Arm Of Galemar (Book 2) (67 page)

Then Tallior would eliminate them all.

A faint knock sounded on the door.  It broke him from
his angered reverie.  Out from the mental closet in his mind he withdrew the
mask of genial affability, fitting it carefully to conceal his anger.

Ferdinand stepped through the door.  He glanced around
at the unlit lamps.  “Is anything amiss, father?”

Santon laughed softly.  “Not in the least.  I find
that cool darkness aids my thoughts at times when I have matters to consider.”

The younger man shrugged.  “I can’t find my new
sword.  I thought it was to be delivered today.”

“It should have been.  I had the swordsmith’s solemn
word on that.”

“Walthers says there were several packages delivered
this afternoon.  Most are in your storage room.”

“Ah.  Well, I can’t keep you from your practices.  I
will come see if it has become mixed in with my own parcels.”

Ferdinand beamed while his father followed him into
the hallway.  Sestion beamed back at his son, making a last note to contact
Tallior by midnight.

*        *        *        *        *

Enough was enough.  Over a month in this city of
whipped dogs and what had he accomplished?

Colbey had taken satisfaction with the ease in which
their pathetic watch force died under his surprise appearances.  He made a
token effort to disguise his increasingly frequent assaults, but gradually he
cared less about whatever they might think when discovering the bodies.  Let
them know themselves for the prey they were; let
them
search the shadows
for knives aimed at their necks.

Six eightdays had passed since summer’s first day.  In
all that time he had wandered occupied Tullainia, intent on uncovering his
enemies secrets through stealth.  He learned many aspects of his enemy’s
nature, yet it amounted to little in the face of what he still did not know. 
Why had he wasted so much precious time? 
Why?

Striking the watchmen satisfied his need for action in
the beginning.  Feeling the blood course across his hands that he had so long
thirsted for fed the empty void within as a starving beggar finding himself at
the king’s own table.  Those anathematized men and women he killed were the
first to pay the forfeit of their lives for their indescribable crime.

But the dark pleasure in their deaths had not lasted
long.  Sheep, dying with their stupid, dull eyes staring at him.  It satiated
the greater hunger less each time.  After last night’s bloody assault he had
stared at the four bodies lying twisted on the balcony, realizing what a waste
of his time they were.

Why
,
prompted the faint voice in his mind, the one that sounded like Sylvia,
do
you expend your efforts to so little gain?
  Little gain?  Yes, he admitted
while he stood in the charnel house of splattered blood and entrails trailing
from sliced open stomachs.

Little gain.  He walked among enemies he could not
understand.  He could not, for all his skill, close the distance between him
and the leaders of their outland army.  He had not been able to uncover any
knowledge related to the creatures kept by these murderers other than what he
could observe with his eyes.  It reduced him to killing gnats by night,
cowering in a market corner by day.

It filled him with fresh rage, boiling and churning
within the black fire of vengeance he clung to.  Shudders gripped him as the
dark fog swelled over all he saw, a phenomenon he now ignored.  He had taken
every medicinal curative familiar to him in an effort to purge his body of this
strange illness, yet still it clung fast.  Colbey decided to ignore what he
could not be rid of, using his iron will to persist, refusing to allow an
ailment to slow his quest.

He needed information.  Eightdays upon eightdays had
passed yet the knowledge he
knew
he needed to bring about their endgame
eluded him.  Looking down on those corpses’ pain-twisted expressions, he
acknowledged that he could continue in this vein for years without ever gaining
it.  The cries from the murdered villagers urged him to action.  Stealth had
proven inadequate.  Time now to
take
what he needed from these craven
butchers.  Anyone who slaughtered the innocent without warning deserved to have
the same fate revisited upon them.

All day he followed a wandering soldier who was
accompanied by a local translating through Traders.  This man led him to still
others until Colbey marked the one who seemed most promising.  A soldier with
alien insignia displayed on his chest.  An officer of meaningless rank.  Colbey
cared not what function he served, only that he must be privy to information
kept from the common fighter and that he spoke Traders.

This murderer displayed little interest in finding
local fare when the day waned.  He eschewed the taverns his blood-craving
soldiers frequented.  Instead he kept a pair of soldiers by his side as he
rough-checked the different outposts stationed in this district.  Colbey
recognized each, serving to garrison the patrol forces that left and entered
the city constantly throughout the day.

His patience snapped while he followed the officer. 
The man seemed intent on continuing endlessly, visiting any or all of the
sixty-seven other barracks Colbey knew of.  He had already waited too long for
answers.

Silent as the breeze sweeping through the narrow
alleyway his quarry traversed, Colbey descended.  Panther slashes tore the
throats from the two guards, destroying their ability to cry a warning,
regretting only that he could not eviscerate their stomachs and watch them
squirm in agony as he had the watchers in their balcony perches.  He leapt on the
officer.  With one arm wrapped around the man’s neck, he gripped the top of the
head with his other hand.  Colbey tightened the pressure until the lack of air
finally forced the outlander into unconsciousness.

The scout’s focused rage drove him to hasten the Enemy
back to his pre-selected safe house with little caution for who might notice
them.  Savage joy surged through him; he felt Liam’s presence, and Sylvia’s and
Farr’s and Orlan’s and all the other villagers crowding near his shoulders,
lending him strength to easily carry his burden without regard to the
armor-encased weight.  He sensed their presence more clearly than since
awakening from the Summerdawn dream populated by rotting corpses of the
restless dead.  It heartened him.  Surely they could foresee this night’s
outcome.  This night he
would
attain the information needed to destroy
these execrable vermin!

In the storeroom once belonging to the merchant who
distributed poisoned food supplies, the house abandoned while his family
suffered imprisonment, Colbey bound the Enemy securely with rope and chain.  He
lit no candles or lamps, relying instead upon his Guardian skills to discern
what he needed to in the gloom.

Questions in the Traders Tongue met the savage upon
awakening to discover himself at the mercy of a shadow.  He offered no reply
other than threats in a halting command of the language.  Slaps to the face
only returned scoffs, the slamming of his head against the metal doors bringing
only promises of retribution.  It took the shattering of two fingers under
Colbey’s grinding boot heel to elicit the first answer.  Stray moonlight
glinted from the scout’s feral grin as he felt bone fragments twist against
each other, cutting into the flesh surrounding the onetime digits.

The fiery pain, intense, outshining the sun, loosened
the lips of this source for a time.  After his body released chemicals to
dampen the pain, he regained enough bravado to resist his captor’s
inquisition.  Colbey solved that problem by bending one of the Enemy’s legs forward
with all his strength, forcing the unnatural angle until he felt the kneecap
break free from the cartilage.  A quick blow with a wagon axle left behind in
the storeroom ensured its destruction.

Colbey interrogated this cowardly murderer for most of
the night, demanding resolutions to the mysteries that had plagued him,
expanding on partial knowledge gleaned from his scouting, learning what he
could think to ask regarding the invaders.  Hesitation on the part of this
reference tome with a mouth resulted in a brutally efficient attack against its
anatomy.

Near dawn, Colbey felt he had learned what he needed. 
The urging presence of his people faded.  It was time to gather the resources
he would need for the assault.  He glanced at the ruined shell curled on the
floor.  He felt no pity.  Let it suffer the pains of the many deaths it had
mercilessly inflicted.  It, too, could know what it meant to suffer.  Colbey
left it to fend for itself.

He would leave Kallied that very moment, travel
nonstop until he crossed into Galemar.  His instructors’ voices ceaselessly
urged him to proceed with caution, to never charge recklessly into the beast’s
maw.  Two could succeed where one would fail, yet even two stood little chance
of victory.  Better to gather as many useful allies as possible for the strike
against the Enemy.

Colbey listened to the wisdom, except his patience had
frayed to a few bare threads.  An army of these outland fools could flock to
him and they would avail him little.  The mage would have to be enough,
would
be enough.  He would heed his instructors, return for the mage, and make his
strike.

The heads of this invading army were his primary
target.  Orders for the movements of these beasts, these Taurs, always
originated with them.  So his source had informed him.  That they had appeared
in his village proved they had been ordered there by a military leader.

But he could not get close to them alone.  Here the
mage would serve him well.  Colbey would bring him as close as possible.  He
would hurl the mage into the nearest force of soldiers.  Surely the mage would
cause enough of a ruckus to disrupt the Enemy’s structure as soldiers ran to
combat the threat, siphoning off any personal guards the leaders might retain. 
Given what the mage had accomplished along the Nolier border, he should create
an opening before he died, enough of one that Colbey could slip through the
defensive ring surrounding his targets.

Colbey would kill them all.  If he survived, next he
would start killing the white-robed sorcerers who controlled the monstrous
Taurs.  He would bring down as many as he could before he finally fell.  Their
soldiers would drown in the ocean of blood he would unleash.

He felt the dark void within him roil in primeval
pleasure as he finally…
finally
…planned their deaths.

Book 04

Contact

A marvel of botanical design and planning, the palace
gardeners had toiled ceaselessly to create a world completely separate from the
harsh reality beyond its borders.  Within the acres given to them, the
horticulturists first appointed by a long dead king of Arronath designed new
planes of existence, rewriting natural laws to suit their vision, defying such
trifles as gravity and season within their domain.

Spectacular verdure in circular beds grew in every
color, liberally distributed to form centerpieces for small clearings within
the palace gardens.  Bright yellow flower bells dipping on vines under a slight
breeze made the beholder strain to hear absent silver clappers.  Snap-blossoms
pursed their petaled lips to offer their sweet kiss to the court ladies who
sought a calm escape in a sylvan oasis.  Massive roses spread their fragrant
hearts to beguile with their perfume.

Trees in multitudinous variety surrounded numerous
privacy clearings, delicately carved benches beside clear fishponds shaded
beneath.  So thick grew the trees that each small clearing was separated from
civilization.  One could walk the gavel pathways from one to the next,
completely departing from the first within a few steps before entering an
entirely different arboricultural realm less than two dozen later.

About the eastern gardens, vines had been teased to
grow into incredibly detailed animal forms.  These creatures of leaf and twig
appeared to graze on the lawns among the wider flower beds.  Trellises spread a
living ceiling over platforms where the court would, at times, gather for
outdoor recreation.  Fountains of trained shrubbery flowed not with water but
dangling orchids.  Other floral creations stole the viewer’s breath with their
graceful sweeps or towering appendages that could not possibly remain standing
without toppling, yet did through the wiles of the caretakers.

The palace gardeners worked year round to keep the
garden’s inhabitants healthy.  Thirty-seven privacy clearings existed, each
with unique flowers and shrubs and trees, all clustered in the western grounds
like a miniature forest.  Twenty-nine topiary animals needed attention lest new
offshoots distort their crisp form.  Thirteen floral structures required constant
maintenance to prevent growth from overstressing the delicate frameworks
concealed within.  Three-hundred-seventy-three different flowers had been
imported from across the entire Arronath continent as well as from Eileon to
the west.  Over a hundred shrub species and nearly as many different tree types
coexisted together under strict supervision.

Along the gardens’ southernmost edge ran Half-Mile
Hall, named so for its apparent length.  It was actually a corridor.  Its
northern side had been built from spaced columns rather than solid wall,
leaving the hallway open to the magnificent gardens.  Gray speckled marble
coated the columns, matching the rusticated granite of the opposite wall.

Through these columns stepped a man clad in
earthen-brown robes of the finest quality.  His angular face took in his
surroundings while betraying nothing of his thoughts.  People who met with him
left wondering at his mind’s workings.  None had yet read him.

All at court knew Councilor Xenos favored the
gardens.  He visited them most days, or at least on days when the courtiers
noticed his presence.  At times the councilor could go for over a week without
being seen.  Ordinarily this would have sparked much gossip.  Few willingly
mentioned him while discussing the latest scandals, though.  A man who could
not be read must be treated with caution in an arena where political alliances
shifted on a daily basis.

Xenos entered the gardens.  As had become his habit,
he trod the pathways that led to the forested privacy niches of arboreal
solitude, feeling the abundant life energy flowing through the rich vegetation
and fertile soil.  His right hand stole within his voluminous robe.  Lightly,
softly, a lover’s caress, he ran his fingers over the veined heart nestled
within an inner pocket.

He’d carefully excised it the night before, cutting
with the steady care of a lifetime chirurgeon.  Her screams had echoed through
the temple cavern as piercingly as the alarm tone could.  Xenos had used his
power to ensure her survival until the moment he reached his reformulated hand
into her chest, through the dissected breast, past the splintered ends of her
fractured ribs.  His elongated fingernails, effective as steel knives, wrapped
around the arterial veins pumping blood throughout her body.

Slowly he’d severed these with his fingers.  He’d felt
the raw surge of pure life energy gushing forth, produced in staggering
quantity via the damage to her mortal shell and her sheer terror.  Her heart
secured firmly, her life his, he had patiently ripped it free to the exultant
moans from his congregation.

Later, after her energies had been harvested, he’d
prepared to dump her body over the altar’s edge into the black chasm whose
depths were a mystery to all but the dead.  Before doing so he noticed life
energy traces clinging to the cooling meat of her heart.  Truly she had been a
rare specimen, producing energy in quantities unknown even to him.  Or perhaps
the explanation for such abundance lay simply in the seven month fetus bulging
her abdomen.

If so, he might need to make it policy to keep female
sacrifices alive long enough for impregnation.

He fondly stroked the energy traces loitering in her
former life-core.  Hardly enough to sense, not worth the bother of extracting;
just enough to recall the glorious inrush.

Xenos withdrew his hand when he came to the edge of
the trees.  He paused, waiting.  After several moments he smiled and finally
called out.

“I sensed you early this morning.  Come face me, if
you’ve the courage.”

His narrow eyes studied the winding tree branches
until movement betrayed the other within the shadows.  Stepping into the dusky
evening walked a man clad mostly in the deep red of a fine wine.  The brightest
red flashed not from his ruby-jeweled eyes, but his fiery hair, the same shade
as the sun’s final face before twilight’s embrace.

“You appear and you face me, apprised of my presence,”
said the Red Man.  “Do you hold superior confidence that you might prevail in
combat against an adversary the likes of myself?”

Xenos’ smiled broadened.  “It was not I who fled our
last encounter, nor do I skulk through shadows searching for weakness.  I have
long been prepared to face you.  To end your interference.”

The Red Man raised one hand.  His immense power
gathered to form a nimbus around the tight red gentleman’s glove.  “I know what
I have come this day to face.  Now you will come to be aware of what faces
you.”

“You don’t know so much as you believe,
eul’kkandr.”

Shock jolted the Red Man.  His control broke.  The
nimbus faded from his hand.  “How came you to be aware of such?”

Councilor Xenos shifted his head sideways an eighth,
watching his pursuer, holding his silence.

“So you have nurtured it so far,” the Red Man decided
while he returned the gaze.  “It grows and awakens until it bestows knowledge
beyond your own experience.”

“I called you out because I wish to know why your race
meddles in the world beyond your boundaries.”  Xenos turned his angular glare,
filled with force, fully upon the Red Man.  “Tell me what prompts your interest
in the affairs of the outer world.  I have searched the memories of the times
before, and I find no conflicts that involved you or yours.”

“Memories you have searched…”  The Red Man fortified
his resolve, regaining mastery over his power.  “You possess recollections of
ages before your birth.  Never did I imagine it could remake its carrier in
such a brief time span.  Hold you no regrets for the man you were?”

“The man I am,” Xenos countered.  “God has granted me
strength enough to serve him.  And serve him I shall, as loyally as any ever
have.”

The Red Man bowed his head an inch.  “I see the man
who once was is now no more.  Your end holds importance beyond what even I
predicted.”

He launched his attack at Xenos.  A river of waves
that were composed not from water, but undulating white-blue lightning.  It
crackled with sound enough to deafen, burst all it touched into splintered
shards.  Trees split.  Benches exploded.  Flowers burned to black ash.

Xenos deflected it with his palm, deformed and
reconstituted anew in an instant.  Electric fire rebounded from his
vein-pulsing digits, his palm redirecting the lightning back to the source.

The Red Man dodged his own attack and launched a
different assault at the same moment.  This came as a spear, white hot, formed
of molten energy.  He hurled it at his foe while smoke clouded his nostrils. 
Flames feeding off blasted wood howled in his ears.

The councilor leapt.  Aided by his fantastic power, he
jumped upward on legs as monstrous as his newly shaped hands.  Fifteen feet he
soared, looking down on his enemy who missed seeing his jump due to the wafting
smoke between them.

Xenos hurled a fiery blast that destroyed the ground. 
The tree line erupted in a volcanic explosion.  Shrapnel from trees and stone
cut the air in vicious guillotine brutality.  A roar of wrenching earth
flattened the garden blossoms as the concussive shock rocked Half-Mile Hall.

Councilor Xenos landed nimbly amidst a snowstorm of
grass, leaves and flower petals, all charred, trailing smoke.  The trees burned
furiously.  Movement from the side alarmed him.  He knew the
eul’kkandr
could
not have moved so quickly!

A different man materialized through the smoke.  Not
the
eul’kkandr
at all.  Xenos could only take in the bizarre sword in
the half eye-blink the stranger afforded him.  With a powerful swing, the
enormous sword whipped around to cut the councilor in half.

Xenos grabbed the blade in his reconstituted fingers. 
He expected to stop the sword cold to the stranger’s surprise.  To his astonishment,
the swordsman’s blade pushed back his hand, stronger than steel, impervious to
a mere weapon.  His hand struck his chest.  The sword slammed into his torso,
his hand a buffer protecting his life, striking with force enough to hurl him
backward.

He was thrown in no gentle arc, but hurled back as a
knife thrown at a gaming post.  Thirty feet away he struck the ground hard and
stopped rolling only when he clawed into the earth with his hands.

“
Kkan’edom
,” Xenos hissed, staring at the
warrior who breathed harshly while he brought his sword around.  The damned
eul’kkandr
had bonded himself.  Xenos quickly regained his feet.  His altered body had
been protected against the worst damage.

Four men burst into their midst as the
kkan’edom
rushed forward.  Palace guards who ran from their stations in a room off the
corridor.  They paused, examining in the scene.  The
kkan’edom
did not
hesitate.  With a swing he smashed the nearest guard.  A steel breastplate
surrendered under the superior force.  A bloody gout sprayed in a wide fan.

The other three stared in astonishment.  Easily, the
kkan’edom
reversed his swing, connecting with the second guard’s stomach, who folded in
half as a red torrent flooded through the armor’s cracks.  Guards three and
four whirled to run.  From behind the swordsman spun on one foot, a movement
that whipped the giant blade around on a tilted angle.  It smashed into the
back of number three, which sent his shattered body crashing into the last. 
Both tumbled to the ground.

Xenos used the moment to launch a burning scythe at
the
kkan’edom
.  It missed when the man sidestepped and retaliated as
only one of his ilk could.  The veins on the swordsman’s forehead bulged, sweat
dripped into his eyes, his hands tightened on the massive sword hilt.  He swung
in an upward arc from below, the tip digging a shallow ditch through the dirt.

Along the track his sword described, a shock-wave of
raw power raced down the blade, then in a furious line along the ground.  Dirt
and pebbles exploded away as the demonic furrow gored through the ground like
an invisible hell-plow.

The councilor snarled and slammed his claws into the
dirt as the ground-sheering lance reached him.  His power clashed with the
kkan’edom’s
. 
He felt the terrible force ripping at his reconstituted flesh until he finally
shattered the construct between his talons.

Before the
kkan’edom
could recover, Xenos
leapt.  He held a palmful of fire that he hurled at the swordsman’s face. 
Except another force reached to turn aside the burning flames.  Out from the
blazing tumult of the flower beds stepped the Red Man.

Eul’kkandr
and
kkan’edom
stepped closer to each other, the Red Man quickly firing a
brilliant sphere of luminescent power that outshone the sun.  Xenos wanted no
more of this.  The
kkan’edom
changed the equation little as matters
stood, but he had miscalculated this encounter.  He summoned his formidable
power and released it in an enlarged version of his first blast.  His unleashed
assault swallowed the sphere as it sped toward him.

The gardens exploded in fire and earthquakes.  Nine
privacy niches were instantly destroyed.  Several others were set afire by the
burning debris landing everywhere.  Underfoot the palace grounds shook from the
blast’s force.  Choking smoke concealed Half-Mile Hall under a black, roiling
fog.