The Legend of Asahiel: Book 02 - The Obsidian Key (45 page)

Almost nothing, he amended silently. He felt the Pendant, hanging from its chain, warm against his chest. Lorre’s guards had been careless when stripping him of his weapons, and had not bothered to take it. Even so, he’d found the talisman to be of little solace, for he failed to see in it any short-term value. At best, it was a ward against his festering despair.

And a poor one at that. For the Stone could not guard against his own dark thoughts. Though he might try to deny it, this scene remained eerily similar to when he had wallowed in the Demon Queen’s dungeons at Kraagen Keep. He was Lorre’s prisoner and plaything, spared for reasons known only to the warlord. And without Kylac Kronus to spring him from this cell, his destiny seemed now in another’s hands.

The sudden darkness blinded him. Since it made no difference, Torin closed his eyes, wondering how long he had before madness set in.

S
AENA NEVER RETURNED WITH SUPPER.
When next the trolls came for him, they came alone. With scarcely a grunt, they removed his shackles and seized him on either side by the meat of his arms, squeezing in unmistakable warning.

They hauled him from his cell and out from the dungeons, following a twisted line of halls and corridors. Torches lit the way, along with the occasional window through which the smothered light of moon and stars shone. Torin blinked and squinted while struggling to keep his bearings. From outside, he heard clearly the relentless thunder of rain.

For some time, they proceeded upward through the keep, climbing stairwells that traced the rise of the mountain ground. Despite his efforts, Torin was soon lost. Were he to manage to break loose, he still would not know which way to turn in order to find his freedom. Then again, he had no intention of leaving without first securing the Sword and his friends, making flight at this juncture a poor choice.

Doorways marched past with military precision, evenly spaced on either side of a featureless limestone corridor. When that passage intersected another, the trolls turned him to the left, through an empty doorway, and into the chamber beyond.

An audience hall, Torin decided, dominated by rows of benches facing a platform at the front of the room to his right. Probably used for the briefing of officers, since the wall above that platform was all but concealed behind scrolls and easels that held maps and military diagrams. The side wall straight ahead was lined with rain-streaked windows through which a training yard was visible, framed in the distance by another wing of the keep. At the back of
the room where he had entered, to his left, sat a great table in front of a bank of cupboards built into the wall.

Like the rest of what Torin had seen of the keep, all was stark and unembellished, with an eye toward function and little else. The ceiling was high and flat, the floor tiles cracked and scraped and in need of polishing. Despite several brightly burning torches, the place had a martial feel to it, cold and rigid and thoroughly uninviting.

His troll escorts released him beside the table at the back of the room. They turned then, and lumbered from view.

Torin was momentarily at a loss. The trolls did not close the door behind them. Nor did they take up guard posts—he could still hear the reverberations of their heavy departure. Had they set him free? It seemed a strange place to do so. More than likely, someone was watching, awaiting his reaction.

So he waited in turn, savoring the non-darkness. He searched the chamber again, but saw no one and no place anyone might hide. As his gaze circled around to the entryway, it snagged upon a spiked club mounted above the lintel. The weapon was old and weathered, with a leather-wrapped haft and a dark stain of what was undoubtedly blood. An odd ornament, given the complete lack of decoration elsewhere throughout the room.

“That once belonged to an orc chieftain,” said a crisp voice, and Torin whirled. Striding toward him from the front of the chamber, from a doorway hidden by a rack of giant maps, was Lord Lorre. “I find it a useful reminder that helps to keep their officers in line.”

Torin held still as the overlord approached. Suddenly, the temperature in the room seemed to drop, and a burrowing dread writhed in the pit of his stomach. His feeling was that he was not worthy of this man’s presence, a feeling brought on by the warlord’s austere bearing.

“An unsightly trophy,” Torin observed, refusing to be intimidated. “I can only imagine those that adorn your own walls back home.”

Lorre stopped less than a pace away, staring down at him with a stern visage. The man seemed taller indoors, perhaps because he was no longer surrounded by giants. He was dressed in a black tunic and breeches, with a ruggedly athletic build and an air both imperial and indignant. By all appearances, he was unarmed.

“This
is
my home,” the warlord said. “And for the time being, my new seat of power. Is that something you wish to challenge?”

Torin considered the man’s face—its high, rigid cheekbones and pale, leathery skin, wrinkled with age and scarred with the wounds of battles untold. But it was the eyes that fascinated him, those hollow, steel-colored orbs that bored into Torin and left him feeling empty within.

Finally, he shook his head. “I only want to know what you intend to do with my friends.”

“If by friends you mean that lawless rabble with which you assaulted this city, rest assured, they will be granted the same choice afforded all those who oppose me.”

Torin frowned. “Which is?”

“To take up their arms in my service, or not at all.”

“Then you would make them into slaves.”

Lorre crossed his arms in front of his chest. “You have no doubt heard much about me, most of it ill-favored, else you would not have joined these rogues in their attack.”

“You lead monsters in the slaughter of men,” Torin accused.

“I find that the two are often inseparable, don’t you? The fact remains, you are not of this land, and its struggles are not your concern. My interrogator tells me that you have come in search of something. Is this not so?”

Interrogator?
Saena, Torin realized. Despite his earlier suspicions concerning the girl, the extent of her role surprised him.

“Skilled, is she not?” Lorre teased. “And with a memory like a spider’s web. I know every word you have spoken to her. What I want to know now is which were truth, and which were lies.”

The man stepped closer, bending near with those soulless eyes and his cropped white hair. His breath was like a mead hall hearth in need of sweeping, and Torin had to fight the urge to recoil.

“All I told her is true,” Torin said. “If I am not allowed to find the Finlorians, a dark force will claim my lands, and may soon spread to yours.”

Lorre waved the possibility aside. “I fear not whatever ghosts you unearthed in those elven tombs. But I, too, have interest in their descendants, they of the once-mighty Finlorian Empire.”

“And why is that?”

“Because, long ago, they stole something from me, and if possible, I would have it back.”

The glass-filled windows rattled. Outside, the rain fell in horizontal sheets, bent sideways by a strafing wind. Torin bit back his next retort, sensing it better to hear the man out.

“Few know what I am about to tell you. I was once married to one, you see—a Finlorian. In our selfishness, we gave birth to a daughter. A cruelty, I now understand, for nowhere were we accepted, among my wife’s people, or mine.”

Torin remained silent, stunned by what he was hearing. At the same time, his mind raced, trying to figure out what sort of game Lorre might be playing.

“We made our home as best we could,” the warlord continued, “traveling from place to place. But there was no escaping man’s intolerance, which finally took from me my wife.”

Torin saw already where this was headed, and understood now the emptiness in the warlord’s eyes. It was not pain, exactly, for that had long ago been buried beneath an avalanche of hate and vengeance. Feelings such as fear and compassion and remorse had since been stripped away. All that remained was a warrior’s defiance, the need to fight because fighting was all he knew.

“I was not born a warrior,” Lorre stated in the same clipped and measured tones. “But I became one to defend my daughter from a similar fate. My first recruits were fellow outcasts, those branded for one reason or another as undesirable to society. By virtue of our creed, we began to attract the scattered
dregs of the older races, who knew better than most what it meant to suffer man’s bigotry. Together, we began to fight back against any who would deny us our basic freedoms.”

“By denying the freedoms of others.”

“By securing for my daughter and my followers a region of our own, free from prejudice and ridicule, with strength enough to deter any who might take it from us.”

Torin saw an opening for continued debate, but decided to ignore it. “And the Finlorians?”

The warlord’s face darkened. “The Finlorians, who could have protected my wife but chose instead to view her marriage to me as an abomination, had the audacity to come to me with a proposal for peace. At the time, I had no intention of invading their domain or any other. But they feared the very possibility. For the wild region we had settled continued to grow, simply because more and more came to us, seeking to join our community. Up until then, we had shown no hostility beyond that required to defend ourselves. But our neighbors saw only our swelling ranks, and so began approaching us with their various entreaties. War did not begin until the Finlorians betrayed us.”

“And what great treasure did they steal from you?” Torin asked flippantly.

Lorre growled. “My daughter.”

Torin flinched in spite of himself. A backward step put him up against the edge of the table.

“For all my carefully laid defenses, I could not shield her from her own confusion, that of a young woman torn between two cultures. One of the Finlorian emissaries, a prince, became enamored with her, and before I knew it, had used his sorcerous wiles to seduce her, then whisk her away under my very nose. What’s more, she was with child at the time, the seed of her husband, a human among our camp.”

The warlord leaned back, recrossing his arms, which had slipped out to form fists on either side.

“So began my conquest, to rescue my daughter and to punish the Finlorians for their treachery. Instead of giving her up, or even fighting to save their lands, they elected to run and hide, sheltering her and the traitorous prince in a way refused my wife and me.”

“You were unable to find them?” Torin asked, taking care this time to sound appropriately sympathetic.

“My hunt lasted only so long. As soon as my armies moved against the Finlorians, the human kingdoms of the north—fearing that they were next—moved against me. Foolishly so, for my anger at that time was such that I was desperate to exact vengeance upon someone—anyone—for what had befallen me. Unable to engage the Finlorians, I granted the humans their war. For I’d come to understand that those who practice cruelty know no other language. To ensure peace, I first had to establish a universal order—a cause to which I chose to dedicate my life. Since then, I have tamed or killed any who stood against me, be they orc or elf, dwarf or troll, man or giant—or something in between.”

Torin shook his head. It should not have surprised him that even one as ruthless as Lorre should have his reasons. Nevertheless, he could not seem to reconcile the man’s motives with the results. “It seems to me you’ve become the very thing you are so impassioned against.”

“Oh? And what is that?”

“One who would bend the wills of others to his own,” Torin answered, choosing his words carefully.

“A tyrant.”

Torin clamped down on a useless denial.

“Call it what you will. I care not what you think of me. You see me as a leader of monsters. I say that I harbor not the blind prejudices by which men have driven such mighty creatures as the giant from your own land. You see them as slaves. I say that they follow me because I offer them conquest, the ultimate freedom from subjugation, a place in this world they would not otherwise have.”

The man’s demeanor was so proud and commanding, his words so brisk and authoritative, that Torin saw little room to argue. “And what would you have of me?”

Lorre regarded him silently for a moment, then stepped back and clapped his hands twice. “Only that you complete the quest you came here to fulfill, that you find the missing Finlorians. When you do, you will lead me to them.”

A recollection flashed through Torin’s mind—a phrase spoken by the witch Necanicum with regard to Lorre and his quest. Something to do with
him
leading the overlord, rather than the overlord leading him. He had only a moment to dwell on it, however, before a giant emerged from the same hidden doorway through which the warlord had entered. The beast strode forward, its shaggy head brushing the chamber’s ceiling, cradling within its massive hands the Crimson Sword.

When the giant reached them, it offered the talisman to Lorre with bowed head. The warlord took it, studied it briefly, then extended it to Torin hilt first.

Torin resisted his urge to snatch it from the man’s grasp. “You’re returning this to me?”

“It is an elven talisman, is it not? Were it not the key to your quest, you would not have brought it.”

Torin scowled. While he was loath to admit it, the warlord was right. He accepted the weapon, only briefly entertaining the idea of forcing Lorre to his knees. “With this, you would be the most powerful man in Yawacor.”

“I am that already,” the warlord said dismissively. He gestured to his giant, which took its leave, ducking through the nearest exit.

Torin continued to frown as he considered the blade. The weapon itself was genuine; he wasn’t sure he could say the same for Lorre’s purpose. “I’ve been told you are without mercy.”

“Good. Nor should you mistake this as such. It so happens I want something that I believe only you might provide.”

“And what makes you think I will find them where you could not?”

“For nearly two decades,” Lorre explained, “I’ve had bounty hunters continue the search. But none of
them
ever recovered a lost Sword of Asahiel. Perhaps that talisman you wield, along with your tale of strife, will be enough to lure the Finlorians from their hole.”