn what exactly she knew. She offered to help.”

“You believe she would do that?”

“If it suits her.”

“Why?”

“You know as well as I do that there are factions within the Courts of the Moon. Just as there are within the Siderean Court. It may be that helping us would embarrass one and improve the standing of another.”

“Do not trust her.”

“I do not. But she is the greatest expert on the Old Ones within a hundred leagues.”

“I would not be so sure of that. There are scholars on the Wizard’s Island who are masters of such lore.”

“Unless they have spent their lifetimes dealing with the Old Ones, I doubt they are as knowledgeable as she.”

“She is our enemy,” Jonas said.

“The last time I looked you were not at war.”

Jonas said nothing.

“It’s like that, is it?” Kormak said.

“Believe me. That woman and her masters mean harm to Siderea and the King-Emperor. They are the enemies of the Holy Sun and the Universal Church and they always have been.”

“It does not mean that on a temporary local basis their interests do not coincide with yours.”

“You are the last man I would expect to hear expressing such sentiments.”

“Life is full of surprises, isn’t it?”

“Just be very careful, my friend.”

Kormak smiled at Jonas. In the world they lived in there were few friends. Kormak doubted Jonas was his. “There are those who think Siderea and the Selenean Courts are natural rivals.”

“I have heard that theory,” Jonas said.

“It makes sense. On one hand, you have a rising Solar power, the richest nation in the world, master of the great ocean, a military giant. On the other you have an ancient Lunar Empire, with powerful armies, and mighty magics. It sees the Eastern half of the Dragon Sea as its natural sphere of influence.”

Jonas put his goblet down on the table. “The Lunars see all the lands bounding the Dragon Sea as their natural sphere of influence. The Old Ones see all humans as their natural slaves. You forget Sir Kormak that it was not that long ago that this, the most powerful nation of the West, was under their heel. Our kingdom was forged in the fires of war. We evicted the last Lunar overlords scarcely a century ago. They see this land as theirs. There are many humans who in secret still agree. They still worship their false gods despite the demonstrable error of their ways.

“Look to the East. Taurea, once the bulwark of the Sunlands is collapsing into civil war. Belaria is a cockpit of chaos where the Knights of Blood assert the power of their old gods. Even here in Siderea we are plagued by heresy and secret Shadow worshipping cults. King Aemon does not believe this is an accident. He believes the Old Ones are moving against us in secret, weakening our realms. He believes they plan a new Resurgence, to reclaim what was theirs.”

“He may well be right.” Kormak thought of what he had seen on his own journeys. The world was darkening. “But there has been political turmoil ever since the First Empire collapsed.”

Jonas held his glass up and studied his reflection in its side. He lowered it and took a sip. “That is the problem, isn’t it? It might just be the natural state of things. Brother falls out with brother. Ambitious nobles seek to become dukes. Dukes seek to become kings. Everywhere the peasants suffer. It is the lot of man.”

He paused to consider his words. “Wars cost money just as much as they cost lives. It takes a fortune to raise an army. We know that Lunar silver finds its way into the hands of heretics here. We know that Lunar weapons and armour find their way into Belaria and Umbrea. These things can be tracked. Sorcerers trained in the east come west and they fight in our wars, always to our detriment.”

“It has not been unknown for things to happen the other way too.” Kormak agreed with a good deal of what Jonas said, had seen evidence of such things with his own eyes. But he had also seen that no one side had a monopoly on virtue. “It takes two sides to make a conflict.”

Jonas laughed. “Indeed but it only takes one strong army to conquer a country. Someone needs to keep watch. Someone needs to stand guard. Your order does that against individual Old Ones. King Aemon and my order seek to do that on a much larger level, among the nations and princedoms. Surely you can see the necessity.”

Kormak felt like saying he had seen that claim used to justify all manner of power grabs. People who set themselves up as guardians against a hidden enemy were always tempted by wielding secret power. Who knew that better than his own order? It hardly seemed diplomatic to say so he nodded.

Jonas took this for acquiescence. “Lady Marketa is centuries old. She is a sorceress. She is an agent of the Courts of the Moon. She is one of the favoured creatures of the rulers of that ancient empire. Be aware of this if you plan on having any further dealings with her. She is not our friend. She is the agent of a powerful rival and she will do anything she can to undermine the King-Emperor and his realm. At the moment, we are the last bulwark against the ambitions of her masters.”

“You are hinting that she might be behind the Vorkhul problem.”

“I doubt she would admit it but it is a possibility worth considering, is it not? Our realm is thrown into chaos, the power of her gods is displayed, even here in the shadow of the Angel. She is, as you have pointed out, an expert on the Old Ones.”

“The sarcophagus did not come from her. It came from your own governor in your own colonies.”

“Lady Marketa has friends even there. They might not love her, but they love the king even less. They could aid her in getting the sarcophagus sent here, even if her own agents in the colonies could not.”

Kormak wondered about this. A lot of secret enemies were suddenly appearing, and this would be a useful pretext to clamp down. He saw the hand of Prince Taran in this and the fine mind of Frater Jonas. This crisis could be used to advance their agenda.

Kormak turned the possibilities over in his mind then dismissed them. His task was simple, to find Vorkhul and end his rampage. He did not have to care about the schemes of kings and dukes and nobles.

“I am a simple man, Frater,” Kormak said. “My goals are simple goals. Protect the innocent. Oppose the Shadow. Uphold the Law. That is what I intend to do. I shall leave you to worry about the political ramifications.”

“I do not think you are so simple, nor is it so easy to do the things you claim to want to. Often it’s hard to tell the innocent from the guilty, the followers of the Shadow from deluded fools, those who seek to uphold the law from the criminal.”

“That is not the Law I was talking about.”

“I know. I was talking to myself more than to you. Sometimes in order to protect the greater good, you must break the law and even do things against your own conscience. I have.”

Kormak had too, but he did not want to give any ground. “We need to try to make those distinctions though,” he said.

“Aye, we do.” Jonas hesitated for a moment, rose from the chair, walked over to the fire and studied the flames. “There are times when I wish I saw the world as you do,” he said. “I fear my vision is clouded sometimes.”

Kormak felt guilty, pretending to a clarity of purpose he lacked.

“I would see this moongate that Lady Marketa is so interested in,” he said.

“That is easily enough arranged,” said Jonas. “Come with me.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THEY WALKED TOWARDS the large building on the far side of the courtyard. It loomed several stories high. Its stained glass windows contained mosaics of elder signs. Statues depicting kings and saints stood sentry in alcoves in its walls.

Jonas strode along. His hands were behind his back, left hand clasping right wrist. His eyes looked down as if he were concentrating hard and did not want to be distracted.

He paused at the foot of the stairs leading up to the Museum’s heavy oaken doors. The ironwork reinforcing the wood was moulded into protective runes. It looked as if the doors could resist a battering ram. Jonas gave a sign to one of the guards in the sentry box. The doors to the Museum swung open.

The priest strode up the steps and Kormak followed. They stepped from sunlight to shadow. It was cooler within.

They walked through a high vaulted hall containing the stuffed remains of several huge animals. A woolly mammoth stood in the beams of light from one of the stained glass windows. Across from it was a bridge-backed wyrm, a reptile so huge it made the mammoth look small. The skeleton of a dragon hung from the ceiling. It ran the length of the large room.

“I’m glad you wanted to come here. The King would like your opinion on the moongate.”

“He is thinking of making the trade?”

Jonas glanced around and then shrugged. “It is difficult to understand how His Majesty thinks sometimes. I am just a humble servant.”

“You certainly seem to have become one since you entered the palace.”

Jonas gave a short barking laugh. “I enjoyed our sea voyage you know. I felt a sense of freedom on that ship. But this palace is where my duty lies and where their burden is heaviest.”

They entered a smaller chamber. Elder signs from half a dozen places lined the walls. There were tracings of symbols to be found in the deserts near Tanyth worked on copper. There was a stone pillar that must have come from somewhere in the Northlands. In one corner brooded a black monolith in which a truesilver star within a circle had been set. It hovered just above a plinth of similar black stone. Doors led out to much larger halls on the left and right, but Jonas kept walking straight ahead through an archway. “This is quite a collection.”

“It was started by the Archmage Pelageus,” Jonas said. “His descendants have added to it. King Aemon most of all. He finds such artefacts fascinating.”

“So I gathered.”

“The possibility that worries me most is that someone who knows about the King’s obsession may have chosen it as a way to strike at him.”

“By sending the sarcophagus?”

Jonas nodded.

“It seems a far-fetched way of doing so.”

“I’ve seen stranger plots,” said Jonas.

“So have I.”

The sarcophagus would have looked at home in the room they walked through. Metal coffins stood upright against the walls. The lids had been moulded into the shapes of sleeping humans. Their features were fine. Their eyes were huge. Over each sarcophagus hung a silver mask, each also an excellent representation of a human face.

“Some of these belonged to the Priest Kings who served the Old Ones when they ruled Siderea. Some come from Umbrea. They were interred in mausoleums.”

“I would have thought they would have been destroyed by the Inquisition.”

“Interring them under the shadow of the Angel is symbolic of Solar ascendance,” said Jonas. “It proves the servants of the Holy Sun have triumphed over the worshippers of the false gods and have no fear of them.”

More guards stood by the entrance of the next chamber. Each of them carried a shield warded with an elder sign. Their helmets were similarly protected. They had the hard, fit look of elite warriors. This room was lit by sunbeams falling through stained glass windows in the roof. Dust floated in the pillars of light. At the far end of the chamber stood the moongate. It was an arch three times the height of a man, made of white marble inscribed with runes. Liquid truesilver filled the arch, remaining upright in defiance of gravity. Kormak walked closer and studied it.