The Dark Remains (63 page)

“If we did,” Vani said, “would we not have journeyed there and dug it up already?”

Great. He and Grace were fated to do something no one had any idea how to do—least of all themselves.

Sareth held his hands toward the fire. “The cards only tell us what will happen, not how. Or when. For all we know, it could be years from now that you journey to Morindu. And right now there are other secrets to concern us. Ones that, unlike those of Morindu, have already been exhumed.”

Durge grunted. “How about telling us the secret of why you have been following us ever since Ar-tolor.”

The Mournish man sighed. “I suppose that is as good a place as any to begin. I am sorry for any mistrust I have caused with my silence. However, it is not usually our way to speak with outsiders. Only the urgency of events causes me to do so now. As does the nature of those to whom I am speaking. But to answer your question, my good cloud, we followed you from Ar-tolor for the same reason we journeyed there in the first place: to keep watch.”

Lirith drew her knees to her chest. “But why?”

Sareth opened his mouth, but Grace was faster. That analytical mind of hers, Travis knew.

“Because we’re your friends, Lirith. They think Travis and I are going to help find their lost city, but then we went back to Earth, so they decided to keep an eye on all of you in case we showed up, figuring you’d be the first people we’d contact here on Eldh.”

Sareth laughed softly. “It seems we Mournish are not so mysterious as we would like to believe. What you speak is true. Our seers told us the one we sought would be a wizard of northern magic, yet that he would not come from the north but rather another world. That was why Vani dared to use the artifact to journey to your Earth.” He looked at Travis. “Then, when we heard the tales about what you did at Calavere last Midwinter’s Eve, we knew you had to be the one. However, before we could reach Calavere, you had returned to your world.”

Sareth stirred the coals, sending sparks snapping upward. “A few months ago, we learned that you had returned to Eldh, but the ravages of the Burning Plague made travel difficult, and by the time we reached Castle Spardis in Perridon, you were both already gone. But we kept watch on your companions. And I sent word to Vani that you had returned to your world once again.”

A thought occurred to Travis. “Sareth, Vani never explained something to us. How were you able to use the artifact to send messages to her?”

The Mournish man’s eyes glittered, and he pulled down the sleeves of his shirt. But not before Travis caught the pale gleam of scars in the firelight.

“I thought you said the Mournish were forbidden to work blood sorcery.”

“Sometimes that which is forbidden must be done in order to prevent a far greater danger.”

Travis thought maybe he understood. In a way, it was like Farr’s dispensation from the Seekers. Rules were made to protect people, but sometimes the rules had to be broken in order to save them. While it took a fairy’s blood to send a person through the gate, it seemed human blood was enough to send words.

Aryn edged closer to the fire. “So when we left Artolor, Sareth, you followed us here to Tarras.”

“That is partly true. But there is another reason we had to journey to Tarras.”

Falken looked up. “The murdered gods. You know what’s happening, don’t you? You know how and why they’re being slain.”

“And we spent all this time trying to find the murderer,” Aryn said. “Why didn’t you just tell us, Sareth?”

The Mournish man gave a bitter smile. “Wagons are not so swift as ships, fair lady. You arrived in Tarras several days before us. I did not reach the city until the day the Scirathi attempted to harm you,
beshala.
” He said these last words to Lirith, his eyes intent.

Lirith did not meet his eyes. “The Scirathi. You mean one like the sorcerer who attacked Grace and Travis on their world.”

Sareth nodded. “Although there was something strange about the sorcerer of Scirath who attacked you,
beshala
. What, I cannot say—but that he was Scirathi there can be no doubt. Only they wear masks of gold.”

“Masks,” Grace murmured. She met the questioning gazes of the others. “The masks are the focus for their magic. We saw that firsthand.”

Beltan cleared his throat. It was the first sound the blond knight had made since they had gathered around the fire. “All right, let me see if I’m following this. These sorcerers—the Scirathi—they’re the ones behind the murders of the gods?”

Sareth hesitated, then nodded.

Melia clenched small hands into fists. “They will pay for this!”

“But how?” Falken said. “Even a sorcerer should not have the ability to slay a god.”

The Mournish man looked down, silent for a long moment. Travis realized he was gazing at his wooden leg. At last he looked up.

“It is a demon,” he said.

Vani clamped a hand to her mouth in an expression of open horror. Clearly she knew what Sareth’s words meant, and by their grim expressions Melia and Falken did as well. But Travis had no idea.

“A demon?” he said.

“Yes,” Sareth answered. “A relic of the War of the Sorcerers long ago. When the sorcerers rose up against the god-kings of Amún, they created the demons as their greatest weapons. A demon could lay waste to an entire city, destroying every last grain of its walls, leaving only bare sand.”

Aryn shuddered. “Just like Madam Vil’s hostel.”

“But the demons, what were they?” Travis said.

“They were
morndari
made incarnate. The
morndari
were ever bodiless and hungry spirits—that is how blood could be used to draw and control them. But a few of the sorcerers found a way to bind the
morndari
, encasing them in bodies of stone. These were the demons. Incarnate, they could walk across the land, but their hunger was not lessened in their physical form. They consumed everything in their path, and they were never sated.”

These words sickened Travis. He could almost see
them—vague, shadowy creatures opening vast maws to eat entire cities as people tried in vain to flee.

“If they were never sated,” Grace said, “then how were they stopped? Why didn’t they consume everything in Amún?”

“They very nearly did. It is because of the demons that the lands of Amún are now the Morgolthi—a wasteland of bones, dust, and death. However, in the end, the sorcerers who created them realized their folly and managed to undo their magic, destroying all the demons.”

“But not all of them,” Falken said. “Not if you’re right.”

Sareth turned toward the bard. “We can only guess that one of the demons crossed the Summer Sea, to the shores of Falengarth.”

“But why didn’t it destroy things here?” Lirith said.

“It was bound somehow, imprisoned in a chamber beneath the very hill upon which Tarras was later built. Although who bound it there we do not know. It must have been a sorcerer of vast power.”

Travis forced himself to stop biting his lip. “But if it took such a powerful sorcerer to bind the demon the first time, how can it be locked up again?”

“The demon is not free,” Sareth said. “Not completely, for were that so there would be only a void where Tarras stands. Its prison has grown weaker, yes, due to the actions of the Scirathi. But I believe the sorcerers have found a way to use the demon for their own ends without releasing it.”

“Their own ends,” Melia said, her voice rising with fury. “You mean to murder the gods!”

Sareth regarded Melia with solemn eyes. “No, great lady, that is not so. To murder the gods is not the reason the Scirathi are using the demon. Instead, the deaths of the gods are merely meant to appease the thing—an attempt to sate it—so that they might safely pass by it.”

“You mean,” Falken exclaimed, “the Scirathi are sacrificing gods to the demon just so they can get past it?”

Melia was shaking with rage. “That’s … that’s utterly perverse!”

Travis’s heart rattled in his chest. Something was wrong—and not just the existence of an ancient monster or the pointless deaths of three gods. Then, with a chill, he understood.

“Sareth,” he said, “you told us that the Scirathi are sacrificing gods to the demon in order to sate it.”

“That is so.”

“But you also said demons can never be sated, no matter how much they consume.”

“No, they cannot.”

“Then what’s to keep it from getting stronger as it feeds, strong enough to escape completely?”

Sareth gazed at his wooden leg and said nothing.

It was Vani who broke the silence.

“Brother, you have yet to tell us how you learned of the demon beneath Tarras.”

Sareth bowed his head, and he seemed to be murmuring something. Was he gathering his thoughts? Or was it a prayer? Before Travis could decide, the Mournish man looked up, his dark eyes haunted.

“It was two years ago that I learned of the demon—not long after you left us, Vani. A dervish came to our caravan where we were camped, at the foot of the Mountains of the Shroud.”

“A dervish?” Falken said, and this question surprised Travis. He had always thought Falken knew everything
about the people and history of Eldh. Evidently there were limitations even to the ancient bard’s knowledge.

Sareth glanced at the bard. “The free working of blood magic is forbidden among the Mournish until the time we regain Morindu the Dark, lest we become like the Scirathi—covetous of power. However, there are those who have chosen to forsake this law, and who strike off alone to master what secrets of sorcery they can. These are the dervishes. Most of them are mad—that is the price they pay for their solitude and the secrets they learn—and this one was no exception.

“He was dying when he stumbled into the caravan. I think that was the only reason he spoke to me, to boast of the mysteries he had learned before death took him. He was dry and thin as bones left in a desert, and his face was a mask of scabs and flies. He said he had come from the Morgolthi, the Hungering Land, and I did not doubt him. He said he had dug there, in the burning sands, and he had found … this.”

Sareth drew something from a pocket. It looked to Travis like a thick, wedge-shaped piece of pottery, covered with angular markings.

“All that night, as I watched over him, the dervish babbled in his sleep. He was burning with fever, and little of what he said made sense. But a few words I heard over and over.
The Dark shall rise again
, he said. And,
His blood is the key
. At dawn I watched the life leave him, and we buried him there.”

Vani reached out, took the shard of pottery from Sareth. “What is it? What did the dervish give his life to dig from the sands of the Morgolthi?”

“It’s a piece of a tablet,” Sareth said. “That I knew at once, although I could not read it. However, Mirgeth could when I took it to him. It is written in the ancient tongue of Amún.”

“What does it say?” Falken asked.

“Very little. A few fragments of words, enough to let
us know it was written during the War of the Sorcerers, that was all. I was prepared to forget the dervish and his ravings when, accepting the shard back from Mirgeth, I dropped it. It struck the ground and …”

Sareth took the shard back from Vani. Carefully, he pulled the shard into two halves and drew something out. It was a thin circle of gold.

Vani sat up straight. “A
fa’deth.
”

“Yes.” Sareth glanced at the others. “It is a
fa’deth
, a message-disk, used by the high sorcerers of Morindu to send missives to one another.”

In the crimson glow of the coals, Travis could make out fine engravings on the disk. “What does it say?”

“Make it speak for us, Sareth,” Vani said, her eyes as bright as the golden disk.

He shook his head. “To do so requires blood. Once the elders let me use the
fa’deth
, but once was enough, and I must not shed more blood for it carelessly.”

“You mean that it can speak to you?” Grace said.

“As I said, it is how the highest sorcerers sent messages to one another. Even if the disk were intercepted, the thief would not be able to hear the missive.”

“Unless the thief was a sorcerer as well,” Travis murmured, not realizing he had spoken until he saw Sareth gazing at him.

“What did it tell you?” Vani said.

Sareth drew in a breath. “That a demon had been imprisoned in a mound of white stone north across the sea—a mound, from its description, I knew to be the very hill upon which Tarras now stands. And it also told how something else was entombed with the demon. A relic of Morindu the Dark.”

“What relic?” Vani whispered, leaning closer.

“A scarab,” Sareth said. “A scarab of Orú.”

Vani gasped, but by the puzzled looks on the faces of those around him, Travis wasn’t the only one who was confused.

“Isn’t a scarab just a piece of jewelry?” he said.

Sareth laughed, a deep and chiming but somehow mirthless sound. “You might as well say the sun is just another flame like a candle. Of all the secret magics of Morindu the Dark, there was none so powerful as the scarabs of Orú.”

“Wait a minute,” Grace said. “I heard your grandmother say that name. Orú. Who was he?”

Vani rested her hands upon her knees. “For three hundred years, he was the god-king of Morindu the Dark.”

“Nonsense,” Durge rumbled. “No man can be king for three centuries.”

Again Sareth laughed. “Yes, that is true, my good cloud. No man. But a god?”

“Orú was not truly a deity,” Melia said, her expression outraged. “The god-kings of Amún were just tyrants who posed as deities so they could claim a divine right to rule their cities. It was despicable!”

“And yet,” Falken said, “some believe that, without such harsh rule, the first cities could never have been carved out of the deserts of Amún. And certainly it was those fleeing the destruction of Amún who brought civilization to Falengarth. Without the god-kings of Moringarth, Tarras would never have existed.”

Sareth weighed the gold
fa’deth
in his hand. “It is true that Orú began life as any ordinary man—in fact, he was the son of a beggar. You see, in Morindu, a king or queen did not rule by right of birth but rather right of magic. The greatest sorcerer of each generation was crowned king or queen. And in the thousand years of its history, no sorcerer was greater than Orú. While the other rulers of Amún dared to call themselves gods, only Orú was truly as powerful as a god.”