The Warrior King: Book Three of the Seer King Trilogy (26 page)

The farmer looked perplexed, Kutulu told me, sounding amused, then said “everybody just knew.”

Very, very good. If “everybody knew” the castle was haunted, no one would think whatever lights we showed were anything but supernatural, and the Maisirians, even more superstitious than our most craven peasant, would stay well clear.

I asked Kutulu if they’d taken a look inside.

Kutulu looked suddenly uncomfortable, and Elfric wouldn’t meet my eyes. No, they hadn’t. Why not? Well, they wanted to get the word back as quickly as possible.

“ ‘Sides,” Elfric rumbled. “There
is
some’at strange about those walls.”

I dismissed him, poured Kutulu a bit of a sweet yellow wine from Dara that I’d discovered he fancied. He sipped at it once, twice, which was as much as draining a flagon for the spymaster.

“Getting superstitious?” I asked.

Kutulu grimaced. “No. Or at any rate, I don’t think so. But …”

“But what?”

“Never mind. I’ll go back tomorrow morning and go through the damned place top to bottom.” For some reason, he sounded a bit angry.

“Never mind,” I said. “We don’t have that much time. We’ll move this afternoon and be inside it by nightfall.”

I gave orders to break camp, then called Cymea, told her about the two men’s discomfort.

“Kutulu?”
she said in disbelief. “Afraid of something?”

“I don’t know if afraid’s the right word … but something about that place bothers him.”

“Perhaps,” she said thoughtfully, “we might walk carefully when we approach. And you, I, your great thug, and a scattering of other muscle-bound sorts might reconnoiter before we wander inside with our slippers in our hand looking for the guest bedroom?”

I thought that an excellent idea, and so Curti, Svalbard, myself, Kutulu, and Lasleigh’s cavalry rode out within the hour, the rest of the force not far behind.

The castle was only two hours’ ride distant, and by midafternoon we’d skirted the village and were at the base of the road leading up to it.

One look, and I understood Elfric and Kutulu’s hesitation. The castle, if that was what it should be called,
was
weird. At first, I thought it had been a single very high round tower whose upper-works had been smashed by time, the elements, or a conqueror, but as we rode closer, I realized the tower was not that ruined, that it had been conceived as a low, squat cylinder. It was as strange a building as I’d ever seen.

There had been no moat, but the gaping main entrance was on a second floor. A stone ramp and rollers lay overturned to one side, which we could hitch horses to and drag back in place. We tethered our mounts, and Curti and I went hand-over-hand up the rough stones to the portal. I tossed a knotted rope down, and the others swarmed up, and we went inside.

Our footsteps echoed on the ancient stone, and as we entered the courtyard, a scatter of pigeons scrawked alarm, and my sword was in my hand as the birds fluttered away through the open roof.

I was sheepish, until I noted that everyone except Cymea also had drawn steel. She had a wand in hand, and her eyes were wide, as if she’d sensed something.

I drew a question mark in the air, she shook her head, and we continued. Ramps in the walls, not stairs, led upward, and as we went, things grew stranger and stranger.

We came across stone tables, benches, badly worn, some tapestries whose detail I couldn’t make out that turned to dust when I touched them. Cymea found a bit of a scroll, said a spell over it, and was able to unroll it. The words, if words they were, were in no language I’d seen, nor did they look as if man’s logic had any part in their construct, one “letter” being a handspan tall, and next to it others not as large as Cymea’s fingernail. She, too, shook her head in ignorance.

There was room enough for many men, the rooms being set into the thick outer walls. They were small and somehow wrong in their proportions, ceilings low enough to make me duck my head, but they were very wide, perhaps thirty feet by twenty.

The top floor was broken away and open to the heavens, looking down on the valley below, but its flooring was sturdy enough yet for guards to make their rounds.

We went back down to the courtyard and found a ringbolted hatch to one side.

“Is it safe?”

“I … think so,” Cymea said. “But be wary.” Svalbard and I lifted hard, stumbled back as the hatch came up as if it were counterbalanced. There was a ramp leading down. A terrible smell rolled up, and we gagged. “I do not like this,” I said.

“I still feel no immediate threat,” Cymea said. “But we can abandon this building and sleep around the walls. Or find another hiding place entirely.”

“No,” I decided. “This place is otherwise perfect. Let’s see what’s below.”

We took bits of ensorcelled wood from our packs, struck sparks, and they grew into full-size tapers, fire sputtering from their tip. We went down into darkness.

There was a center room, with corridors spidering out. At intervals, there were barred doors, a small spy hole in each one.

“Dungeon,” Svalbard guessed. It made sense. Curti lifted the balk on one, opened it, held high his torch.

There were bones on the inside, as if a prisoner had been abandoned when the castle was vacated. But these bones, moldered by the centuries, had belonged to nothing human.

My skin crawled, but we went on. All of the corridors dead-ended against the outer walls but one, and at that one was a doorway, this with four stone balks barring it, and a strange symbol carved into the stone.

I remembered another demon, who’d lived in the depths below another ancient castle, and how Tenedos’s spell had brought it ravening forth. I didn’t need Cymea’s warning to leave that door blocked and was glad to go up into the dying light.

Lasleigh was standing in the courtyard entrance, so the rest of my troops had arrived.

I drew Cymea to one side. “Well?”

“I do not greatly like this place,” she said. “Something terrible happened a very long time ago, and there’s a great sadness. I feel no echo of man here, as if this tower’s builders were not human.”

“Demons?”

“I’ve never heard of demons requiring housing,” she said, trying to make light.

“So we should leave?”

“It’s your option. But I still don’t feel threatened. But I’ve never been anywhere that felt so dead, as if it’d died a thousand thousand years ago and still kept on dying.” She shook her head. “I know, that doesn’t make sense.”

I was most reluctant, but the day was growing late. One night could not hurt.

I supervised moving the ramp into place, and it slid easily, as if it were as light as pumice, but very strong. I watched the horses and mules carefully as we led them inside, for I’ve a belief animals can sense things, even the supernatural, better than man. But none of the beasts appeared nervous, and they seemed quite happy to be out of the dank.

I assembled the men, told them to take rooms by four-man fighting sections. I had guards told off and sent those who wished to wash back down the road about a third of a league to a creek. Other men I detailed to find dry wood for our cooking fires.

We cooked and ate, and then I called them together again.

“None of you have been told what you volunteered for, but it doesn’t take the brains of a recruit to know we’re here after some Maisirian hide. I want to hit the bastards here, there, and everywhere. Piss them off, make them afraid, then get the hells out of here.

“I want them to be like a man who’s stumbling through a forest, bitten by bugs, slashed by berry bushes, stumbling over vines, half-mad, not thinking right.

“When the weather changes, they’ll be marching north, toward us, toward Nicias, like that man in the forest. When they reach us in Kallio, we’ll have set them up for the kill.

“Any of you ever see an owl that grabs a nice rabbit just at dawn and goes to a perch to enjoy his feast? Then a bunch of crows see him and start picking at him, picking here, there, until he’s in a frenzy. Pretty soon he says the hells with this gods-damned rabbit and takes off for the deep forest, while the crows dine well.”

There was some laughter.

“We’re crows, and the Maisirians are the owl. We want their ass … I mean, their rabbit.”

I waited until the laughter faded.

“But remember something else. Every now and then, a crow gets too bold, and the owl rips his throat out.” Silence dropped like a weighted curtain.

“You understand me well,” I said. “Don’t fuck up and become that crow. Or make
me
into that crow. We’re here to help some other sorry bastard die for his country, not us.

“Now, go to your rooms. Tomorrow is make and mend. Get your weapons cleaned, check your mounts, get some sleep, and be ready to move when ordered.

“When we go out, I want us to get more gods-damned rabbits than you’ve ever seen!”

I set a heavy watch, less because I was worried about intruders than this castle itself.

Kutulu had the room next to me, Cymea next to him. Svalbard and Curti insisted on sleeping outside my room, in spite of my telling them to find a room of their own because there was nothing to worry about.

I spent an hour going over the map, forming my plan for the morrow. I thought it good and found myself most sleepy. I still felt uncomfortable, but not endangered, more as if I was spending the night in the home of someone I disliked, but who was neither my friend nor my enemy … yet.

I wrapped myself in my blankets on the stone floor, cold but not as cold as the mud we’d been sleeping in, blew out the candles, and went to sleep instantly.

I dreamed, and my dream was strange.

I was not a god, not a demon, nor human either. I had great powers and could manipulate the nature of matter itself. I was beyond good, beyond evil, and so offended greater powers, greater beings.

I was exiled, with those many beings who were connected to me, not quite family, but more than friends, to a far-distant world, where everything was hideous, strange, green.

I built this tower and continued my studies, cast my spells. I needed servitors, and so created, or perhaps brought from another place, smaller beings, pale, hideous to look at, pathetic in being locked into one shape for their brief existence.

Time passed, and once more I lusted for power. I reached out to the old realms, conspired, used all for my own ends, even those around me.

I was struck down from behind, by someone I trusted. As I lay dying I realized I’d used all my powers for nothing, trying to grasp at something that didn’t matter, and given up what did, and then I died.

I was laid to rest in the bowels of this tower, and the others like me escaped or were taken back to whatever we had come from, while those horrible beings who’d served us fled into the wilds.

I was dead, but still lay dying for aeons, alone on this alien world,
and I came awake, guts wrenching in sorrow.

I sat, shaken for a time, then dressed, strapped on my sword, and went out. Curti was half-dozing against a wall, and his eyes snapped open.

“Stay here,” I said, trying to sound calm. “I’m just going out for air.”

I went up to the roof. It was chill and overcast, but at least the rain had stopped.

The sentries saluted. I returned their salutes but didn’t speak, gazing out at the blackness of the lands around, only a tiny light here and there at this late hour, then noticed someone else, huddled against one wall.

It was Cymea. I tried to greet her cheerily, not wanting anyone, this close to battle, to notice my illogical upset, then saw that she’d been crying.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Never mind. I’m being silly.”

I waited.

“I just had a stupid, stupid dream.”

“So did I.”

“About this place?”

“Yes,” I said. “Tell me about it.”

I’ve never believed dreams mean anything much, so’ve always been bored by those who insist on talking about them and their supposed significance. But I obeyed Cymea. As I spoke, I saw her nodding.

“You had the same dream?”

“Almost exactly,” she said.

“This place,” I said. “This was where the … hells, I don’t know what he was … this was what he built?”

“I think so.”

“So how old is it?”

“How old
could
it be?” she responded. “Older, I think.”

I shudder, then another thought came, even worse.

“Those little creatures he … it … created or called up. Were those supposed to be us? Is
that
where we came from?”

“I don’t know,” Cymea said. “I hope not.”

“Abandoned flunkies for a degenerate god,” I said, finding it almost funny. “So there’s no Umar the Creator, no Irisu the Preserver, no Saionji?”

“Don’t be sure of that,” she said. “Maybe our wizard, our demon … if he even existed … was one of those we call gods.”

“I think I know a way we could find out,” I said.

“You mean open that crypt? No, Damastes. I think that might drive me mad.”

“Good. As the saying goes, I’m mad, but I’m hardly crazy.”

We stood in silence for a time, letting the cold night wind blow across our faces, and slowly the sadness ebbed.

“Maybe,” Cymea said, “that dream was worse, harder for me than it was for you.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m from a magician’s loins,” she said, bitterly. “I can feel what that creature thought. I know what price sorcerous power exacts. And what people are willing to do to gain it.”

“You mean,” I said, choosing my words very carefully, “the way your father, Landgrave Amboina, conspired against Tenedos?”

Her lips twisted. “You think conspiracy is the worst sin magicians contemplate, when they’re clawing for omnipotence? Damastes, you are a
very
naive man.”

She whirled, almost ran to the ramp, and disappeared.

No, I could have replied, I know there are far worse, at least in my eyes. Tenedos was willing to betray whatever ideals he’d had at one time, his country, and his people to satisfy the blood-drinking demon he thought his servant, the one he actually served.