From Across the Clouded Range (90 page)

“
It will seem merciful to
a fault. The crowds outside the hall will be screaming for your
death, but I will tell them that I still see a way for you to find
redemption. You will look like a proud monster, unwilling to admit
your undeniable guilt even when it is so obviously laid out before
you. I will appear to be a benevolent master who only wishes to
lead his subjects to enlightenment. It will be a grand spectacle
that will deliver the Empire truly and fully into my hands alone.
And all you have to do is say two loud, clear words:
not guilty
.”

Relishing his plan, Nabim rose from
his chair and leered. Jaret could see the madness clearly in his
eyes. If he were still capable of such emotion, he would have been
more afraid of the Emperor than he was of Thagas'kiula. Fear not
for himself, but for the people this man would rule. Yet, as much
as he sympathized for what those people would suffer under Nabim’s
twisted sovereignty, his fear, his sympathy was locked away. And
even if he had it, he now knew that he could only feel his own
pain. He knew how intense that pain could be. All the empathy in
the world could not elevate the pain of others to match what he had
suffered, and he knew that come tomorrow he would do exactly as
Nabim had instructed.

Nabim packed up his entourage and
started to leave. As he left, he patted Jaret on the head like a
dog. “Until tomorrow, my friend.”

Jaret barely noticed the attention. He
was glad that he had somehow chosen the correct response but was
troubled as well. He did not have the slightest idea what power had
forced him to say those words despite his every mental capacity
pushing for the lie. In that moment, and even now, he was not
certain that he was physically capable of lying.

#

With his pain and fear locked away,
Jaret slept soundly for the first time in as long as he could
remember. His sleep was dreamless, deep, and fulfilling. The
nightmares were far off, held at bay by the same barrier that
restrained his emotions. They fought against that barrier, but for
this night, it held.

He woke suddenly from that sleep to
the sound of a hushed voice calling him and the sensation of being
roughly shaken. His first thought was that Thagas'kiula had
returned. He knew that the prospect should fill him with terror,
but that fear was insubstantial, so he opened his eyes and looked
blearily at the shadow-shrouded intruder. He found a ruggedly
handsome face some years younger than his own that he eventually
matched to one from the catalogue of images from his life so long
ago. He closed his eyes then opened them again to be certain, but
the image did not change. Gallian Jimmenov, sub-commander of the
Legion of the Rising Sun, was crouched over him, shaking him
awake.

Gal, as he was commonly known, was not
watching his subject as he shook, and Jaret had to put a hand on
his chest to show that he was awake. With that touch, Gal’s face
shot back to Jaret’s. Their eyes locked. “Commander, we have come
for you, but we must hurry.” The words were little more than
whispered pants.

He certainly is
excited
, Jaret thought with utter
indifference. He assumed that he was dreaming. He had experienced
this dream countless times in the days since his capture. This had
to be a new version of the same torturous delusion, but he still
knew how it would end, with his men dead and him cowering before a
small man in a black robe. He tried to dismiss the dream before it
could start, but Gal just kept looking at him in confusion –
probably wondering if his commander was worth saving.

“
Sir,” Gal whispered
sharply, “it’s me. We have come for you, but we really do have to
hurry. The guards will discover our handiwork any minute
now.”

Jaret could not remember anyone
talking in the previous versions of this dream. He also did not
remember ever having a choice, so with the detachment of one who
can no longer feel fear, he allowed Gal to pull him from the hard
stone floor.

Gal was visibly surprised by Jaret’s
apathy, but he soon recovered and handed his superior a bundle of
dark clothes similar to the ones he was wearing. Gal had already
unlocked the shackles that had bound Jaret’s wrists and ankles, so
he pulled on the loose-fitting pants, long-sleeved shirt, and soft
boots as Gal anxiously watched the hall.

Much to Gal’s apparent chagrin, Jaret
did not hurry with his changing. He was not certain if he was
capable of feeling urgency. He felt perfectly calm and settled as
if he were waking in his summer cottage on Lake Balair rather than
preparing to escape from the dungeons of a massive fortress against
all possible hope. The black pants and shirt were followed by a
stiff leather vest and a dirk that he slipped into his belt. He
looked up just in time to catch the length of a dark scabbard that
Gal threw to him. He checked the blade then slung it over his
shoulder as he stepped to the door.

Jaret strode outside the room behind
Gal and found two more men hidden in the shadows. Those men led him
at a run down the long hall of doors that ended in his cell. With
each door they passed, more black figures joined their ranks until
their number was near twenty. They sprinted past the crumpled forms
of four men in the garb of chamber guards. Jaret found himself
wholly indifferent to the deaths and felt no satisfaction to see
that one of them was the mammoth brute who had taken so much
pleasure in beating him.

The end of the hall brought them to
another group of black clothed figures and another neat pile of
bodies. This time, there were eight of the first and a dozen of the
second. One of the bodies was clad in black, but Jaret did not
mourn the loss as he turned down another long hall. From what he
could tell, the rescue was going well. His muscles, joints, and
bones felt as good as he remembered them feeling in the past twenty
years, and despite weeks of inactivity, he was unfazed by the
exertion of the run.

Though his body felt remarkable, the
pain of Thagas'kiula’s poison still burned his blood. The barrier
in his mind had dulled the pain, but it was certainly there. It was
the same with his other emotions. They were there but unreachable,
insubstantial. Where he should have felt fear, anticipation,
exultation, there was nothing, only a detached indifference as if
he were watching himself from far away. It was an eerie sense of
calm and purpose almost as if he were being guided by a force other
than his own freewill.

The black troop rounded another corner
and started up a wide set of stairs. At that point, Jaret realized
that he did not have the slightest idea where they were. The Great
Chamber was a colossal building, and he had never been much of an
explorer, so he did not know most of it. Logic dictated that the
dungeons would be in the lowest, inner-most part of the building,
and given what he knew about the fortress-like building, their
hopes of escape were miniscule. Certainly, Nabim would have
increased the number of guards in the Chamber in anticipation of an
escape and to ease his likely sense of paranoia. Even if he had
not, they would have to pass countless guard posts to reach the
outer wall and then make it out of one of the gates, which were
always closed at night. Still, Gal had made it into the Chamber,
perhaps he had an equally good plan for getting out.

The muffled clatter of a man falling
backward down the stairs stanched even that slight hope. Jaret
noticed the dark arrow quivering in the legionnaire’s chest as he
hurdled the writhing form, yet from the time he was struck until
the moment he died, the man did not make a single sound that might
serve as an alarm. The discipline was extraordinary, but Jaret did
not mark it. He brought his eyes to the top of the stairs and saw a
cadre of sleek, black, not quite human shapes blocking the
passageway, the Curava Deilei Tuhar’za.

The site of the creatures created an
eruption of fear that pounded against Jaret’s barrier, but he
refused to give in to that fear and mentally reinforced the
barrier. The appearance of the blade in his hand strengthened his
resolve further, and the barrier was soon a steel wall. It blocked
even the emotions that should have been racing through him in
anticipation of battle. He dodged an arrow without a tremor in his
pulse or catch in his breath and pounded up the stairs looking for
Thagas'kiula in the crowd of dark shapes.

Ten legionnaires had hit the figures
at the top of the stairs and were fighting for their lives when
Jaret reached the fray and looked for a place to insert himself.
The creatures carried terrible weapons that were better suited for
torture than actual fighting, but they were skilled in their use
and supplemented them with their horrible bite. The teeth of one of
the creatures found the shoulder of a legionnaire in front of
Jaret. He winced in recognition of the pain that bite would cause
but did not hesitate in skewering the creature as the injured guard
recoiled from the attack.

The sound of the man’s unbridled
screams echoed down the halls, sending a tremor through the
legionnaires and a shaky looking cadre of chamber guards who stood
behind the creatures, but the man was back on his feet better than
new a minute later. He returned, still muttering in disbelief, just
in time to block a set of barbed hooks that were aimed at Jaret’s
leg. The legionnaire parried the hooks and drove his blade into the
chest of the creature that held them. Jaret returned the favor by
deflecting a curved knife from the man’s stomach before burying his
dirk in the side of its owner. The creature fell but was replaced
by another that could have been its twin.

Jaret dodged the thrust of its
serrated sword, deflecting the thick blade with his own. He jerked
his dirk from the thing’s cousin, dropped to a knee, and brought
the knife up just in time to catch the mouth of the creature as it
plunged toward him. “And keep it shut,” he growled as he punched
the dagger up into the creature’s head then brought his sword
around into its chest.

He discarded the body into a growing
pile of unmoving forms behind him and turned to face his next
opponent, but there was no slashing sword to deflect or darting
teeth to dodge. Somehow a seam had opened before him, and he stared
at it, waiting for it to fill. The legionnaires had fought their
way through most of the creatures, Jaret realized as he stared at
the opening, but the chamber guards who formed the next rank were
afraid of their allies and were keeping a lot of space between
themselves and the dwindling number of creatures.

Unfortunately, the numbers of the
legionnaires had likewise dwindled to about a dozen while there
were at least fifty chamber guards stretching as far as Jaret could
see down both sides of the hall. Even if they made it through the
creatures, they had no hope of escape. With their long spears and
tight formation, the guards would push the legionnaires back into
the dungeons, trap them in a corner, and cut them to ribbons
without the legionnaires ever getting close enough to strike. Jaret
searched the eyes of the chamber guards. He found no desperation,
bloodlust, or rage that could be exploited, only calm certainty.
These men were trained professionals. They would not make the same
mistakes as the imperial guards. The situation was
desperate.

A bellow drew Jaret’s eyes attention
to the far end of the staircase. He turned in time to see a hulking
legionnaire lift a creature and throw it back into the crowd of
guards he was preparing to face. As the guards recoiled from the
body of the creature, Jaret saw their chance. The stairs they were
on continued around the corner from where they fought and appeared
to be free of guards. If they could make it around the corner to
those stairs, they might be able to outrun the heavily laden guards
and escape, if only for enough time to regroup.

Knowing what he had to do, Jaret broke
from his place in the middle of the line and bounded to the far
side of the stairs. He inserted himself at the end of the line just
in time to deflect a spear to the wall. He tossed his dirk to
distract the guard then pulled the spear toward him. The
off-balance guard plunged forward into the blade of Jaret’s sword
and convulsed as he twisted it. Rather than discard the guard’s
body down the stairs as he would have done a minute before, Jaret
held it in front of him and turned to the legionnaire at his side.
“You, man,” he yelled. “Bring one in close and hang on to him.”
Jaret felt spears slashing by him, but the guard proved an
effective shield as his compatriots refused to stab through the
body of their friend.

The legionnaire nodded his
understanding without ever looking away from the three guards he
was facing. Those guards thrust their spears at him simultaneously.
He didn’t have a chance. He caught the first, deflected the second,
but had no answer for the third. It found its mark and pounded
through him.

Jaret flinched, but the veil in his
mind blocked further response. He just watched as the valiant
legionnaire continued on despite the spear jutting from his guts,
brought his opponent in close and stuck a dagger in his side so
that they would die together. The heroic display created enough
forward momentum to knock the guards around the pair off-balance,
and that was all the opening Jaret needed.

“
Legionnaires, circle
‘round. Follow me!” he screamed and lowered his shoulder into the
guard he held. He pushed into the body with all the force his legs
could muster and felt it rise off the floor as he pressed it into
the men before him. The already unbalanced guards fell back into
the packed masses of their fellows until an opening appeared at
Jaret’s back.