The Pinnacle Of Empire (Book 6) (8 page)

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s been a family secret for generations.”

“A wizard and a royal princess,” the mistress mumbled, selecting a cherry tart from a tray by the bed. She took a nibble and tossed it back on the table. “Do tell your little pet.”

“What a disaster it was. The king sent his wizard to tutor his daughter in some of the arts. It seems he taught her something else and left her with child. The enraged king hid-- I should say sealed-- her in that dark, forbidden tower at the back of the palace. She was never heard from again. The sorcerer was dangerous and the king realized it. He exiled the fiend and told him if he was found in the kingdom in three days, the guards had orders to kill him on sight. The monster fled across the continent; eventually, it turned out, to the Prince of Prertsten’s obscure court at the far end of the peninsula.”

“And he was never heard from again?”

King Nemenese turned from his distracted thoughts and stared at the mistress. She dropped the macaroon she nibbled and looked down, avoiding his glaring response.

“You really don’t know do you? That scraggly, unscrupulous wizard became the Dark King of Dreaddrac, nearly destroying the peninsula and the known world! That’s why Velstorbokkin kings have banned wizards from the kingdom through the succeeding generations.”

Silent, the mistress settled down into her bed and said no more.

Nemenese stared at her a moment. “Never repeat a word of what I told you.”

*

“Whoever sent that assassin to kill me will try again,” Nemenese said to the chatra in the private audience chamber the next morning. He looked out across the horizon toward Senoshesvas then turned to the chatra. “If it’s the emperor, I must make an alliance with King Nindax before the perpetrator can seize my kingdom. We stand alone without allies at this point. We cannot survive as a sovereign kingdom should the might of the empire fall upon us without warning.”

“Senoshesvas and Velstorbokkin have never been allies, even when the imperial threat loomed large. Nindax is a treacherous and unprincipled man, Majesty. He is ambitious as well. Will he make a reliable ally? He could promise support but turn on you in a crisis if he sees a better opportunity.”

“We can’t trust him, but we must have an ally. We can’t stand alone against the empire should war come. A treaty between Velstorbokkin and Senoshesvas, once known to the emperor, would at least be a deterrent against a brazen surprise attack on us. I must to go to Senoshesvas at once to confer with King Nindax face to face.”

The chatra rushed up to the king who was again looking out the window toward Senoshesvas. Dark storm clouds swirled over the horizon. “Majesty, you must not travel personally to Senoshesvas. They refuse even to allow Velstorbokkin ships to land at any coastal harbor, and to attempt travel through the Urgenak Forest would be insane.”

“I must go. Without the alliance, I’m a dead man anyway. Sooner or later, the culprit behind this assassination attempt will get through my guards unless I secure a treaty with Nindax. That will make seizure of the kingdom unpalatable at my death at least.”

*

King Nemenese left the capital in the early morning hours with only his chatra and son aware of his destination. He traveled through a foggy chill with only eight of his most trusted bodyguards, lest he draw attention, traveling through the kingdom or alarm Nindax at his approach. They reached the Urgenak Forest at the southern border late one afternoon and camped for the night at the forest edge. The huge, twisted trees loomed ominously ahead of them like a defiant army drawn up arm-in-arm for battle. The massive sprawling and interlocking limbs blocked out the daylight, keeping the forest floor in perpetual darkness. No woodcutter had entered the forest in generations.

“Secure the horses well, and post a guard through the night,” Nemenese ordered. “No telling what will be hunting during the night around here. The guards will be held responsible for maintaining the fire through the night.”

“Are the stories true?” the captain asked Nemenese. “Do the dead walk that forest at night?”

“No one knows for sure. Over the generations stories change and get embellished. Perhaps there is nothing more than tales born of fear.”

“They say the dead live again over and over in there. What’s the real story behind those tales?”

Nemenese sat by the newly blazing fire and poked at it with a stick. “Sit here next to me, and enjoy the warmth before the night air chills our bones,” the king said, allowing the captain to sit in his presence. “Long ago, even before the Powteros Empire, back when the Occintoc Empire was still in infancy, the kings of Senoshesvas and Velstorbokkin went to war in their bid for empire. They committed massive armies, conscripted from all their subjects that fought a ferocious battle in those mountains. The would-be victor hoped to lead the combined might of the two kingdoms and challenge the infant Occintoc Empire, but with such high stakes, it was a bloodbath. They sacrificed a generation on both sides in that battle. The kingdoms could never again successfully challenge the empire.”

“Neither side was victorious?”

“The might of both kingdoms was lost in those three days of battle. The Occintoc emperor was enmeshed in the consolidation of his new empire and failed to capitalize on the opportunity to seize the devastated kingdoms. Senoshesvas and Velstorbokkin retreated behind their mountain defenses and waited for an attack that never came.”

“But what of this forest?”

“The death and destruction of their generation in that battle, fought here in these mountains, left the kingdoms devastated. As word spread of the annihilations on both sides, none would venture there except the scavengers that robbed the dead and dying. Soon, word spread from those parasites, perhaps to scare off competitors, that the souls of those killed in agony there were walking among the corpses, seeking the living for company. Ghouls walked amid the scavengers. The living fled the area and, undisturbed, this forest grew up in the soil fertilized by the rotting corpses. It’s said these trees are sinister, if a plant can be sinister. They fed on the dead. Even now stories leak out that ghouls still patrol the forest at night.”

“A grizzly tale it is, but how can such a place still be so evil if the battle was so long ago?”

“There was supposed to be an elf witch-queen that lived in the area. Her peoples left and went into the west long ago. She remained and, being alone among the growing presence of men, she moved into the forest. The souls that roamed there seeking the living, soon overwhelmed her. In the absence of people, she’s supposed to have made it possible for the aimless, lonely souls to inhabit the living trees. The infestations, so alien to the living forest, soon caused the gnarled trees to grow dark and twisted. Leaves formed galls as if responding to parasitic grubs. Over time, the souls have guarded their host trees. Trees that have grown ancient with the limbs weaving this wooden mesh that blocks out the sun.”

“But if the souls subsist within the trees themselves, how can they harm men?”

Nemenese poked the fire, savored the sweet smoke, then looked into the captain’s eyes. “You sure you want to know?”

“No, but to protect you, I suppose I should be aware.”

A twig snapped at the edge of the forest and the two men jerked, staring, looking for the source.

“An opossum.” King Nemenese settled back. “The tormented souls seek their living human company. They’ll take a man for host if the man is close enough to grasp and is unknowingly susceptible to the infestation. If the living man cannot be taken, the souls will attempt to kill him, that his soul will join their company.”

“What makes a man susceptible to the lost souls?”

“His mind, something in what he’s thinking opens his being to the lonely soul. They sense it. Then they find an opening, a wound of any kind. No one knows for sure, but it could be sorrow, or evil thoughts like envy or greed. None taken have come back to tell how it happened.”

“And the witch-queen, what became of her?”

“No one knows that either. She may still be in there.”

The next morning the travelers packed up and ate well then hacked their way through a tiny break in the webbing vines and into the forest’s dark gloom. They’d not gone far when the undergrowth died out for lack of light. A thick carpet of molding leaves carpeted the forest floor, dotted everywhere with mushrooms and other fungi. The horses grew wary and often shied at things unseen. Three hours ride into the woodland, something else protruded through the leaf litter, gleaming white. A horse’s hoof snapped a fallen branch and all jumped at the crackle.

“What’s that?” one of the guards traveling in the lead asked the others. He’d stopped and pointed to the new white element speckling the endless expanse of brown leaves and the occasional lichen clump.

The captain, then Nemenese, pulled up beside the man. “Bones!” the king’s hushed voice uttered. “Ancient bones, more bones than rodents can gnaw.”

“This must be where the armies clashed,” the captain said, his eyes scanning the bone field. “They never buried the dead but left them to rot. No wonder the souls are still wandering in search of peace.”

“Them bones goes on as far as I can see,” another guard grumbled. The horses began stamping about and neighing. A strong sweet-nauseous smell of decaying flesh permeated the air, heavy with electrical charge that made arm hair bristle.

A vine slinked down from an overhanging branch, spiraling as if searching. It brushed a guard’s shoulder then shot down with lighting speed wrapping around and around him before he could react. The panicky man struggled, trying to unwrap it, but the vine tightened. It squeezed his arms to his side and constricted like a python. The more he struggled, the more the vine entangled him. The captain whipped out his sword and hacked the creeper above the man’s head. It fell limp. The guard wiggled free at last and threw it to the forest floor.

“What was that?” the victim asked, breathing heavily from his ordeal.

“Something or someone possessed that thing,” Nemenese said. He looked up in the tree. The cut stump was gone, pulled up into the branches.

“Move on… now,” the king said. “Be careful not to cut yourselves. Avoid those vines and plants with long thorns that we’ve seen growing up around boggy areas.”

They rode on, carefully picking their way through the skulls and protruding rib cages. The clack of horse hooves on bones rattled the silence and nerves. In midafternoon, something like a monstrous rat, but with long fangs, leapt up and pounced on a vole in front of the lead rider. The sudden movement startled the guard’s horse. It reared up, throwing the man off, and galloped back out through where they had come. On the ground, the stunned man sat up, rubbing his head. Before he could stand, vining tendrils rippled through the leaves, wrapped around his feet, then shot up his legs.

“Cut the vines,” the captain said.

That done, they grabbed the befuddled man and pulled him up on another guard’s horse. More vines grew, probing side to side through the leaves when the man had been. The group rode on with two men on one horse slowing their progress.

Late in the afternoon, the gloom grew even darker. Mist rose from the forest floor.

“We’d better find a place to camp for the night,” Nemenese said. “It’ll get dark early in here. We must find some place where those vines, and whatever else hunts in the night, doesn’t find us.

“Stay within sight of each other in case of an attack,” the captain added.

They spread out, searching for a campsite. Within minutes, the guard on the end disappeared before anyone noticed. He never cried out but was never seen again, either.

“We can’t go back and look for him now,” the captain said when they discovered him missing. “It will be dark in a quarter of an hour and we’ve no safe place for the night. We’ll all be doomed if we don’t find shelter soon.”

“Captain,” a guard said, pointing to a circle of stones.

“It was a camp,” Nemenese mumbled. “Those stones circled a campfire. Something found them there. See the two skeletons, the upright ribcages on either side of the fire. The skulls are detached.” He looked around him in all directions and up in the trees.

“There’s a third one over there,” a guard said, pointing to the bones. “He must have tried to escape.”

“They attack and overwhelm fast,” the captain said.

“We must move on and find safe shelter. It will soon be too dark to see in here,” Nemenese said. He spurred his horse and they rode faster up the now rocky slope at the foot of the mountain range separating Velstorbokkin from Senoshesvas. Night began swallowing the silvery gloom.

“There!” shouted the lead guard. He pointed to rock rubble and two stone corners.

“Must have been a farmhouse back before the battle,” Nemenese said. “Make for it. There’s nothing else here for protection. Time’s run out.”

The first guard dashed for the humble ruins and dismounted before checking them out. As he dropped to the ground, his horse reared up and dashed off. A troll came from behind one of the stone corners, raising a great cypress knee club. The guard stumbled backward and, seeing the troll almost upon him, raised his crossed arms to ward off the blow.

The captain raced up, slicing the troll across his torso as he smashed down the club. The club still found its mark and the guard was dead before the troll’s blood pulsed over him. The dead fiend fell forward on top of the guard.