Heart of the King (16 page)

A shadow of a smile flickered across Therrador’s face; seeing it caused a twist in Sienhin’s gut. What did it mean? Before he could divine its origin, it disappeared and the king was extending his hand toward him. The general looked at it for a second, then grasped it.

“Good luck, my friend. The Gods be with you.”

Sienhin nodded once, pulled his hand from the king’s, and started down the tunnel without a word.

***

The going was slow.

Sir Alton shuffled his feet along the bottom of the channel, dragging his boots through the slime as he went to keep from slipping and ending up in the putrid water. He held the torch in his left hand and his right rested on the hilt of his sword, both to be ready in case he needed it, as well as to angle it and keep the tip of the scabbard out of the water.

The tunnel was wide enough for six men to stand shoulder to shoulder between its stone walls; when he raised the torch over his head, the general saw the curving stone ceiling just above the flickering flames. It was too high for him to reach, but he wouldn’t want to. Black-looking mold and moss covered most of it, with gray stone showing through occasionally. The growth spilled part way down the walls, but ceased before it reached a level even with Sienhin’s head. Side channels—grated  and too small for a man to crawl through—opened  on to the main tunnel at regular intervals a foot above water level. Water trickled through some, but dark sludge that made his stomach churn dripped from most.

“Curse this place,” Sienhin muttered, the words echoing and bouncing from the walls to be squelched by the moss-moldy ceiling. Amongst the reverberating words, he thought he heard a splash not made by himself.

Sienhin stopped and held his breath, listening. He heard nothing but the sound of the torch’s flame crackling in his ear and a trickle of water from a grate ahead on the left. He waited another few seconds, then carried on, moving more slowly, wary. Ripples on the surface of the black water carried the torchlight away to disappear in the dark tunnel. He squinted, straining to see beyond the few yards of sight afforded by the torch. A chunk of debris vaguely the shape of a finger floated past his leg.

He moved steadily forward until he noticed the ripples he created clashing with wavelets rolling back toward him.

Sir Alton stopped, his gaze fixed on the water as the ripples created by his movement subsided. The water smoothed, then a series of small waves washed toward the general. He clenched his teeth and tightened his grip on his sword’s hilt.

“Who’s there?”

He barked the words, hoping to scare off any creature which might lurk in the dark. With practiced skill, he loosened the first few inches of his blade.

No reply came at first, but then, yards farther down the tunnel, he saw a green spark of light. Tiny at first, like an ember cast into the sky by some eldritch fire, the spark grew larger and brighter until it rivaled his own torch. Then he saw the light’s wielder.

“Hahn? What in the name of the Gods are you...”

Sienhin took a few sloshing strides toward him, then stopped, both at the memory of what Therrador told him about the Voice of the People, and as the other figures standing behind Hahn Perdaro came into view.

“Hello, General.” Perdaro smiled and gestured at the men standing behind him. “We’re glad you could make it.”

Without the sickly green glow at the end of the staff in Hahn Perdaro’s hand, the six creatures standing with him would have been hideous. The light, however, turned them into monsters, deepening the hole in one’s throat, making the other’s sunken eyes sink farther into its skull. Parchment thin skin pulled tight across a dented skull took on an amphibious hue appropriate for the damp tunnel surroundings. Sienhin lowered his brows and pulled his sword.

“What is this, Hahn?”

The Voice of the People smiled crookedly. “Exactly what it looks like, General. We’re here to stop you.”

“Traitor. How could you do this to your king? To your kingdom?”

Perdaro’s laughter echoed down the tunnel and Sienhin felt heat rise in his cheeks. He concentrated to keep anger from quaking his sword hand.

“This kingdom was lost long ago—long  before Braymon ever fell. It just didn’t know it yet.” He brandished the glowing end of his staff toward the general. “Do you see this? That’s not flame, old friend, it’s magic. How can you fight it? And them.” He gestured again at the undead soldiers.

“I care not for your magic and your dead men, Hahn.” Sienhin took a step forward, closing the distance between himself and his adversaries, and felt a familiar calmness descend on his mind despite his outward bluster. It was ever this way with a fight imminent. “I care only for my homeland.”

“Don’t be foolish, Sir Alton. This is a battle you cannot win. Lay down your sword and join me. I have the Archon’s ear, and I’ll make sure she knows of your cooperation. You will be compensated.”

“You can have that whore’s ear. I’ll not lay my sword down until I have her head.”

“As you like.”

Perdaro stepped back and swept his arms forward. With the gesture, the five undead soldiers advanced, chipped swords and rusted axes in hand.

The general’s muscles tensed, ready to accept their attack, but his gaze flickered away at the feel of a cold touch around his knees. A billowy white mist had crept into the drainage tunnel from one of the side ducts. It resembled a mist that might collect in a meadow with the dawn of a springtime sun, and it floated past him as though it moved with a purpose, collecting in the space between him and the dead men. Sienhin’s legs and sword arm strained to the point of pain.

What manner of deviltry is this?

The Kanosee dead men halted at the sight of it, seemingly unwilling to let their lifeless flesh contact the vapor. It swirled a slow, gentle circle, then extended upward into a slender column.

“What are you waiting for?” Perdaro screeched. “Kill him!”

The Kanosee soldiers looked at each other with dead eyes and hesitated a second longer. In that instant, the column of mist rectified itself into the shape of a ghostly woman. Sienhin gasped a half-breath in surprise but stopped himself for fear inhaling the mist might prove deadly.

“Whore,” he muttered raising his sword.

The translucent woman advanced on him before the soldiers did and, before she made contact with him, he saw it wasn’t the Archon, but a face he didn’t know. Then the ghostly woman’s hands touched his chest and, instead of passing through him or wrapping around him as a mist should have done, her palms hit him like a mace, knocking his wind free of his lungs and sending him from his feet.

The general tumbled backward, arms thrashing for balance. The torch hit the murky water first, hissing as it extinguished and throwing the tunnel into the sickly green glow of Hahn Perdaro’s staff, but Sienhin’s experience of it was short-lived. His back hit the water, then his head. In an instant, the sludgy liquid surrounded him, covered him.

Foul fluid touched his tongue, rubbed against his eyes. The black water muted the light of Perdaro’s staff to a far-off turquoise tint, but Sienhin paid it little attention, for in a matter of seconds the undead soldiers, or the ghost woman, or both, would be on him. He fought his throat’s urge to gag the squalid water from his mouth and attempted to sit up and remove himself from its depths, to bring his sword to bear in defense, but it felt as though a weight sat atop his chest, holding him below the surface.

He blinked flecks of detritus out of his eyes and flailed uselessly under the water. The turquoise hue grew brighter, changed in quality, and something about it made Sir Alton Sienhin cease his thrashing. He sank to the bottom, black water cradling him until he settled in the layer of sludge. His back touched the bricks and a calmness settled in on him.

This is the end then.

The thought of dying didn’t scare him; he’d faced death more times than he could count or wanted to try. But with him died Therrador’s message. With him died the hope of the kingdom. The weight of his failure weighed him down, held him under the water.

Then the flash came, startling him. Orange-yellow light bright enough to penetrate the murky water and nearly blind him flashed like a bolt of lightning. It remained for a second, maybe two, then disappeared and darkness descended—no  orange-yellow light, no turquoise glow. Sienhin rose off the bottom as though rescued by helping hands. His face broke the surface and he coughed viscous fluid out of his lungs and throat and nose.

Breath surged into his chest and decades of combat brought his sword up, ready for an attack as he lay in the water. None came. Sienhin remained stationary, his blade held over him, only his eyes moving as they darted side-to-side. He sensed no movement in the darkness, heard no sound save the plunk of water droplets falling from his blade. A gust of foul wind buffeted his cheeks and sent a wave washing over his nose before it died away. After a few seconds, he drew another ragged breath through his nostrils. He never would have thought he’d be happy to draw such a rank smell into his chest, but it was better than sucking polluted water into his lungs.

Wondering where a breeze had come from in an underground tunnel, Sienhin struggled to his feet and tossed aside the useless torch he still held in his left hand. It banged against the wall and landed in the water with a mute splash, as though it hit something below the surface. The general gritted his teeth and swallowed hard, struggling the taste of sewage down his throat, then moved toward the spot where the torch had landed.

He advanced cautiously, dragging his feet on the slimy bottom and probing the dark in front of him with the tip of his sword. As he moved, the smell of sewage dissipated, overpowered by another odor that brought a hard lump to the back of the general’s throat.

The smell of burnt flesh.

Sir Alton pressed forward another step, squinting against the darkness, and realized he could see a little, the tunnel illuminated by a tiny light under the water to his right. His eyes flickered toward it, saw the spot of green light beneath the surface some distance away, then he looked back to his target ahead. A dark mass, blacker than the black water, floated near the wall. Three more steps brought him close enough to see it was one of the undead Kanosee soldiers floating face down. He pushed the tip of his sword into its side; it sank in a couple of inches without reaction.

That one’s no longer un-dead.

Closer to the body, the acrid smell of burnt flesh was enough to make the veteran soldier hold his breath. He reached forward with his free hand and grabbed the Kanosee’s wrist to turn him, but when he pulled on him to do so, the flesh of the thing’s forearm and hand stripped off like a macabre glove. Sienhin tossed it aside to hit the water with a hollow slap.

What in the name of the Gods happened?

The general faced the dim light and started toward it, wading carefully through the murky water. Between him and his goal, he saw other darker patches floating. Each of them he touched with the tip of his sword; none of them reacted. A disembodied head floated by. An arm. A leg. Things so badly damaged they were rendered unrecognizable.

How did I survive this?

Dank water splashed around his knees as he approached the light and he heard a noise that made him stop. For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of dripping water and the lap of the tiny waves created by his movement sloshing against dismembered body parts.

Then he heard it again: a moan from the vicinity of the underwater glow. Perhaps a human sound, perhaps not. Sienhin inhaled a distasteful breath into his chest and moved toward the sound.

A few strides away, the glow cast enough light for him to see the man slouching precariously against the tunnel wall. In the dim illumination, his skin looked black, his physique frail, and Sienhin wondered if this might be the fiend responsible for the blinding flash of light that almost ended his life. He extended the tip of his sword at the
man’s
throat.

“Who are you, devil?”

White eyes, a stark contrast against the black skin, moved lazily at the sound of his voice, but the man did not otherwise move. Sienhin took two more steps.

“Speak or die,” he barked.

A sound whispered through charred lips, a sibilance that might have been nothing more than a breath. The general leaned closer, his blade pressed close to the man’s throat.

“Did you do this? Did you kill them all?”

He turned his ear toward the man. A click sounded at the back of his parched throat, then words hissed past a swollen tongue.

“Ssssssienhinnn. Hhhhhhelpp meeeeee.”

Sienhin pulled his face away from the man, looked into his eyes and saw pain in them. The eyelids were burned away, the ability to blink taken with them. The man’s nose was gone, his cheeks blackened and cracked. All the hair was melted from his head.

“Perdaro.”

The general lowered his sword and looked the man up and down. Tatters of clothing hung from his shoulders and a patch of flesh burnt red rather than charred black showed through his shirt. His fingers were curled to useless claws, his arms bent crooked and tight by tendons shrunken with the heat. Sienhin’s lips flattened to a thin line beneath his bushy mustache. No man should have to endure such pain.

Almost no man.

“Sssienhinnn. K-k-k-kill mmmmeeee.”

He stared at the man, remembering who he’d been, or who he’d thought he was before he sold out his kingdom. Had he ever been the man Sienhin thought him to be? Or was it years of trickery and deception, living behind a facade, a mask hiding his true nature and allegiance from those closest to him? Now he’d never know.

Sienhin raised his blade to the man’s throat again, pressed its edge against his flesh and watched as the burnt and destroyed face of Hahn Perdaro flinched with the pain of its touch.

“You deserve death,” the general said leaning close to his one-time compatriot’s ear. “But you do not deserve mercy.”

He stepped back and slid his sword back into its scabbard.

Without lips or eyelids, the burnt man was incapable of showing expression, yet Sienhin saw a change in his eyes as panic rose in them. Had he been able to move, he’d have undoubtedly grasped at the general’s clothes, begged him for death, but he could only look back with those panicked, pleading eyes. Breath huffed between his teeth, perhaps intended as words, but Sir Alton Sienhin didn’t stop to find out.