Dreams of Darkness Rising (51 page)

“As the demons lunge at Irthig,” the stranger said. “He declares that once more he must weave his macabre dance of death—leaps that are adorned by fountains of crimson life—twirls ever accompanied by the splinter of bone.”

His sword and dagger seemed to work in symbiosis, darting and twisting in a shimmer as the two bandits attacked.

Aldred’s sword rang out as he clashed with the goblin bandit, turning the spear aside. It was all he could do not to watch this stranger.

“Our hero flows through the Pale-spawn! The unholy creatures fall like ears of corn at the harvest. Irthig mourns their passage as if it were his own kin, for his black heart is jaded by chaos.”

He span and his sword clattered against the bandits, forcing it past his side. He stabbed upwards with his dagger and the tip drove into the jaw of his foe.

The goblin fighting Aldred stumbled as his dead comrade fell against him. Seizing his moment Aldred thrust his sword through the bandit’s chest, green blood torrenting down his arm. He suppressed the rising nausea as the bandit died.

The goblin leader was the only remaining bandit now and in desperation he charged at the theatrical warrior. Almost idly the black cloaked man jumped to the side so the attack was far off target. The stranger span with a flash of steel and his sword sliced cleanly through the goblin’s neck. The startled head flew into the air. With a flourish the man halted his spin and caught the head, even as the body crashed to the ground, twin jets of blood pumping into the dirt.

“The act ends with Irthig’s soliloquy, but I accept that such rich verse will fall upon ears that no longer hear mortal sounds, yet rather aspire to the symphony of the afterlife. Such tales we may have shared over a mulled wine and cheese, my goblin friend. Until we meet in another world I bid you adieu. Please recall, its nothing personal. It’s simply what I do.”

Aldred retched at the side of the road as the stranger tossed aside the head. The stranger walked towards the maimed bandit who writhed in the dirt and casually ran him through.

The stranger then turned and approached Aldred. The young noble was shaking as the adrenaline faded.

“You have my thanks, sir. May I ask your name?”

“My name? I have had so many. More faces than I can recall but you shall call me Ekris. And I fear that now I shall be late for the Spring Fayre.”

Chapter 5    The Sanctuary

Blossomstide 1924

The room gave Emelia the feeling of being in a womb. There were no straight edges to be seen; every surface flowed in gentle curves from the apex of the ceiling some fifteen foot above her strange bed. She lay in a shallow hollow in the floor, padded with wool blankets that carried the mustiness of rare usage. The room was lit with a serene glow from crystalline rocks placed within a dozen alcoves. The room was fragrant with the scent of lavender and sandalwood.

Emelia felt tranquil as she lay there staring at the contours of the ceiling. In time she was aware that her shoulder was not burning with pain and she touched the area gingerly. The wound was gone, nought but scars to indicate it had been there. What had happened?

It was a strain to sit up, like every individual muscle had to be taught how to perform even this basic function. Across the chamber, in the corner, a man sat propped up against the wall.

He was broad and stocky, with sandy brown hair tied back in a pony tail. His beard was unkempt and did little to hide a haggard face that added years to his likely age.

“Hello,” he said. “I’ve been watching you while you’ve slept. Sorry, I know that sounds a touch creepy.”

Emelia looked at him without smiling; where were Jem and Hunor? His demeanour seemed amiable but Emebaka was whispering caution. She fiddled nervously with her shell pendant.

“Looked like a good rest you were having. I’ll admit to being jealous,” he said.

“It’s a rare thing for me as well, so don’t feel too envious,” Emelia said.

“Your Imperial is very crisp, like an Eerian’s.”

Emelia continued to stare at him warily.

“My mother used to tell me—between hitting me with her mighty wooden spoon—that dreams were what your spirit saw when it left your body at night. She always claimed the wind sprites, children of the earth goddess Nolir, would slip on the breeze into your bedchamber and ease your spirit away with their long ethereal hooks.”

“I had a friend who believed something similar. Spirits at night,” Emelia said.

“Really? Because I’m fairly well travelled and I’d say Corinthians usually believe that dreams are vapours from the Pale, changed as they bubble through the oceans. The good-hearted get the dreams that Asha the water father has altered the most. The wicked, well you know. I do assume your friend is an Islander like yourself?”

“No she was Azaguntan. In truth I’m not…ah, certain what the Islanders believe. I left as a child. I am…was, a servant. A kitchenmaid. Not any more. Now I’m—not certain.”

Emelia’s head was heavy, her thoughts dragging like feet through mud.

“I don’t think any of us know who we truly are,” the man said. “We play so many roles in our days: child, warrior, adventurer, tracker, lover and friend. I’ve had such a number, such a range of guises to wear that at times I lose track. Feel like coming to a room like this and just been alone with my thoughts, sort out the clutter.”

“What is this room?”

“This is Master Mek-ik-Ten’s chamber of reflection. He just lost the mirrors. Ouch, sorry, terrible jest. We were brought in here to be healed and to regain our fortitude.”

“He’s done a good job on my wound. What was wrong with you?”

“He’s not certain. Since I escaped from Erturia a month or so ago I’ve been delirious and running this fever. We’re sure it’s not contagious, so don’t panic. Besides it seems to be reducing now.

“I’m Kervin by the way. I’m a tracker, amongst my other ‘masks.’ I’m from Artoria which I suppose makes us distant cousins.”

“How so?”

“Well without getting all Jem-like on you it works like this. I’m from South Artoria, near Keresh, but my old dad was from Belgo in the North. The first men to settle in Artoria, ooh three thousand years ago, were from Aquatonia and Corinth. They’re your kin, the Islanders. So really we’re distant cousins.”

“The resemblance between us is uncanny,” Emelia said and the two erupted in laughter. The mirth made her shoulder ache but it had been so long since she had laughed she had forgotten the warm intoxication it provided.

“So we’ve got an Islander former maid with impeccable Imperial travelling with an Eerian knight, a Thetorian thief and a Goldorian Wild-mage, sat in a cave belonging to a Galvorian monk with an Artorian tracker. We’re a lesson in international unity! Mind you when we add Marthir in, the Artorians take the lead.”

“Marthir?”

“Jem’s wife, the druid. You won’t have met her yet, she’s a…force of nature.”

The jest fell on deaf ears. Emelia felt faint, the room swirling like a whirlpool around her. Nausea clawed her throat and she crumpled back onto the soft sheets. He’s got a wife? Jem has a wife? The force of her furious scream was countered by the silence of deepest sorrow such that all that came out was a stifled gasp.

The room came into focus and Kervin’s face dominated her vision. Up close she could see he was a handsome man, though the impact of starvation had tarnished the better features.

“I’ll take it that was a surprise? Sorry,” Kervin said. “I mean Marthir is his wife but, well, they’re not really together in what I’d consider a normal sense. It’s a thing of the past, back when we all adventured together. Before she left to become a druid.”

“Are you and her…together then?”

“Me? Marthir? Nolir’s roots no. No. Druids are polygamous and that’s way too strange for me, all that free love. I mean she’s a gorgeous woman, wild and passionate, but she’s my friend, my comrade. You can’t go into battle by the side of someone you love. It ruins the focus. You’d wind up dead and I was far too close to that happening in Erturia to risk it again.”

Emelia smiled, her eyes glittering like a hundred fire flies in the amber light. Kervin helped her sit back up.

“Kervin, my name is Emelia. I have no family name I know of. I don’t really feel like seeing the others yet. Shall we unclutter our thoughts a bit more, like you said? Maybe you could tell me more about you, Hunor and Jem and what you used to get up to?”

“No problem, Emelia. Let’s enjoy some peace and quiet. It is supposed to be a room of reflection after all. Let me tell you about Hunor, me and the Wailing Bog-Troll of Varsan…”

***

Lady Orla Farvous had a degree of familiarity with Galvorians yet despite this she could not help but be impressed by Mek-ik-Ten’s residence. To say it was hewn from the mountain was a disservice to the quality of the place. There were no rough chiselled edges or harsh carved lines to be seen. Rather the place flowed from the rock around them, all smooth graceful curves. Orla scowled at herself: where were these artistic thoughts coming from?

The druid girl, Marthir, sat opposite Orla and maintained a manic energy. Hunor sat with her and conveyed the manner of a man entertaining a tavern full of dear friends. Each laugh and familiar touch of Marthir’s arms irritated Orla far more than it should.

Mek-ik-Ten, sat cross-legged on a rock chair with a long pipe in his wide mouth. Orla had always found Galvorians a curiosity. The race hailed from Orio, an island a thousand miles west of mainland Nurolia and many more from Coonor, yet were no strangers in the City of Mists. Even as a girl she had seen their stunted bodies, skin the colour of richest soil and had been fascinated. They had turned their expertise in excavation and rock lore into an indispensible requirement for any nation that mined. Eerians had employed them for hundreds of years, along with Earth-mages, burrowing further and further into seams of gold, silver, iron and magnate in the Cloudtip Mountains.

Master Mek-ik-Ten, a Galvorian monk, exuded an infectious tranquillity and all in the room were struggling to stay awake, despite the clear importance of the impending debate.

 “I’ve never been able to work out how someone who eats rocks can still cook such delicious food,” Hunor said, his mouth full of the potato dish Master Ten had prepared.

“Hunor!” Marthir said. “It’s plain to see your etiquette hasn’t improved in the last eight years.”

“Hunor’s skills have ever lain within realms more subtle than etiquette, Marthir,” Master Ten said. “Answer me this, young Thetorian—what use is a herbalist who can not flavour the fruits of the earth that you now consume?”

“I’ll assume the herbology also helps with that potent mixture of smoke you sedate us all with?” Hunor said.

 “Peace of mind is peace of body. You shall not heal with minds wounded by anger,” said Master Ten.

Marthir stretched like a cat, pulling Jem’s cloak around her tattooed shoulders.

“So you finally got caught doing something you shouldn’t have been doing, eh boys?” Marthir said. “Astonished it took so long. What on earth did you do to get taken down by an Eerian knight?”

“As you suggest, they perpetrated a crime against one of the most important nobles in Coonor and justice still awaits them there. It is no matter of jest,” Orla said.

“All credit to you then, lady knight. I could never find Jem when I was married to him. He was always sneaking off for a wild weekend of meditation with Master Ten.”

“I’m certain Lady Farvous has minimal interest in the details of our marital woes, Marthir,” Jem said. “She may however join me and Hunor in a certain curiosity as to why we find you on the wrong side of the Emerald Mountains with a semi-conscious Kervin and some rather blood-thirsty pursuers?”

“And a horse one minute and a mountain lion the next,” Hunor said.

Marthir sat forward, the green glow of the lichen making her emerald eyes all the more intense.

“With regards the latter, I achieved fourth tier in the mastery of druidism and with that came the gift of bestial forms: therianthropy. It’s a gift to use…carefully. As for my pursuers: they were Knights of the Ebony Heart.”

“This is fantasy,” Lady Orla said, her eyes rolling. “To my recall there are only three true orders of knighthood: the Eerian, the Goldorian and the Artorian.”

“Well true or not they are a force to be respected,” Marthir said. “It’s unlikely you’d have met them as they don’t venture this side of the mountains so often and certainly not towards the splendid isolation of Eeria.”

“Tell us of this black order, Marthir,” Master Ten said.

“We’re not certain as to when they first formed but they came to the attention of the Druid council about a decade ago, before I went to the Great Forest,” Marthir said. “They originate from the wastes of North-Eastern Artoria and seem to confine their activity to the mountains and the wilderness.”

“And did the noble Artorian knights not take affront at this black troop?” Orla asked.

“The Artorian knights? Noble? I’d say you’re stuck in your fairy tales, m’lady,” Marthir said. “Agreeably I’ve no love for the northerners. None of the Kereshians have. But it’s true to say if they spent half the time being knights that they spent arguing politics and principle then the Ebony Heart would have never got a foothold.”

“But why were they pursuing you, Marthir? And what is the nature of these devices they employ?” Jem said.

“I suppose it best to start at the beginning,” Marthir said. “Four years ago I came into possession of an old book after clashing with two knights near Sandar’s Beck. I was with Kervin and Ygris then as Sir Tinkek was indisposed.”

“Tinkek? How is the old sot?”

“I’m sure you’re more aware than I, Hunor, what with your covert arrangements.”

The thief shifted uncomfortably in his stone seat as Jem flashed a curious stare at him.

“He’s grand, Hunor. Fatter and, well, goutier than when last you saw him,” Marthir said. “He’s neck deep in all the machinations of the knighthood. Half of them joust with only their tongues now, the other half charm the ladies and curry favour from the equally useless king.”