Arthur Daigle's Blog - Posts Tagged "monsters"
Idiot's Graveyard part 1
Note: This story first appeared in the free ebook anthology Hall of Heroes. It is too long to post the entire piece on GoodReads, so I am submitting it in two parts.
A gorgeous summer day was coming to an end as Dana Illwind and Sorcerer Lord Jayden led a small merchant caravan. They’d protected three wagons for eleven days, a task Dana had been certain would have been boring. After all, they were far from hostile borders and nowhere near wilderness areas that could harbor threats. To her surprise (and no one else’s), they’d had to earn their pay guarding the wagons.
“I still don’t get what they were thinking,” Dana said. She was a woman of fifteen, wearing a simple dress, fur hat, backpack and leather boots that came up to her knees. Dana had a knife and was giving serious thought to getting a better weapon. She had brown hair and brown eyes, and was pretty enough that men working the caravan had been a bit too friendly for her liking during the trip. She’d told two of them to stop and drawn her knife on a third.
“Bandits aren’t known for clear thinking,” Jayden told her. Jayden was a walking contradiction. He wore expertly tailored black and silver clothes and had long blond hair that was perpetually messy. Jayden carried no weapons, but as the world’s only living Sorcerer Lord was dangerous even empty-handed. He was handsome, confident, skilled and a wanted man for constantly harassing the royal family and their supporters. Smart men avoided him, which should have made their guard duty as dull as dry toast.
Dana counted off fingers, saying, “They recognized you. They knew about the manticore you killed singlehanded. You gave them a fair warning. And somehow they still thought attacking was a good idea.”
“They were likely desperate, stupid, drunk, or some delightful combination of the three,” Jayden replied.
The caravan’s owner winced from where he sat on the lead wagon. “And now they’re not anything.”
“You’ll find the road safer with their passing, as will your fellow merchants,” Jayden replied. The fight with the bandits had been brief, one sided and exceedingly messy. Dana had been repulsed by the consequences of the battle, but she couldn’t disagree with Jayden. Those men would have gone on to hurt others if he hadn’t stopped them.
That was the problem with being around Jayden. Dana liked him, in a sisterly sort of way, but he dealt harshly with foes. She’d decided to join Jayden on his journeys partly in gratitude after he’d risked his life for her town, but also to limit how much damage he might do.
And he’d done a lot of damage. Jayden had been the end to many threats in the three months they’d traveled together. Bandits preying on travelers, wolves and bears preying on livestock, and monsters that preyed on everything, he’d faced them and won. But Jayden had an intense hatred of the king and queen, one Dana didn’t fully understand and he wouldn’t explain. It had taken all her efforts to keep him focused on defeating dangers to the common man rather than going after the royal family like a starving dog after a bone. So far she’d guided him down the right path, but it was a constant effort.
The caravan owner stood up and pointed at a dim light in the distance. “That’s the town of Jumil. I’m afraid it doesn’t have much to offer. The inn is cold and cramped. Their blacksmith specializes in mediocre work. Salt is an exotic seasoning. And the residents, well, they try hard.”
“Yet you wish to go there,” Jayden remarked.
“They pay well for spices and produce good furs,” the owner replied. “I’ll make a fair profit here even with your ten percent share of the cargo.”
“Why don’t other merchants come here if it’s so nice?” Dana asked him.
“They used to, but the roads have been a nightmare ever since the civil war.”
Shocked, Dana said, “That was twenty years ago!”
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” the man replied. He tipped his hat to Jayden and said, “No offense, but you’re not the first to clear this road. It’s been done many times by many men, but monsters and bandits keep cropping up, drawn in by the chance to rob farmhouses and travelers.”
Jayden yawned as he walked. “Keeping the roads safe is supposed to be a job for knights. It’s a shame they’re too busy getting ready for war to care what happens to their own people.”
The caravan owner chuckled without mirth. “As far as they’re concerned, we’re as far beneath them as livestock.”
The town of Jumil was if anything less impressive than the caravan owner’s description. The houses looked sturdy enough and properly maintained, but there were no decorations, no boardwalks to keep people from walking in the mud, and pigs wandered the streets rooting through garbage thrown out windows.
If the town wasn’t pleasant, the residents were another matter. A cheer rose up when the caravan approached, and men ran out to greet them. Most of them were shopkeepers and homeowners eager to buy a share of the cargo, while some men came hoping to sell what goods they had. Still more people came to see the newcomers. It took Dana a moment to realize that a caravan’s arrival was a spectacle for them rather than an ordinary occurrence.
“You’re the first strangers here in a week,” a town guard told them. He studied Jayden’s odd clothing with some concern.
“And we are indeed strange,” Jayden replied. “Nevertheless, we come bearing only the best of intentions.”
The guard frowned. “You, ah, you’re the Sorcerer Lord, aren’t you? There are wanted posters for you in every town with more than fifty souls.”
“Is that going to be a problem?” Jayden asked. He looked relaxed, even bored.
More guards came, but only to escort the caravan inside town limits. The first guard made no effort to alert them, instead saying, “If you cause no trouble then there will be no trouble. No bounty is worth dying for.”
That cheered Jayden for all the wrong reasons. “Pray tell, what’s my head worth?”
“The price on you goes up by the month. The latest bounty is five hundred silver pieces.”
“Five hundred?” Jayden looked at Dana. “It’s offensive. A cow fetches twenty silver pieces. A plow horse is worth fifty. I’ve bedeviled the crown for five years, robbing them, humiliating them, yet I’m worth only ten plow horses. Clearly I have to improve my performance.”
“Helping caravans and towns in need might bring the price down,” Dana countered. Jayden’s smile showed how little that mattered to him. “Settle up with the merchant and I’ll see about getting us a place to sleep tonight.”
“Agreed.”
Dana spotted the town’s inn and slipped through the growing crowd to reach it. She had to work fast. Jayden got bored easily, and when that happened his thoughts turned to harassing the king. She had hours at most to find something, anything, for him to do that would bring in cash and possibly magic.
The caravan’s owner had summed up Jumil’s inn quite well. It was clear they got little business with their few rooms, and would be totally unprepared if more than twenty visitors came to their town. There were a few men drinking at a table, so the inn wasn’t totally deserted. The innkeeper watched the caravan through an open window while a boy swept the floor.
“Hi there,” Dana said cheerfully. “My friends and I need rooms for the night.”
The innkeeper pointed at Jayden, still outside and happily talking with excited children. He did love attracting attention. Sounding more curious than worried, the innkeeper asked, “You’re with him?”
“Yes.”
“Listen, we don’t want trouble.”
“You already have it. We were attacked by bandits on our way here.”
One of the men drinking set down his mug. “It happened again?”
“It happened for the last time,” Dana corrected him. That cheered the men if not the innkeeper. “It was a paying job, and one that helped your town. We don’t have another job lined up after this one, though, so I thought you might be able to help. My friend is interested in old ruins, the older the better, but he’s open to other opportunities. Are there threats nearby? Monsters, bandits, problems you’d like to go away and never come back?”
The innkeeper’s brow furrowed. “There’s an old stone tower north of here. We don’t go near it, what with the howling at night.”
A man at the table waved for Dana to join him. “We know places you could earn some coins and do us a good turn. Innkeeper, get the lady a drink and put it on my tab.”
The next hour proved better than Dana had hoped for. The innkeeper provided directions to the tower and a history of the place going back three generations. More potential jobs came from the other guests. They had a litany of complaints, including thieves, highwaymen, walking skeletons and a wyvern responsible for eating cattle. They also knew of a nearby mayor fond of confiscating cargo from passing merchants. It was a good list that would keep Jayden busy and profitable.
Speaking of Jayden, the Sorcerer Lord was noticeable by his absence. Dana looked outside in the growing darkness and saw Jayden chatting with the guards. It was odd to see them so friendly with a wanted man, but she’d seen that people in isolated towns like Jumil took a relaxed view of the law. They worried about their families and neighbors. Anything happening outside their little world was beyond their control and of little interest.
Dana had been the same not long ago. Her father was mayor of a small town, and she knew firsthand how hard people worked just to put food on the table. If some injustice or disaster fell on people a hundred miles away, there was little they could offer besides their sympathy. And if a stranger came with a dubious past, men were willing to overlook it provided he behaved and had something to offer.
Jayden had a lot to offer. He’d learned the magic of the long dead Sorcerer Lords, and in a kingdom with few wizards that made him a rare and precious commodity. He could handle big threats, like when he and Dana destroyed the Walking Graveyard a month ago. If a man was desperate, had some gold saved up, didn’t mind property damage and had no connection to the royal family, he could hire Jayden. That might be what was happening outside.
It was so dark that stars twinkled in the night sky when Jayden finally entered the inn. The caravan owner and his men came next, laughing and with coins to spare. Their wagons were already loaded with furs and safely stored in an empty barn. The innkeeper cheered at the increase in business and readied rooms for his guests.
Dana and Jayden shared a table near the back of the inn’s common room. Smiling, Dana told him, “I found places we could go next, all within five days walking distance.”
Jayden smiled back. “Two hours in town and you’re already sharing girlish secrets with the ladies?”
“I spoke with men in the inn.” She frowned and added, “I don’t get along with other women. They’re always so catty, like my being there is a threat.”
“I imagine it has to do with having husbands with wandering eyes. You are efficient as always, Dana, but there’s a matter I have to attend to first.”
Worried, Dana asked, “What kind of matter?”
“We’ll discuss it on the road tomorrow. For now, eat, drink and enjoy what little this town has to offer.”
* * * * *
The next morning brought a sparklingly bright day. Jumil’s people were still giddy from having the road open to traffic and trade, and the innkeeper brought a simple but filling breakfast. They were still eating when an older and visibly drunken man staggered into the inn.
“What brings you, mayor?” the innkeeper asked.
Dana prepared for the worst. Jayden’s reputation meant there was no telling what sort of reception he’d receive, and the mayor might have come to arrest him. But the man brought no weapons or guards, and in his inebriated state he was a threat to no one but himself.
Steadying himself against a wall, the mayor took out a scroll and unrolled it. “This came last night by royal courier. It…you need to hear it.”
Reading aloud, the mayor announced, “By decree of His Majesty the King and his beloved wife the Queen, from this day forth there is a tax of one copper piece per person per day staying at an inn, hostel or hotel, to be collected and sent to the capital each month.”
“Mercy, you’ll bankrupt me!” the innkeeper protested.
Still reading from the scroll, the mayor said, “Furthermore, the owners and operators of these establishments must record the names and destinations of all customers, to be reported to the capital on a monthly basis and at the owners’ expense.”
The caravan owner and other guests at the inn edged away. If the king knew who you were and where to find you, he could tax you. Rates started at twenty percent and went up from there. The king could also take offense at where a man went and who he did business with, resulting in fines, arrest, imprisonment and possibly execution depending on royal whim.
“Hold on, now,” the caravan owner began.
He needn’t have worried. The mayor rolled up the scroll and said, “So for legal reasons none of you were ever here. Just, you need to know what’s going on, and that other mayors might obey this foolishness.” The man looked despondent as he left, muttering, “I used to like this job. I’m sure I did.”
“Every innkeeper in the kingdom just became an informant for the crown,” Dana said.
One of the men at the table grimaced. “This wouldn’t have happened before the king remarried. He’s not the same man he used to be before that wench and her clan got their hooks into him. The kingdom’s been a dark place since the old queen passed away and her son was exiled, and growing darker by the day.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” Jayden said. He smiled in genuine friendship rather than his usual sarcastic grin. “It pains me to leave such good company, but we’ve work to do. I bid you good day, gentlemen, and wish you luck.”
Dana followed him out onto the streets, where he headed north. “Jayden, you said you’d tell me what this was about when we got onto the road. Where are we going?”
“I accepted the job to help those merchants for a reason I didn’t share with you before. I’d heard of a company of infantrymen marching the same road we took to reach Jumil. I want to know where they’re going and why they were sent here. I spoke to the town guards last night. They confirmed the company’s arrival two months ago, and which road they departed on.”
“We’re going after an entire infantry company.” Dana put a hand over her face. “Jayden, you’re strong, but you can’t fight eighty men. It’s insane!” Nearby people turned and stared when she shouted. Lowering her voice, she said, “I like you. I respect you and know what you can do. I don’t love the king any more than you do, but one man taking on a kingdom is insane. You’re going to get killed.”
“Possibly. Dana, the king and queen are planning a war of conquest against neighboring lands. Why would they send away troops they’re going to need? Why send them to a part of the kingdom that’s more or less safe?”
“Less safe than more,” she told him. “There are monsters in the woods.”
“So many they need eighty men to defeat them?” They left the town limits while Jayden spoke. “I’m not an idiot, contrary to all appearances. The adventures and opportunities you’ve found for me all take me away from more civilized parts of the kingdom, places where I could strike at the king and queen. I don’t mind, as your leads have produced gold and two inscribed spells of the Sorcerer Lords that enhanced my strength. But my goal has not changed. I intend to either bring down the throne or hurt it badly enough to prevent it from visiting the horrors of war on other lands.”
“This isn’t a good idea.”
Jayden shrugged. “The alternatives are worse. You are, of course, not obliged to join me. I’m sure your parents would be glad if you returned home.”
“I’m trying to save your life!”
“I know.” Jayden was uncharacteristically polite. “I appreciate your concerns and the risks you’ve taken on my behalf. No one else has done the same, and I have helped many in the same way I did you and your town. It nearly cost you your life when we fought the Walking Graveyard.”
“That thing only ate my shoes,” Dana said. “I liked those shoes.”
“It could have taken your feet. You remained with me after that happened, and I’m grateful. Dana, if I’m right then something is dreadfully wrong and could get much worse. I’m not sure I can prevent it, but I must try.”
Dana hated this. She’d tried her best, but Jayden was dead set on taking on the army, a force far worse in character than it once was. The kingdom was short of manpower even since the civil war, so short that citizens were only obliged to join local militias rather than become soldiers. The king got around that by hiring mercenaries from other lands, brutal men whose loyalty depended on monthly pay.
“So where are we going?” she asked.
“The men went north to an unpopulated and isolated region.”
Dana stopped in her tracks. “Wait, north? There are ruins of a stone tower north of here. The innkeeper said nobody’s gone near there for decades because of weird noises.”
Jayden rolled his eyes. “I normally don’t hate being right.”
A gorgeous summer day was coming to an end as Dana Illwind and Sorcerer Lord Jayden led a small merchant caravan. They’d protected three wagons for eleven days, a task Dana had been certain would have been boring. After all, they were far from hostile borders and nowhere near wilderness areas that could harbor threats. To her surprise (and no one else’s), they’d had to earn their pay guarding the wagons.
“I still don’t get what they were thinking,” Dana said. She was a woman of fifteen, wearing a simple dress, fur hat, backpack and leather boots that came up to her knees. Dana had a knife and was giving serious thought to getting a better weapon. She had brown hair and brown eyes, and was pretty enough that men working the caravan had been a bit too friendly for her liking during the trip. She’d told two of them to stop and drawn her knife on a third.
“Bandits aren’t known for clear thinking,” Jayden told her. Jayden was a walking contradiction. He wore expertly tailored black and silver clothes and had long blond hair that was perpetually messy. Jayden carried no weapons, but as the world’s only living Sorcerer Lord was dangerous even empty-handed. He was handsome, confident, skilled and a wanted man for constantly harassing the royal family and their supporters. Smart men avoided him, which should have made their guard duty as dull as dry toast.
Dana counted off fingers, saying, “They recognized you. They knew about the manticore you killed singlehanded. You gave them a fair warning. And somehow they still thought attacking was a good idea.”
“They were likely desperate, stupid, drunk, or some delightful combination of the three,” Jayden replied.
The caravan’s owner winced from where he sat on the lead wagon. “And now they’re not anything.”
“You’ll find the road safer with their passing, as will your fellow merchants,” Jayden replied. The fight with the bandits had been brief, one sided and exceedingly messy. Dana had been repulsed by the consequences of the battle, but she couldn’t disagree with Jayden. Those men would have gone on to hurt others if he hadn’t stopped them.
That was the problem with being around Jayden. Dana liked him, in a sisterly sort of way, but he dealt harshly with foes. She’d decided to join Jayden on his journeys partly in gratitude after he’d risked his life for her town, but also to limit how much damage he might do.
And he’d done a lot of damage. Jayden had been the end to many threats in the three months they’d traveled together. Bandits preying on travelers, wolves and bears preying on livestock, and monsters that preyed on everything, he’d faced them and won. But Jayden had an intense hatred of the king and queen, one Dana didn’t fully understand and he wouldn’t explain. It had taken all her efforts to keep him focused on defeating dangers to the common man rather than going after the royal family like a starving dog after a bone. So far she’d guided him down the right path, but it was a constant effort.
The caravan owner stood up and pointed at a dim light in the distance. “That’s the town of Jumil. I’m afraid it doesn’t have much to offer. The inn is cold and cramped. Their blacksmith specializes in mediocre work. Salt is an exotic seasoning. And the residents, well, they try hard.”
“Yet you wish to go there,” Jayden remarked.
“They pay well for spices and produce good furs,” the owner replied. “I’ll make a fair profit here even with your ten percent share of the cargo.”
“Why don’t other merchants come here if it’s so nice?” Dana asked him.
“They used to, but the roads have been a nightmare ever since the civil war.”
Shocked, Dana said, “That was twenty years ago!”
“I wouldn’t lie to you,” the man replied. He tipped his hat to Jayden and said, “No offense, but you’re not the first to clear this road. It’s been done many times by many men, but monsters and bandits keep cropping up, drawn in by the chance to rob farmhouses and travelers.”
Jayden yawned as he walked. “Keeping the roads safe is supposed to be a job for knights. It’s a shame they’re too busy getting ready for war to care what happens to their own people.”
The caravan owner chuckled without mirth. “As far as they’re concerned, we’re as far beneath them as livestock.”
The town of Jumil was if anything less impressive than the caravan owner’s description. The houses looked sturdy enough and properly maintained, but there were no decorations, no boardwalks to keep people from walking in the mud, and pigs wandered the streets rooting through garbage thrown out windows.
If the town wasn’t pleasant, the residents were another matter. A cheer rose up when the caravan approached, and men ran out to greet them. Most of them were shopkeepers and homeowners eager to buy a share of the cargo, while some men came hoping to sell what goods they had. Still more people came to see the newcomers. It took Dana a moment to realize that a caravan’s arrival was a spectacle for them rather than an ordinary occurrence.
“You’re the first strangers here in a week,” a town guard told them. He studied Jayden’s odd clothing with some concern.
“And we are indeed strange,” Jayden replied. “Nevertheless, we come bearing only the best of intentions.”
The guard frowned. “You, ah, you’re the Sorcerer Lord, aren’t you? There are wanted posters for you in every town with more than fifty souls.”
“Is that going to be a problem?” Jayden asked. He looked relaxed, even bored.
More guards came, but only to escort the caravan inside town limits. The first guard made no effort to alert them, instead saying, “If you cause no trouble then there will be no trouble. No bounty is worth dying for.”
That cheered Jayden for all the wrong reasons. “Pray tell, what’s my head worth?”
“The price on you goes up by the month. The latest bounty is five hundred silver pieces.”
“Five hundred?” Jayden looked at Dana. “It’s offensive. A cow fetches twenty silver pieces. A plow horse is worth fifty. I’ve bedeviled the crown for five years, robbing them, humiliating them, yet I’m worth only ten plow horses. Clearly I have to improve my performance.”
“Helping caravans and towns in need might bring the price down,” Dana countered. Jayden’s smile showed how little that mattered to him. “Settle up with the merchant and I’ll see about getting us a place to sleep tonight.”
“Agreed.”
Dana spotted the town’s inn and slipped through the growing crowd to reach it. She had to work fast. Jayden got bored easily, and when that happened his thoughts turned to harassing the king. She had hours at most to find something, anything, for him to do that would bring in cash and possibly magic.
The caravan’s owner had summed up Jumil’s inn quite well. It was clear they got little business with their few rooms, and would be totally unprepared if more than twenty visitors came to their town. There were a few men drinking at a table, so the inn wasn’t totally deserted. The innkeeper watched the caravan through an open window while a boy swept the floor.
“Hi there,” Dana said cheerfully. “My friends and I need rooms for the night.”
The innkeeper pointed at Jayden, still outside and happily talking with excited children. He did love attracting attention. Sounding more curious than worried, the innkeeper asked, “You’re with him?”
“Yes.”
“Listen, we don’t want trouble.”
“You already have it. We were attacked by bandits on our way here.”
One of the men drinking set down his mug. “It happened again?”
“It happened for the last time,” Dana corrected him. That cheered the men if not the innkeeper. “It was a paying job, and one that helped your town. We don’t have another job lined up after this one, though, so I thought you might be able to help. My friend is interested in old ruins, the older the better, but he’s open to other opportunities. Are there threats nearby? Monsters, bandits, problems you’d like to go away and never come back?”
The innkeeper’s brow furrowed. “There’s an old stone tower north of here. We don’t go near it, what with the howling at night.”
A man at the table waved for Dana to join him. “We know places you could earn some coins and do us a good turn. Innkeeper, get the lady a drink and put it on my tab.”
The next hour proved better than Dana had hoped for. The innkeeper provided directions to the tower and a history of the place going back three generations. More potential jobs came from the other guests. They had a litany of complaints, including thieves, highwaymen, walking skeletons and a wyvern responsible for eating cattle. They also knew of a nearby mayor fond of confiscating cargo from passing merchants. It was a good list that would keep Jayden busy and profitable.
Speaking of Jayden, the Sorcerer Lord was noticeable by his absence. Dana looked outside in the growing darkness and saw Jayden chatting with the guards. It was odd to see them so friendly with a wanted man, but she’d seen that people in isolated towns like Jumil took a relaxed view of the law. They worried about their families and neighbors. Anything happening outside their little world was beyond their control and of little interest.
Dana had been the same not long ago. Her father was mayor of a small town, and she knew firsthand how hard people worked just to put food on the table. If some injustice or disaster fell on people a hundred miles away, there was little they could offer besides their sympathy. And if a stranger came with a dubious past, men were willing to overlook it provided he behaved and had something to offer.
Jayden had a lot to offer. He’d learned the magic of the long dead Sorcerer Lords, and in a kingdom with few wizards that made him a rare and precious commodity. He could handle big threats, like when he and Dana destroyed the Walking Graveyard a month ago. If a man was desperate, had some gold saved up, didn’t mind property damage and had no connection to the royal family, he could hire Jayden. That might be what was happening outside.
It was so dark that stars twinkled in the night sky when Jayden finally entered the inn. The caravan owner and his men came next, laughing and with coins to spare. Their wagons were already loaded with furs and safely stored in an empty barn. The innkeeper cheered at the increase in business and readied rooms for his guests.
Dana and Jayden shared a table near the back of the inn’s common room. Smiling, Dana told him, “I found places we could go next, all within five days walking distance.”
Jayden smiled back. “Two hours in town and you’re already sharing girlish secrets with the ladies?”
“I spoke with men in the inn.” She frowned and added, “I don’t get along with other women. They’re always so catty, like my being there is a threat.”
“I imagine it has to do with having husbands with wandering eyes. You are efficient as always, Dana, but there’s a matter I have to attend to first.”
Worried, Dana asked, “What kind of matter?”
“We’ll discuss it on the road tomorrow. For now, eat, drink and enjoy what little this town has to offer.”
* * * * *
The next morning brought a sparklingly bright day. Jumil’s people were still giddy from having the road open to traffic and trade, and the innkeeper brought a simple but filling breakfast. They were still eating when an older and visibly drunken man staggered into the inn.
“What brings you, mayor?” the innkeeper asked.
Dana prepared for the worst. Jayden’s reputation meant there was no telling what sort of reception he’d receive, and the mayor might have come to arrest him. But the man brought no weapons or guards, and in his inebriated state he was a threat to no one but himself.
Steadying himself against a wall, the mayor took out a scroll and unrolled it. “This came last night by royal courier. It…you need to hear it.”
Reading aloud, the mayor announced, “By decree of His Majesty the King and his beloved wife the Queen, from this day forth there is a tax of one copper piece per person per day staying at an inn, hostel or hotel, to be collected and sent to the capital each month.”
“Mercy, you’ll bankrupt me!” the innkeeper protested.
Still reading from the scroll, the mayor said, “Furthermore, the owners and operators of these establishments must record the names and destinations of all customers, to be reported to the capital on a monthly basis and at the owners’ expense.”
The caravan owner and other guests at the inn edged away. If the king knew who you were and where to find you, he could tax you. Rates started at twenty percent and went up from there. The king could also take offense at where a man went and who he did business with, resulting in fines, arrest, imprisonment and possibly execution depending on royal whim.
“Hold on, now,” the caravan owner began.
He needn’t have worried. The mayor rolled up the scroll and said, “So for legal reasons none of you were ever here. Just, you need to know what’s going on, and that other mayors might obey this foolishness.” The man looked despondent as he left, muttering, “I used to like this job. I’m sure I did.”
“Every innkeeper in the kingdom just became an informant for the crown,” Dana said.
One of the men at the table grimaced. “This wouldn’t have happened before the king remarried. He’s not the same man he used to be before that wench and her clan got their hooks into him. The kingdom’s been a dark place since the old queen passed away and her son was exiled, and growing darker by the day.”
“Truer words were never spoken,” Jayden said. He smiled in genuine friendship rather than his usual sarcastic grin. “It pains me to leave such good company, but we’ve work to do. I bid you good day, gentlemen, and wish you luck.”
Dana followed him out onto the streets, where he headed north. “Jayden, you said you’d tell me what this was about when we got onto the road. Where are we going?”
“I accepted the job to help those merchants for a reason I didn’t share with you before. I’d heard of a company of infantrymen marching the same road we took to reach Jumil. I want to know where they’re going and why they were sent here. I spoke to the town guards last night. They confirmed the company’s arrival two months ago, and which road they departed on.”
“We’re going after an entire infantry company.” Dana put a hand over her face. “Jayden, you’re strong, but you can’t fight eighty men. It’s insane!” Nearby people turned and stared when she shouted. Lowering her voice, she said, “I like you. I respect you and know what you can do. I don’t love the king any more than you do, but one man taking on a kingdom is insane. You’re going to get killed.”
“Possibly. Dana, the king and queen are planning a war of conquest against neighboring lands. Why would they send away troops they’re going to need? Why send them to a part of the kingdom that’s more or less safe?”
“Less safe than more,” she told him. “There are monsters in the woods.”
“So many they need eighty men to defeat them?” They left the town limits while Jayden spoke. “I’m not an idiot, contrary to all appearances. The adventures and opportunities you’ve found for me all take me away from more civilized parts of the kingdom, places where I could strike at the king and queen. I don’t mind, as your leads have produced gold and two inscribed spells of the Sorcerer Lords that enhanced my strength. But my goal has not changed. I intend to either bring down the throne or hurt it badly enough to prevent it from visiting the horrors of war on other lands.”
“This isn’t a good idea.”
Jayden shrugged. “The alternatives are worse. You are, of course, not obliged to join me. I’m sure your parents would be glad if you returned home.”
“I’m trying to save your life!”
“I know.” Jayden was uncharacteristically polite. “I appreciate your concerns and the risks you’ve taken on my behalf. No one else has done the same, and I have helped many in the same way I did you and your town. It nearly cost you your life when we fought the Walking Graveyard.”
“That thing only ate my shoes,” Dana said. “I liked those shoes.”
“It could have taken your feet. You remained with me after that happened, and I’m grateful. Dana, if I’m right then something is dreadfully wrong and could get much worse. I’m not sure I can prevent it, but I must try.”
Dana hated this. She’d tried her best, but Jayden was dead set on taking on the army, a force far worse in character than it once was. The kingdom was short of manpower even since the civil war, so short that citizens were only obliged to join local militias rather than become soldiers. The king got around that by hiring mercenaries from other lands, brutal men whose loyalty depended on monthly pay.
“So where are we going?” she asked.
“The men went north to an unpopulated and isolated region.”
Dana stopped in her tracks. “Wait, north? There are ruins of a stone tower north of here. The innkeeper said nobody’s gone near there for decades because of weird noises.”
Jayden rolled his eyes. “I normally don’t hate being right.”
Idiot's Graveyard part 2
And here is the second part of Idiot's Graveyard. We now continue your story, already in progress.
Dana and Jayden traveled the entire day, leaving farmland far behind and entering rolling hills and forests. The road they followed was narrow and winding, but there were fresh wagon ruts and countless boot prints in the dirt. Men had come through in great numbers.
“The innkeeper said the tower is all that’s left of a larger ruined settlement,” Dana told Jayden. “It was always in bad shape, but long ago there was a flood that took out everything but the tower. People used to go there to scavenge bricks for their houses. They stopped when they heard weird noises with no source.”
“Have livestock or people disappeared?”
“Nobody got close enough to risk it. They’ve been shying away from this place for generations. The only men who came close were fur trappers, and their traps stayed empty no matter how long they were out, the bait drying out instead of being eaten.”
Jayden frowned. “The duration of the problem suggests powerful magic is involved. Whatever it is, it hasn’t been freed yet, a blessing indeed. If these mercenaries dig up the source of the power, they risk causing devastation across a wide area. Thousands could be in danger.”
“Could this be magic from the old Sorcerer Lords?” she asked. The original Sorcerer Lords had died out over a thousand years ago, torn apart by internal divisions and finished off by the elves of old. Long gone they might be, but they’d left behind ruins, artifacts and monsters that survived their creators’ passing.
“Possibly. They produced horrors the likes of which this world hadn’t seen before, and some of their evil lives to this day. Such willingness to commit terrible deeds is far from unique. Many have perpetrated equally foul acts since the fall of the original Sorcerer Lords and could be responsible for this problem.”
The countryside became ever more wild, with tangled weeds and trees twisted in unnatural shapes. At the same time there were few animals present and no signs that men lived here except the road itself.
“We’ll leave the road and travel near it for the next few miles,” Jayden said. “That way we may miss sentries posted by the mercenaries.”
Dana worried she might pick up ticks in the tangled brush, but she found insects and vermin just as absent as larger animals. Marching through the brush slowed their progress and left a trail even an idiot could follow.
“What do we do if they found whatever caused the trouble?” she asked.
“Steal it if possible, destroy it if necessary, or run for our lives if it’s as dangerous as I think.” Jayden smiled at her and added, “I dislike running, but it’s best when the alternative is dying. I’d like to put that off as long as possible.”
“I’d never guess,” Dana said dryly. The going was tough with the thick underbrush. It didn’t help that there were no animals to eat it, and it looked like dead briars and brambles weren’t rotting, either. She practically needed an ax to force her way forward. Casually, she asked, “Jayden?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think the man behind that tree is trying to hide from us?”
He glanced to their right. “The one behind the oak?”
“Yes, him.”
“I imagine so. It would be impolite to ask, but then I’ve never been accused of being good mannered. Hello!”
The raggedy man broke from cover and ran for the road. Now that he was in the clear, he looked like an escaped slave or prisoner. His long brown hair was tangled, his clothes torn and dirty, and he had fresh bruises. Jayden walked after him at a leisurely rate while speaking arcane words that formed a black whip in his hand. He swung it and the whip stretched wildly until it reached ahead of the fleeing man. The whip burned through the underbrush, hacking through curling trees and twisted brambles, finally cutting through an oak. The man skidded to a halt in front of the shredded plant life.
“I see you like a captive audience,” the man said in a polite tone. He held up his shackled hands and rattled the chains running between his wrists.
Jayden and Dana walked over to the man while the whip retracted and disappeared. Smiling, Jayden said, “Now then, what’s a fine looking gentleman like yourself doing on a lonely road?”
The stranger smiled back. “Trying not to die. It’s a full time job as of late. I suppose introductions are in order. I’m—”
Dana marched up to the man and poked him in the chest. “You’re Jeremy Galfont, the grave robber! My father has a wanted poster with your picture. You’ve desecrated graves across the kingdom!”
“I, madam, am an asset recovery specialist,” Galfont replied. “In my defense, the wanted posters got my bad side. I’m quite handsome when I’m allowed to shave, bathe and eat regular meals.”
Jayden cast another spell, forming a sword of utter blackness edged in white light. He pointed it at Galfont’s throat, making the man sweat. “That answers one question and demands another. You look like someone whose past caught up with him, but we found you on the road with no guards or men chasing you. Care to explain your situation?”
“Certainly, but would you mind pointing that sword somewhere else? It makes me nervous.” Jayden answered Galfont’s request by lowering his blade from the grave robber’s throat to hover between his legs. “That’s not much of an improvement.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. Answer my question.”
Galfont gulped before he began. “I’d like to start by saying this isn’t my fault. The lady’s description of me leaves a lot to be desired. I recover riches that would otherwise be of use to no one and reintroduce them into the economy.”
“You rob graves!” Dana yelled.
Galfont rolled his eyes. “Must you put a negative spin on it? My profession requires patience and skill. I do hours of research to learn which graves have valuables to recover. I’ve never hurt a man nor beast, and I always spread the wealth.”
“Jayden, can I hit him?”
“If his story doesn’t progress, then yes.”
The grave robber sighed. “No one appreciates the hardships I go through. Three months ago, I was spending hard earned coins in a tavern when a very polite young man came to my table. He said he was interested in hiring me. Despite the young lady’s poor opinion of me, I don’t hire to anyone. Employers either want the profits of my hard work, or they want me to do something dangerous and repugnant.”
“Like rob graves?” she asked.
“If I may continue,” Galfont asked peevishly. “The man knew a lot about me, never a good sign in my line of work, and promised a reward for my services. I thanked him for his offer, threw my drink in his face and ran out the back…where I found a number of men with swords. I was arrested and told my reward would be keeping my head and neck close friends. My work was to help dig up a treasure in an ancient ruin.”
“The stone tower north of here?” Jayden asked.
“The same. I was taken there with eighty mercenaries, men without any sense of humor, I might add. I work best alone, but they insisted on staying with me night and day. We spent months digging and sifting through the ruins. I told them it was pointless! It was clear to any with eyes that these were elf ruins, and elves don’t bury their dead with anything, not even clothes.”
Dana tried to imagine that and blushed. “That must make for awkward funerals.”
“Closed caskets are required,” Galfont told her. “The ruins were trapped with magic wards, old and very powerful ones. I got around them with one part skill, one part experience and eight parts blind luck, but early yesterday morning I found a hidden room in the tower containing a silvery box three inches across. My captors recognized it and were very pleased to get it.”
Jayden lowered the sword and pressed closer. “This is very important. Did they identify it?”
Galfont shrugged. “They called it Vali-something or other. I’d never heard the word before.”
“Validendum?” Jayden asked.
“No. It was harsher sounding than that.”
“Valivaxis?”
The grave robber snapped his fingers. “That’s it! Wait, you knew the word. Oh dear, that’s not good for me, is it?”
“It’s not good for anyone. How did you escape?”
“I was tied up and thrown into a wagon while the mercenaries broke down their camp. They’d only just started when there was a terrible scream. Something, and I’m glad to say I don’t know what, attacked their camp. I heard its death cry, a ghastly sound, and I heard them pile wood on the body and burn it. I gather they lost a lot of men. They got back to breaking down their camp and were ready to leave. This time I saw one of the men carry the Valivaxis. It got all glowy, and a shiny door opened in front of him. This, I’m sorry, I can’t describe it without using the word ‘thing’, came out and attacked. I broke free and ran.”
Frightened, Dana asked, “What happened to the men?”
“Some tried to fight and others fled. The ones who ran lasted longer. I know a few of them got away because I heard them stumbling around in the dark the same as me. There was a terrible screaming sound, so I think the second monster was killed.”
“We’re in trouble,” Dana said.
“We are, as is the town of Jumil and everyone else within five hundred miles,” Jayden said. “We have to close the Valivaxis before anything else escapes from it.”
“I doubt I’d be much use in my current condition,” Galfont said. He wasn’t lying. The man was unarmed and had obviously suffered during his incarceration. He held up his shackled hands and said, “I feel I’ve been of some use in this matter. Might I be so bold as to ask for payment, kind sir?”
Jayden cut through the shackles with his sword and allowed the black blade to vanish. The grave robber bowed, and before leaving said, “I’d tip my hat if I had one. Wizard though you are, sir, I’ll wish you luck, because magic alone won’t be enough.”
“Wait, you’re letting him go?” Dana demanded.
“We can’t turn him in for the bounty money given my own wanted status, nor would I want to considering the tortures he would receive. That means we either kill him or let him go, and I choose mercy when possible.”
Galfont made a hasty exit while Jayden walked onto the road and headed for the stone tower. Dana followed him and asked, “Jayden, what is this thing?”
“I’d read about the Valivaxis long ago. It dates to the Ancient Elf Empire, one of the many magic artifacts that survived its collapse. Its more common name is The Idiot’s Graveyard.”
“A grave for idiots? It must be full to overflowing.”
Jayden smirked. “The name refers to the royalty buried there. In elven society it’s considered a heavy blow for an enemy to desecrate the graves of your ancestors. Elven emperors were very worried about the loss of face they’d suffer if their dead were disinterred. They built the Valivaxis, a gate to an inhospitable world where they placed their dead.”
Puzzled, Dana asked, “Why is it called The Idiot’s Graveyard if that’s where they put their leaders?”
“The elves never got over the fall of their empire. They had to blame someone, and the emperors were a popular choice.”
Dana snapped her fingers. “The monsters that attacked the mercenaries came from the Valivaxis. They were meant to defend it, weren’t they?”
“This is why I like traveling with you, Dana. Yes, the ancient elves knew if someone stole the Valivaxis they could use it to dig up the former emperors. As a further safeguard, they stocked it with their wizards’ failed experiments, monsters created with powerful magic and too unstable to control. Elf wizards placed those abominations in a magical slumber, neither moving nor aging, wakening only if triggered to be a final guard against attack. Opening the Valivaxis is easy, but there is a specific way to do it to avoid waking its foul defenders. The mercenaries did it wrong and paid with their lives.
“And it remains open. The Valivaxis has only been opened once before, releasing monsters twice a day until it was correctly sealed. That one horrible mistake cost the lives of many good people before it was closed, however that was done. Now that it’s open again, it will continue releasing its guardians, horrors created by an ancient and debased people, and they will attack any and all they meet.”
Worried, she asked, “How many monsters are in there?”
“No one knows, and I’d rather not find out.”
Dana jogged in front of Jayden and asked, “But why would the king and queen send men to find it? What good are graves with no treasure and monsters no one can control?”
Jayden scowled. She knew him well enough to know he wasn’t mad at her asking the question, but instead at the answer he’d have to give. “There are two equally disturbing possibilities. The first is they didn’t know that the emperors were buried without even the clothes on their backs and hoped there were riches to recover. Vulgar as that is, I wouldn’t put it past them.”
“And the second?”
Jayden stopped walking, seething in anger. “They knew there is no treasure and want the monsters. Such an uncontrollable force can be a benefit depending on where they are released. Suppose a spy working for the king snuck into an enemy country with the Valivaxis and opened it. The monsters would attack the first people they met, sowing destruction and discord, costing countless lives. The royal couple could then send in their armies to finish off whoever survived and claim land now conveniently devoid of people.”
Dana felt a cold, empty feeling in her stomach at the thought. “They wouldn’t be blamed for it, either. No one could link them to the monsters.”
“I don’t know how they discovered the location of the Valivaxis. Perhaps they found some ancient texts describing where it last was, or they hired a wizard or seer to locate it. Once they knew the location, they seized Galfont to help recover it without heavy loss of life. It was a brilliant if revolting plan that would have worked, except one of their men must have accidentally opened it. And now we have to close it if we’re to save Jumil and all the towns nearby.”
* * * * *
Jayden and Dana spent the rest of the trip in silence. Dana was terrified of what they’d find. Two monsters had been freed from the Valivaxis and then destroyed, but eighty men had died to do it. She’d been worried how Jayden could fight so many mercenaries, but how could he defeat monsters that were able to win such a fight? Jayden, confident as ever, marched to a battle he might not win.
The land became ever more desolate as they progressed. The soil was rocky, so much so that boulders jutted up from the ground. Thin soil supported few plants, and even those were thin and sickly. By and by the road grew steeper until it took a lot of effort to climb up. Eventually the road leveled out and brought them to the ruins.
“I was wondering how a flood could destroy an entire ruin,” Dana said.
“This would do the job,” Jayden agreed.
The stone tower was on the very edge of a gorge going sixty feet down to a dry, rocky riverbed far below. Stone tile roads led to the edge of the gorge, showing where the rest of the ruins had been. Some long distant flood had weakened the ground so much that it had gone down the gorge as a rockslide, taking with it whatever buildings and roads had survived until that time. Now only a stone tower fifty feet tall and twenty feet across remained alongside freshly dug pits.
There were new additions to the ruins courtesy of the mercenaries. Flattened canvas tents littered the ground next to crushed wagons, smashed crates and broken wood barrels. Snapped spears and bent swords were scattered about. There were charred remains of two bonfires, one cold and the other smoldered with glowing embers. Dana spotted a ribcage three feet across in the older fire, and a mound of large, blackened vertebra in the second. Here and there some of the mercenaries’ property survived by luck or good planning. The pits still had intact digging tools in them, as if the owners would soon be back.
And there were bodies. Most had been placed in the pits and covered with a thin layer of soil. A few remained above ground. They’d suffered serious wounds, many crushed to death as if a great weight had fallen upon them.
“I’ve no love for mercenaries, but no one deserved this,” Jayden said as he walked along the edge of the pits.
Dana shied away from the fallen men. “I’d heard from my father that some of them had come from as far away as Skitherin Kingdom. Imagine traveling so far just to die.”
Jayden pulled open a destroyed tent and searched through it. “We have to work fast. The Valivaxis could open again at any time.”
Dana picked a spot far from the dead mercenaries and looked for the silvery box. “The grave robber said some mercenaries escaped. How long until they bring reinforcements?”
“The closest towns have small garrisons, too few to help.” Jayden found a pouch of coins and tossed it aside. “Gold. Any other day that would be a worthy find. Nearby town militias are too poorly trained to be of much use. Surviving mercenaries will have to travel for days to reach the nearest town big enough to offer help, then spend days further bringing them here. This assumes they don’t simply flee the kingdom after such a loss. No, we don’t have to worry about mercenaries in the near future.”
More searching turned up a host of loot. There were coins, rings, weapons, some armor and plenty of tools. Dana might be a mayor’s daughter, but her family was still of modest means. A pile of valuables like this would be worth a fortune to the poor people back home. But no matter how hard she looked she didn’t find anything resembling the Valivaxis.
Dana found a handsome blue cloak and bundled treasure into it. It bothered her to take things off a battlefield, and made her wonder if there was really a difference between this and what Galfont the grave robber did. True, he disturbed graves and left families of the dead traumatized, while she was taking what was freely available for any who walked by. She could live with the distinction.
“Some of these silver coins are tarnished black,” Dana observed. “I think the mercenaries found them while digging for the real treasure.”
“I’ve come across other antiquities,” Jayden told her. “There’s nothing of great value and no magic, but it’s still more than I expected. I’d thought all the remnants of the Elf Empire were long since looted.”
“How long do we have until the Valivaxis opens?” she asked.
Jayden overturned a damaged wagon and sifted through its contents. “The legends said it opened twice a day when activated.”
That news made Dana stop working and stand up. “Galfont said two monsters already came out, and that was yesterday.”
“Which means either another one has already been set loose or will be so soon. Keep looking.”
Dana searched with a renewed vigor. They had to find the Valivaxis for their own sake and for the people in Jumil. She could only imagine what would happen if a monster tough enough to fight a company of infantrymen attacked such a small town. It would be terrible!
Wait, what was that glittering in the bottom of one of the pits? Dana had missed it earlier because there was a body in it and she hadn’t wanted to touch it. Gingerly she climbed down and shifted the dead man aside. “Jayden, this might be it.”
Jayden ran over and climbed down beside her. The Valivaxis was in the hands of a younger man once handsome to behold and dressed like an officer. “This must be the man who arrested Galfont. He found his prize and paid for it.”
“Can you close it?” she asked.
Jayden took the silvery box and studied it. “The good news is it’s safe to touch. Once opened, the Valivaxis has no further defenses. The bad news is it will remain dangerous until closed, which I don’t know how to do.”
“Bad news seems to understate the problem.”
Dana and Jayden left the pit and sat down. Jayden touched a small panel on the Valivaxis and slid it over. “It’s a puzzle box. Arranging the panels in the right pattern will close the gateway to the other world.”
Jayden slid panels across the box from one position to another. Somehow the panels could move from one side of the box to another without coming off. Dana saw two panels together form a word in elven, but Jayden separated them and moved them into new positions.
“There is a pattern to it,” he said. “The dragons represent years, months and days, while the words list specific elf emperors. I believe the dates match important events for the emperors, birth, death or coronation. The problem is many of these dates don’t correspond to any of the three.”
This was far outside Dana’s training or experience. She left him to the box and kept an eye on their surroundings. After all, Jayden might be wrong about the mercenaries leaving. Survivors could return to reclaim their prize if they were scared to come back without it. There could also be a monster about, whether from the Valivaxis or one native to the kingdom.
“Why do you think people living nearby heard noises?” she asked. “I mean, the box was sealed and the monsters were asleep.”
“Sleepers stir in the night, and no door is ever entirely closed,” he replied. “Those noises might have been what alerted the king and queen to the presence of the Valivaxis in their land. Let’s see, slide this one here…no, that’s not right. Emperor Clastisin wasn’t born for another century.”
It had taken most of the day to get here, and even summer’s long days had to end. The sun began to set and clouds turned a lovely shade of orange. Dana rummaged through the destroyed camp and found food and water. She was eating a late dinner when she saw a glint far down the road.
“Someone’s coming.”
Jayden’s attention remained on the Valivaxis. “Tell them to wait, or better yet to leave. When was Emperor Laskimaxil born?”
The last rays of light struck the approaching figure. As it neared, Dana could make out a man wearing a suit of silver plate armor set with jade panels, easily the gaudiest armor she’d ever seen. As the man neared, she noticed elaborate etchings on the jade. The knight was unarmed and moved without haste.
“Someone weird is coming,” she warned.
Still looking at the Valivaxis, Jayden asked, “How weird?”
“His armor has jade on it.”
Jayden set down the Valivaxis and stood up. Studying the approaching knight, he said, “That is a strange suit of armor. It looks ceremonial with the jade. Wait, elves favor green jade above all other precious stones. They call them eternal leaves.”
The jade knight reached the edge of the ruins and destroyed mercenary camp. He stopped walking well away from Jayden and Dana but stood facing them. A sour, acidic smell permeated the air.
“Name yourself,” Jayden called out.
The jade knight answered with a shriek no man or animal could make. His shoulders shifted forward, and a sickening cracking sound rang out. Eight oozing green tentacles sprouted from his back and stretched out thirty feet to grab intact swords and spears. Armed, the hideous knight advanced on them.
“The Valivaxis must have released this abomination before we arrived,” Jayden said. He backed up and cast a spell to form his black magic whip. “Get behind me, and whatever you do, don’t let it touch you.”
Slime dripped from the jade knight’s back as he walked into battle. Dana ran to the left, and from there saw a crack running down the horrible creature’s armored back. Those tentacles sprouted from the crack, and inside it she saw what looked like pulsating organs.
“I’m not trying to enter the Valivaxis,” Jayden told it. “I’m trying to close the gate. You can help me do it. We can close the doors and keep the emperors’ graves safe. Do you understand?”
“Burning, changing, twisting, winding,” it hissed, and swung three swords at Jayden. Two blades came from the right and one from the left. He ducked two swords and struck the third with his whip. The whip burned through the sword and cut off the tip of a tentacle. The jade knight howled and backed up, but only for a few seconds. It grabbed a shovel with the disarmed tentacle and attacked again.
“I’m not your enemy!” Jayden shouted.
“Twisting words, bending thoughts, burning minds, winding ways.” The jade knight was totally mad, its mind as warped as its body. It pressed the attack with swords and shovel coming straight down. Jayden ran from it and swung his whip again. This time he caught a tentacle and the whip wrapped around it. There was a hiss as the whip burned through the tentacle. The jade knight howled again, but didn’t flee. Instead it ran at Jayden and swung its remaining weapons with wild abandon.
Jayden took cover behind a damaged wagon while the hideous knight dropped down on all fours and scuttled around it. More cracks appeared on its armor, this time on the legs and arms, and still more tentacles stretched out. It lunged at him, swinging a host of weapons, and Jayden barely dodged the attacks. He cut a spear in half and leaped over a sword aimed at his ankles. Jayden lopped off another tentacle, forcing the jade knight back. It dropped its weapons and grabbed the damaged wagon with its tentacles, then lifted it up and threw it at Jayden. He hacked the wagon in half, and ducked when the jade knight jumped fifteen feet and sailed inches over his head.
Quite by accident, that jump brought it close to Dana.
“Run!” Jayden ordered.
Dana grabbed a shovel, the only weapon at hand, and headed for the tower. The jade knight scuttled after her, its arms and legs splayed out like a lizard’s. Its tentacles swung at her and she swatted one aside with the shovel. When another grabbed her around the waist, she drew her knife and slashed it. The tentacle spurted yellow ichor and let go.
Jayden caught up and stabbed the jade knight in the leg. Black sword met shining armor, and the magic blade pierced deep. The jade knight howled and ran off fifty feet.
“Pay attention to the man with the sword!” he yelled at it.
The jade knight gibbered and howled, a frightening mix of random words and animal noises. Its tentacles grabbed tent poles, shovels, picks, anything it could use as a weapon, and it charged Jayden again. He ran to the left and it followed, leaving Dana safe for the moment.
This would be a good time to run for her life, but that wasn’t an option when this abomination was faster and tougher than she was. If it beat Jayden, it could come after her and there was little she could do to stop it. She took a step closer to the stone tower, wondering if there was anything in it that might help. That thought ended when her right foot got so hot she jumped back and cried out in surprise. She looked down to see that she’d stepped into the remnants of the second bonfire. Her leather boot was blackened where it had touched the still hot embers.
Thinking fast, Dana scooped up red-hot embers with her shovel. The jade knight had its back to her while it was fighting Jayden, and she saw those wide openings in its armor where the tentacles emerged. She ran after it, and just as it was attacking Jayden she threw the shovel’s contents straight into the hole in its back where those freakish tentacles sprouted.
The jade knight screamed a high-pitched screech of agony. It threw its weapons aside and flailed about, knocking Dana to the ground. It clawed at its back, trying to dig out the embers burning it from the inside. Jayden rushed in and drove his sword through the panicked beast’s chest, impaling it and lifting it off its feet. The magic blade winked out, and he let the jade knight drop to the ground. It twitched and squirmed for a few moments, then became still.
Jayden ran over and helped Dana up. “Are you hurt?”
“Bruised, but I’ll live.” She stared at the abomination shaped like a man. It was dead, a blessing, but many more could soon arrive. Even now it disgusted her in the way it parodied a knight yet had those awful tentacles growing from its body…growing longer. “Jayden, the tentacles you cut off, they’re healing! It’s getting better!”
The jade knight stirred. Its wounds began to seal shut, and it tried to get up. It got on its hands and knees before falling back to the ground. Dana realized now why the mercenaries had burned the other two monsters. Hard as it was to hurt them, they could recover if they fell in battle and had to be completely destroyed.
Jayden pressed his hands together and began chanting. The jade knight hissed and sat up. Its tentacles slithered about until they found idle weapons to grab. A tiny spark formed within Jayden’s hands and he continued chanting. The jade knight struggled to its feet just as Jayden finished his spell. The spark flew off and slipped inside the monster’s armored body through the crack in its back.
“Get in the pit!” he shouted. Dana jumped into the nearest pit and Jayden leapt down beside her.
BOOM!
The spark expanded into a fireball twenty feet across. When the flames subsided, Dana got up and saw that the jade knight had been consumed by the blast. Only shattered bits of jade and melted scraps of armor remained. Nearby tents and wagons were burning, as were some weapons.
“That’s a new one,” Dana said as she climbed out of the pit.
“It’s actually the first spell I learned,” he replied. He followed her and leaned against a broken wagon, this one not on fire. “I don’t use it often because it takes so long to cast. Enemies are rarely obliging enough to let me complete it.”
Something glowed to their right. Dana and Jayden turned to see the Valivaxis shine and its many panels slide about.
Dana stared at it. “You have got to be kidding me.”
A glowing door appeared ten feet in front of the Valivaxis. Dry, cold air spilled out of the opening, and they heard a multitude of growls. The magic door was only four feet across, but it widened as some new horror pressed forward.
“Can you close it?” Dana asked.
Jayden ran over and snatched the Valivaxis off the ground. He slid the silver panels on the little box, but the moment he took his fingers off the panels they immediately started moving again. “No! We’ve got another one to deal with, and soon!”
Countless clawed hands grasped the edges of the magic door. At first Dana thought it was a large number of monsters coming through at once, but as the slavering green horror kept pushing forward, she realized there was only one creature. The dozens of green, slimy, wide jawed monsters were connected, with limbs fused together to make a single abomination. The many heads had no eyes, only gaping mouths, yet they turned to face Jayden and Dana.
Jayden threw down the Valivaxis and remade his black whip. To Dana’s surprise, the magic door moved when he dropped the silvery box. She shouted, “The door is linked to the Valivaxis! It goes where the box does!”
“What?”
There wasn’t time to explain. Dana grabbed the Valivaxis and ran for the gorge. As she ran the magic doorway moved with her, carrying the monster along. The monster kept coming out, more and more horrible bodies like an entire crowd. She didn’t know exactly how big it was, but it kept crawling out of the magic door. She’d nearly reached the gorge’s edge when the monster figured out what she was doing. It grabbed at rocks and ruined wagons, trying to stop. Jayden struck it with his whip and it let go, allowing Dana to keep running until she was at the edge of the gorge, and the magic door was ten feet over the lip.
The monster tried to pull back into the magic door, but there was too much of it through already, and it fell screaming to its death.
Jayden looked down at the creature at the bottom of the dry riverbed below. “Dana Illwind, you are without a doubt my favorite person in the world.”
* * * * *
A full day had passed since their battle, yet Dana and Jayden had not left the ruins. Dana had gathered up a respectable pile of treasure while Jayden had covered every square inch of dirt with formulas and math equations. He’d spent the entire night and all of today trying to find the right combination of panels to seal the Valivaxis. He wiped a patch of dirt clean and scratched new numbers on it, and then scowled.
“Any luck?” Dana asked.
“That depends on your definition of luck. I have three configurations that might close the Valivaxis. The problem is there’s no way to know which one will work until it tries to open again.”
She walked alongside him and frowned. “What do we do when we close it?”
“Take a boat three days out to sea and throw the Valivaxis overboard. I see no alternative.”
“How soon until it opens again?”
“Two or three minutes, assuming this configuration is wrong.” He stood up and stretched his arms. “We’re running out of time. We have to be long gone before the king’s men come. Still, this is the best place to close the door without endangering others.”
Dana looked over the edge of the gorge and two ash piles at the bottom. Jayden had cremated the first monster Dana had dumped over the gorge, and then the next one that had appeared around breakfast time and plummeted to its doom. Would the Valivaxis open again and another monster fall to its death? They’d know soon enough.
The sun began to set, and to Dana and Jayden’s frustration the Valivaxis started glowing. But this time something was different. The panels didn’t move across the box and a magic door didn’t form. The glow came from one side of the box and then another, as if it was searching for a way out. Finding none, the light died away and the Valivaxis fell silent, releasing no new walking atrocity upon the world.
Jayden gingerly picked up the Valixavis and wrapped it in a cloak once owned by a mercenary, then stowed it in a backpack with treasure he’d found in the camp. “Come, Dana, let’s be on our way. We dare not stay longer when the king’s forces could soon arrive. I’d tell you this is over, except our lives are in danger until The Idiot’s Graveyard is safely hidden where none can ever find it.”
“Whoever put it in the tower thought it was safely hidden,” Dana said, highlighting how hard their task would be. She followed him from the camp with all the loot she could carry. “Life’s never dull around you, Jayden. It might be short, but never dull.”
Dana and Jayden traveled the entire day, leaving farmland far behind and entering rolling hills and forests. The road they followed was narrow and winding, but there were fresh wagon ruts and countless boot prints in the dirt. Men had come through in great numbers.
“The innkeeper said the tower is all that’s left of a larger ruined settlement,” Dana told Jayden. “It was always in bad shape, but long ago there was a flood that took out everything but the tower. People used to go there to scavenge bricks for their houses. They stopped when they heard weird noises with no source.”
“Have livestock or people disappeared?”
“Nobody got close enough to risk it. They’ve been shying away from this place for generations. The only men who came close were fur trappers, and their traps stayed empty no matter how long they were out, the bait drying out instead of being eaten.”
Jayden frowned. “The duration of the problem suggests powerful magic is involved. Whatever it is, it hasn’t been freed yet, a blessing indeed. If these mercenaries dig up the source of the power, they risk causing devastation across a wide area. Thousands could be in danger.”
“Could this be magic from the old Sorcerer Lords?” she asked. The original Sorcerer Lords had died out over a thousand years ago, torn apart by internal divisions and finished off by the elves of old. Long gone they might be, but they’d left behind ruins, artifacts and monsters that survived their creators’ passing.
“Possibly. They produced horrors the likes of which this world hadn’t seen before, and some of their evil lives to this day. Such willingness to commit terrible deeds is far from unique. Many have perpetrated equally foul acts since the fall of the original Sorcerer Lords and could be responsible for this problem.”
The countryside became ever more wild, with tangled weeds and trees twisted in unnatural shapes. At the same time there were few animals present and no signs that men lived here except the road itself.
“We’ll leave the road and travel near it for the next few miles,” Jayden said. “That way we may miss sentries posted by the mercenaries.”
Dana worried she might pick up ticks in the tangled brush, but she found insects and vermin just as absent as larger animals. Marching through the brush slowed their progress and left a trail even an idiot could follow.
“What do we do if they found whatever caused the trouble?” she asked.
“Steal it if possible, destroy it if necessary, or run for our lives if it’s as dangerous as I think.” Jayden smiled at her and added, “I dislike running, but it’s best when the alternative is dying. I’d like to put that off as long as possible.”
“I’d never guess,” Dana said dryly. The going was tough with the thick underbrush. It didn’t help that there were no animals to eat it, and it looked like dead briars and brambles weren’t rotting, either. She practically needed an ax to force her way forward. Casually, she asked, “Jayden?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think the man behind that tree is trying to hide from us?”
He glanced to their right. “The one behind the oak?”
“Yes, him.”
“I imagine so. It would be impolite to ask, but then I’ve never been accused of being good mannered. Hello!”
The raggedy man broke from cover and ran for the road. Now that he was in the clear, he looked like an escaped slave or prisoner. His long brown hair was tangled, his clothes torn and dirty, and he had fresh bruises. Jayden walked after him at a leisurely rate while speaking arcane words that formed a black whip in his hand. He swung it and the whip stretched wildly until it reached ahead of the fleeing man. The whip burned through the underbrush, hacking through curling trees and twisted brambles, finally cutting through an oak. The man skidded to a halt in front of the shredded plant life.
“I see you like a captive audience,” the man said in a polite tone. He held up his shackled hands and rattled the chains running between his wrists.
Jayden and Dana walked over to the man while the whip retracted and disappeared. Smiling, Jayden said, “Now then, what’s a fine looking gentleman like yourself doing on a lonely road?”
The stranger smiled back. “Trying not to die. It’s a full time job as of late. I suppose introductions are in order. I’m—”
Dana marched up to the man and poked him in the chest. “You’re Jeremy Galfont, the grave robber! My father has a wanted poster with your picture. You’ve desecrated graves across the kingdom!”
“I, madam, am an asset recovery specialist,” Galfont replied. “In my defense, the wanted posters got my bad side. I’m quite handsome when I’m allowed to shave, bathe and eat regular meals.”
Jayden cast another spell, forming a sword of utter blackness edged in white light. He pointed it at Galfont’s throat, making the man sweat. “That answers one question and demands another. You look like someone whose past caught up with him, but we found you on the road with no guards or men chasing you. Care to explain your situation?”
“Certainly, but would you mind pointing that sword somewhere else? It makes me nervous.” Jayden answered Galfont’s request by lowering his blade from the grave robber’s throat to hover between his legs. “That’s not much of an improvement.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. Answer my question.”
Galfont gulped before he began. “I’d like to start by saying this isn’t my fault. The lady’s description of me leaves a lot to be desired. I recover riches that would otherwise be of use to no one and reintroduce them into the economy.”
“You rob graves!” Dana yelled.
Galfont rolled his eyes. “Must you put a negative spin on it? My profession requires patience and skill. I do hours of research to learn which graves have valuables to recover. I’ve never hurt a man nor beast, and I always spread the wealth.”
“Jayden, can I hit him?”
“If his story doesn’t progress, then yes.”
The grave robber sighed. “No one appreciates the hardships I go through. Three months ago, I was spending hard earned coins in a tavern when a very polite young man came to my table. He said he was interested in hiring me. Despite the young lady’s poor opinion of me, I don’t hire to anyone. Employers either want the profits of my hard work, or they want me to do something dangerous and repugnant.”
“Like rob graves?” she asked.
“If I may continue,” Galfont asked peevishly. “The man knew a lot about me, never a good sign in my line of work, and promised a reward for my services. I thanked him for his offer, threw my drink in his face and ran out the back…where I found a number of men with swords. I was arrested and told my reward would be keeping my head and neck close friends. My work was to help dig up a treasure in an ancient ruin.”
“The stone tower north of here?” Jayden asked.
“The same. I was taken there with eighty mercenaries, men without any sense of humor, I might add. I work best alone, but they insisted on staying with me night and day. We spent months digging and sifting through the ruins. I told them it was pointless! It was clear to any with eyes that these were elf ruins, and elves don’t bury their dead with anything, not even clothes.”
Dana tried to imagine that and blushed. “That must make for awkward funerals.”
“Closed caskets are required,” Galfont told her. “The ruins were trapped with magic wards, old and very powerful ones. I got around them with one part skill, one part experience and eight parts blind luck, but early yesterday morning I found a hidden room in the tower containing a silvery box three inches across. My captors recognized it and were very pleased to get it.”
Jayden lowered the sword and pressed closer. “This is very important. Did they identify it?”
Galfont shrugged. “They called it Vali-something or other. I’d never heard the word before.”
“Validendum?” Jayden asked.
“No. It was harsher sounding than that.”
“Valivaxis?”
The grave robber snapped his fingers. “That’s it! Wait, you knew the word. Oh dear, that’s not good for me, is it?”
“It’s not good for anyone. How did you escape?”
“I was tied up and thrown into a wagon while the mercenaries broke down their camp. They’d only just started when there was a terrible scream. Something, and I’m glad to say I don’t know what, attacked their camp. I heard its death cry, a ghastly sound, and I heard them pile wood on the body and burn it. I gather they lost a lot of men. They got back to breaking down their camp and were ready to leave. This time I saw one of the men carry the Valivaxis. It got all glowy, and a shiny door opened in front of him. This, I’m sorry, I can’t describe it without using the word ‘thing’, came out and attacked. I broke free and ran.”
Frightened, Dana asked, “What happened to the men?”
“Some tried to fight and others fled. The ones who ran lasted longer. I know a few of them got away because I heard them stumbling around in the dark the same as me. There was a terrible screaming sound, so I think the second monster was killed.”
“We’re in trouble,” Dana said.
“We are, as is the town of Jumil and everyone else within five hundred miles,” Jayden said. “We have to close the Valivaxis before anything else escapes from it.”
“I doubt I’d be much use in my current condition,” Galfont said. He wasn’t lying. The man was unarmed and had obviously suffered during his incarceration. He held up his shackled hands and said, “I feel I’ve been of some use in this matter. Might I be so bold as to ask for payment, kind sir?”
Jayden cut through the shackles with his sword and allowed the black blade to vanish. The grave robber bowed, and before leaving said, “I’d tip my hat if I had one. Wizard though you are, sir, I’ll wish you luck, because magic alone won’t be enough.”
“Wait, you’re letting him go?” Dana demanded.
“We can’t turn him in for the bounty money given my own wanted status, nor would I want to considering the tortures he would receive. That means we either kill him or let him go, and I choose mercy when possible.”
Galfont made a hasty exit while Jayden walked onto the road and headed for the stone tower. Dana followed him and asked, “Jayden, what is this thing?”
“I’d read about the Valivaxis long ago. It dates to the Ancient Elf Empire, one of the many magic artifacts that survived its collapse. Its more common name is The Idiot’s Graveyard.”
“A grave for idiots? It must be full to overflowing.”
Jayden smirked. “The name refers to the royalty buried there. In elven society it’s considered a heavy blow for an enemy to desecrate the graves of your ancestors. Elven emperors were very worried about the loss of face they’d suffer if their dead were disinterred. They built the Valivaxis, a gate to an inhospitable world where they placed their dead.”
Puzzled, Dana asked, “Why is it called The Idiot’s Graveyard if that’s where they put their leaders?”
“The elves never got over the fall of their empire. They had to blame someone, and the emperors were a popular choice.”
Dana snapped her fingers. “The monsters that attacked the mercenaries came from the Valivaxis. They were meant to defend it, weren’t they?”
“This is why I like traveling with you, Dana. Yes, the ancient elves knew if someone stole the Valivaxis they could use it to dig up the former emperors. As a further safeguard, they stocked it with their wizards’ failed experiments, monsters created with powerful magic and too unstable to control. Elf wizards placed those abominations in a magical slumber, neither moving nor aging, wakening only if triggered to be a final guard against attack. Opening the Valivaxis is easy, but there is a specific way to do it to avoid waking its foul defenders. The mercenaries did it wrong and paid with their lives.
“And it remains open. The Valivaxis has only been opened once before, releasing monsters twice a day until it was correctly sealed. That one horrible mistake cost the lives of many good people before it was closed, however that was done. Now that it’s open again, it will continue releasing its guardians, horrors created by an ancient and debased people, and they will attack any and all they meet.”
Worried, she asked, “How many monsters are in there?”
“No one knows, and I’d rather not find out.”
Dana jogged in front of Jayden and asked, “But why would the king and queen send men to find it? What good are graves with no treasure and monsters no one can control?”
Jayden scowled. She knew him well enough to know he wasn’t mad at her asking the question, but instead at the answer he’d have to give. “There are two equally disturbing possibilities. The first is they didn’t know that the emperors were buried without even the clothes on their backs and hoped there were riches to recover. Vulgar as that is, I wouldn’t put it past them.”
“And the second?”
Jayden stopped walking, seething in anger. “They knew there is no treasure and want the monsters. Such an uncontrollable force can be a benefit depending on where they are released. Suppose a spy working for the king snuck into an enemy country with the Valivaxis and opened it. The monsters would attack the first people they met, sowing destruction and discord, costing countless lives. The royal couple could then send in their armies to finish off whoever survived and claim land now conveniently devoid of people.”
Dana felt a cold, empty feeling in her stomach at the thought. “They wouldn’t be blamed for it, either. No one could link them to the monsters.”
“I don’t know how they discovered the location of the Valivaxis. Perhaps they found some ancient texts describing where it last was, or they hired a wizard or seer to locate it. Once they knew the location, they seized Galfont to help recover it without heavy loss of life. It was a brilliant if revolting plan that would have worked, except one of their men must have accidentally opened it. And now we have to close it if we’re to save Jumil and all the towns nearby.”
* * * * *
Jayden and Dana spent the rest of the trip in silence. Dana was terrified of what they’d find. Two monsters had been freed from the Valivaxis and then destroyed, but eighty men had died to do it. She’d been worried how Jayden could fight so many mercenaries, but how could he defeat monsters that were able to win such a fight? Jayden, confident as ever, marched to a battle he might not win.
The land became ever more desolate as they progressed. The soil was rocky, so much so that boulders jutted up from the ground. Thin soil supported few plants, and even those were thin and sickly. By and by the road grew steeper until it took a lot of effort to climb up. Eventually the road leveled out and brought them to the ruins.
“I was wondering how a flood could destroy an entire ruin,” Dana said.
“This would do the job,” Jayden agreed.
The stone tower was on the very edge of a gorge going sixty feet down to a dry, rocky riverbed far below. Stone tile roads led to the edge of the gorge, showing where the rest of the ruins had been. Some long distant flood had weakened the ground so much that it had gone down the gorge as a rockslide, taking with it whatever buildings and roads had survived until that time. Now only a stone tower fifty feet tall and twenty feet across remained alongside freshly dug pits.
There were new additions to the ruins courtesy of the mercenaries. Flattened canvas tents littered the ground next to crushed wagons, smashed crates and broken wood barrels. Snapped spears and bent swords were scattered about. There were charred remains of two bonfires, one cold and the other smoldered with glowing embers. Dana spotted a ribcage three feet across in the older fire, and a mound of large, blackened vertebra in the second. Here and there some of the mercenaries’ property survived by luck or good planning. The pits still had intact digging tools in them, as if the owners would soon be back.
And there were bodies. Most had been placed in the pits and covered with a thin layer of soil. A few remained above ground. They’d suffered serious wounds, many crushed to death as if a great weight had fallen upon them.
“I’ve no love for mercenaries, but no one deserved this,” Jayden said as he walked along the edge of the pits.
Dana shied away from the fallen men. “I’d heard from my father that some of them had come from as far away as Skitherin Kingdom. Imagine traveling so far just to die.”
Jayden pulled open a destroyed tent and searched through it. “We have to work fast. The Valivaxis could open again at any time.”
Dana picked a spot far from the dead mercenaries and looked for the silvery box. “The grave robber said some mercenaries escaped. How long until they bring reinforcements?”
“The closest towns have small garrisons, too few to help.” Jayden found a pouch of coins and tossed it aside. “Gold. Any other day that would be a worthy find. Nearby town militias are too poorly trained to be of much use. Surviving mercenaries will have to travel for days to reach the nearest town big enough to offer help, then spend days further bringing them here. This assumes they don’t simply flee the kingdom after such a loss. No, we don’t have to worry about mercenaries in the near future.”
More searching turned up a host of loot. There were coins, rings, weapons, some armor and plenty of tools. Dana might be a mayor’s daughter, but her family was still of modest means. A pile of valuables like this would be worth a fortune to the poor people back home. But no matter how hard she looked she didn’t find anything resembling the Valivaxis.
Dana found a handsome blue cloak and bundled treasure into it. It bothered her to take things off a battlefield, and made her wonder if there was really a difference between this and what Galfont the grave robber did. True, he disturbed graves and left families of the dead traumatized, while she was taking what was freely available for any who walked by. She could live with the distinction.
“Some of these silver coins are tarnished black,” Dana observed. “I think the mercenaries found them while digging for the real treasure.”
“I’ve come across other antiquities,” Jayden told her. “There’s nothing of great value and no magic, but it’s still more than I expected. I’d thought all the remnants of the Elf Empire were long since looted.”
“How long do we have until the Valivaxis opens?” she asked.
Jayden overturned a damaged wagon and sifted through its contents. “The legends said it opened twice a day when activated.”
That news made Dana stop working and stand up. “Galfont said two monsters already came out, and that was yesterday.”
“Which means either another one has already been set loose or will be so soon. Keep looking.”
Dana searched with a renewed vigor. They had to find the Valivaxis for their own sake and for the people in Jumil. She could only imagine what would happen if a monster tough enough to fight a company of infantrymen attacked such a small town. It would be terrible!
Wait, what was that glittering in the bottom of one of the pits? Dana had missed it earlier because there was a body in it and she hadn’t wanted to touch it. Gingerly she climbed down and shifted the dead man aside. “Jayden, this might be it.”
Jayden ran over and climbed down beside her. The Valivaxis was in the hands of a younger man once handsome to behold and dressed like an officer. “This must be the man who arrested Galfont. He found his prize and paid for it.”
“Can you close it?” she asked.
Jayden took the silvery box and studied it. “The good news is it’s safe to touch. Once opened, the Valivaxis has no further defenses. The bad news is it will remain dangerous until closed, which I don’t know how to do.”
“Bad news seems to understate the problem.”
Dana and Jayden left the pit and sat down. Jayden touched a small panel on the Valivaxis and slid it over. “It’s a puzzle box. Arranging the panels in the right pattern will close the gateway to the other world.”
Jayden slid panels across the box from one position to another. Somehow the panels could move from one side of the box to another without coming off. Dana saw two panels together form a word in elven, but Jayden separated them and moved them into new positions.
“There is a pattern to it,” he said. “The dragons represent years, months and days, while the words list specific elf emperors. I believe the dates match important events for the emperors, birth, death or coronation. The problem is many of these dates don’t correspond to any of the three.”
This was far outside Dana’s training or experience. She left him to the box and kept an eye on their surroundings. After all, Jayden might be wrong about the mercenaries leaving. Survivors could return to reclaim their prize if they were scared to come back without it. There could also be a monster about, whether from the Valivaxis or one native to the kingdom.
“Why do you think people living nearby heard noises?” she asked. “I mean, the box was sealed and the monsters were asleep.”
“Sleepers stir in the night, and no door is ever entirely closed,” he replied. “Those noises might have been what alerted the king and queen to the presence of the Valivaxis in their land. Let’s see, slide this one here…no, that’s not right. Emperor Clastisin wasn’t born for another century.”
It had taken most of the day to get here, and even summer’s long days had to end. The sun began to set and clouds turned a lovely shade of orange. Dana rummaged through the destroyed camp and found food and water. She was eating a late dinner when she saw a glint far down the road.
“Someone’s coming.”
Jayden’s attention remained on the Valivaxis. “Tell them to wait, or better yet to leave. When was Emperor Laskimaxil born?”
The last rays of light struck the approaching figure. As it neared, Dana could make out a man wearing a suit of silver plate armor set with jade panels, easily the gaudiest armor she’d ever seen. As the man neared, she noticed elaborate etchings on the jade. The knight was unarmed and moved without haste.
“Someone weird is coming,” she warned.
Still looking at the Valivaxis, Jayden asked, “How weird?”
“His armor has jade on it.”
Jayden set down the Valivaxis and stood up. Studying the approaching knight, he said, “That is a strange suit of armor. It looks ceremonial with the jade. Wait, elves favor green jade above all other precious stones. They call them eternal leaves.”
The jade knight reached the edge of the ruins and destroyed mercenary camp. He stopped walking well away from Jayden and Dana but stood facing them. A sour, acidic smell permeated the air.
“Name yourself,” Jayden called out.
The jade knight answered with a shriek no man or animal could make. His shoulders shifted forward, and a sickening cracking sound rang out. Eight oozing green tentacles sprouted from his back and stretched out thirty feet to grab intact swords and spears. Armed, the hideous knight advanced on them.
“The Valivaxis must have released this abomination before we arrived,” Jayden said. He backed up and cast a spell to form his black magic whip. “Get behind me, and whatever you do, don’t let it touch you.”
Slime dripped from the jade knight’s back as he walked into battle. Dana ran to the left, and from there saw a crack running down the horrible creature’s armored back. Those tentacles sprouted from the crack, and inside it she saw what looked like pulsating organs.
“I’m not trying to enter the Valivaxis,” Jayden told it. “I’m trying to close the gate. You can help me do it. We can close the doors and keep the emperors’ graves safe. Do you understand?”
“Burning, changing, twisting, winding,” it hissed, and swung three swords at Jayden. Two blades came from the right and one from the left. He ducked two swords and struck the third with his whip. The whip burned through the sword and cut off the tip of a tentacle. The jade knight howled and backed up, but only for a few seconds. It grabbed a shovel with the disarmed tentacle and attacked again.
“I’m not your enemy!” Jayden shouted.
“Twisting words, bending thoughts, burning minds, winding ways.” The jade knight was totally mad, its mind as warped as its body. It pressed the attack with swords and shovel coming straight down. Jayden ran from it and swung his whip again. This time he caught a tentacle and the whip wrapped around it. There was a hiss as the whip burned through the tentacle. The jade knight howled again, but didn’t flee. Instead it ran at Jayden and swung its remaining weapons with wild abandon.
Jayden took cover behind a damaged wagon while the hideous knight dropped down on all fours and scuttled around it. More cracks appeared on its armor, this time on the legs and arms, and still more tentacles stretched out. It lunged at him, swinging a host of weapons, and Jayden barely dodged the attacks. He cut a spear in half and leaped over a sword aimed at his ankles. Jayden lopped off another tentacle, forcing the jade knight back. It dropped its weapons and grabbed the damaged wagon with its tentacles, then lifted it up and threw it at Jayden. He hacked the wagon in half, and ducked when the jade knight jumped fifteen feet and sailed inches over his head.
Quite by accident, that jump brought it close to Dana.
“Run!” Jayden ordered.
Dana grabbed a shovel, the only weapon at hand, and headed for the tower. The jade knight scuttled after her, its arms and legs splayed out like a lizard’s. Its tentacles swung at her and she swatted one aside with the shovel. When another grabbed her around the waist, she drew her knife and slashed it. The tentacle spurted yellow ichor and let go.
Jayden caught up and stabbed the jade knight in the leg. Black sword met shining armor, and the magic blade pierced deep. The jade knight howled and ran off fifty feet.
“Pay attention to the man with the sword!” he yelled at it.
The jade knight gibbered and howled, a frightening mix of random words and animal noises. Its tentacles grabbed tent poles, shovels, picks, anything it could use as a weapon, and it charged Jayden again. He ran to the left and it followed, leaving Dana safe for the moment.
This would be a good time to run for her life, but that wasn’t an option when this abomination was faster and tougher than she was. If it beat Jayden, it could come after her and there was little she could do to stop it. She took a step closer to the stone tower, wondering if there was anything in it that might help. That thought ended when her right foot got so hot she jumped back and cried out in surprise. She looked down to see that she’d stepped into the remnants of the second bonfire. Her leather boot was blackened where it had touched the still hot embers.
Thinking fast, Dana scooped up red-hot embers with her shovel. The jade knight had its back to her while it was fighting Jayden, and she saw those wide openings in its armor where the tentacles emerged. She ran after it, and just as it was attacking Jayden she threw the shovel’s contents straight into the hole in its back where those freakish tentacles sprouted.
The jade knight screamed a high-pitched screech of agony. It threw its weapons aside and flailed about, knocking Dana to the ground. It clawed at its back, trying to dig out the embers burning it from the inside. Jayden rushed in and drove his sword through the panicked beast’s chest, impaling it and lifting it off its feet. The magic blade winked out, and he let the jade knight drop to the ground. It twitched and squirmed for a few moments, then became still.
Jayden ran over and helped Dana up. “Are you hurt?”
“Bruised, but I’ll live.” She stared at the abomination shaped like a man. It was dead, a blessing, but many more could soon arrive. Even now it disgusted her in the way it parodied a knight yet had those awful tentacles growing from its body…growing longer. “Jayden, the tentacles you cut off, they’re healing! It’s getting better!”
The jade knight stirred. Its wounds began to seal shut, and it tried to get up. It got on its hands and knees before falling back to the ground. Dana realized now why the mercenaries had burned the other two monsters. Hard as it was to hurt them, they could recover if they fell in battle and had to be completely destroyed.
Jayden pressed his hands together and began chanting. The jade knight hissed and sat up. Its tentacles slithered about until they found idle weapons to grab. A tiny spark formed within Jayden’s hands and he continued chanting. The jade knight struggled to its feet just as Jayden finished his spell. The spark flew off and slipped inside the monster’s armored body through the crack in its back.
“Get in the pit!” he shouted. Dana jumped into the nearest pit and Jayden leapt down beside her.
BOOM!
The spark expanded into a fireball twenty feet across. When the flames subsided, Dana got up and saw that the jade knight had been consumed by the blast. Only shattered bits of jade and melted scraps of armor remained. Nearby tents and wagons were burning, as were some weapons.
“That’s a new one,” Dana said as she climbed out of the pit.
“It’s actually the first spell I learned,” he replied. He followed her and leaned against a broken wagon, this one not on fire. “I don’t use it often because it takes so long to cast. Enemies are rarely obliging enough to let me complete it.”
Something glowed to their right. Dana and Jayden turned to see the Valivaxis shine and its many panels slide about.
Dana stared at it. “You have got to be kidding me.”
A glowing door appeared ten feet in front of the Valivaxis. Dry, cold air spilled out of the opening, and they heard a multitude of growls. The magic door was only four feet across, but it widened as some new horror pressed forward.
“Can you close it?” Dana asked.
Jayden ran over and snatched the Valivaxis off the ground. He slid the silver panels on the little box, but the moment he took his fingers off the panels they immediately started moving again. “No! We’ve got another one to deal with, and soon!”
Countless clawed hands grasped the edges of the magic door. At first Dana thought it was a large number of monsters coming through at once, but as the slavering green horror kept pushing forward, she realized there was only one creature. The dozens of green, slimy, wide jawed monsters were connected, with limbs fused together to make a single abomination. The many heads had no eyes, only gaping mouths, yet they turned to face Jayden and Dana.
Jayden threw down the Valivaxis and remade his black whip. To Dana’s surprise, the magic door moved when he dropped the silvery box. She shouted, “The door is linked to the Valivaxis! It goes where the box does!”
“What?”
There wasn’t time to explain. Dana grabbed the Valivaxis and ran for the gorge. As she ran the magic doorway moved with her, carrying the monster along. The monster kept coming out, more and more horrible bodies like an entire crowd. She didn’t know exactly how big it was, but it kept crawling out of the magic door. She’d nearly reached the gorge’s edge when the monster figured out what she was doing. It grabbed at rocks and ruined wagons, trying to stop. Jayden struck it with his whip and it let go, allowing Dana to keep running until she was at the edge of the gorge, and the magic door was ten feet over the lip.
The monster tried to pull back into the magic door, but there was too much of it through already, and it fell screaming to its death.
Jayden looked down at the creature at the bottom of the dry riverbed below. “Dana Illwind, you are without a doubt my favorite person in the world.”
* * * * *
A full day had passed since their battle, yet Dana and Jayden had not left the ruins. Dana had gathered up a respectable pile of treasure while Jayden had covered every square inch of dirt with formulas and math equations. He’d spent the entire night and all of today trying to find the right combination of panels to seal the Valivaxis. He wiped a patch of dirt clean and scratched new numbers on it, and then scowled.
“Any luck?” Dana asked.
“That depends on your definition of luck. I have three configurations that might close the Valivaxis. The problem is there’s no way to know which one will work until it tries to open again.”
She walked alongside him and frowned. “What do we do when we close it?”
“Take a boat three days out to sea and throw the Valivaxis overboard. I see no alternative.”
“How soon until it opens again?”
“Two or three minutes, assuming this configuration is wrong.” He stood up and stretched his arms. “We’re running out of time. We have to be long gone before the king’s men come. Still, this is the best place to close the door without endangering others.”
Dana looked over the edge of the gorge and two ash piles at the bottom. Jayden had cremated the first monster Dana had dumped over the gorge, and then the next one that had appeared around breakfast time and plummeted to its doom. Would the Valivaxis open again and another monster fall to its death? They’d know soon enough.
The sun began to set, and to Dana and Jayden’s frustration the Valivaxis started glowing. But this time something was different. The panels didn’t move across the box and a magic door didn’t form. The glow came from one side of the box and then another, as if it was searching for a way out. Finding none, the light died away and the Valivaxis fell silent, releasing no new walking atrocity upon the world.
Jayden gingerly picked up the Valixavis and wrapped it in a cloak once owned by a mercenary, then stowed it in a backpack with treasure he’d found in the camp. “Come, Dana, let’s be on our way. We dare not stay longer when the king’s forces could soon arrive. I’d tell you this is over, except our lives are in danger until The Idiot’s Graveyard is safely hidden where none can ever find it.”
“Whoever put it in the tower thought it was safely hidden,” Dana said, highlighting how hard their task would be. She followed him from the camp with all the loot she could carry. “Life’s never dull around you, Jayden. It might be short, but never dull.”
Duel part 1
The next day was a frantic race across the kingdom. Jayden stopped only when he had to and took chances he would have normally avoided. This meant they were spotted at a distance twice by soldiers or sheriffs, but both groups declined to give chase. Either the authorities didn’t recognize them or thought better of starting a fight they might not win.
“We need horses,” Jayden declared at noon.
“Good luck finding any,” Dana told him. “The army requisitioned everything with four legs months ago.”
“Then we need to steal some. Have you ridden before?”
“A little, but that’s not the point. The only men with horses can fight to keep them and are going to travel in groups bigger than we can take.”
Jayden frowned as he ate a quick meal. “Not always. The next town may have horses, either for the mayor or his sheriff. Those will have to do.”
“You’ve been spooked ever since we fought Victory’s Edge. That guy, if he was still a guy, was the scariest thing I’ve ever met, but he’s dead.”
Jayden headed down a narrow trail, likely made by poachers and smugglers trying to avoid notice. “Before his death, I asked Victory’s Edge what made him think he could work his evil here. He said it was an inspired idea. His choice of words could have been coincidental, but I fear it was deliberate. The necromancer Cimmox claimed the king and queen invited wizards of the Inspired to the kingdom. I took Victory’s Edge’s taunt as proof.”
“Who are these people?”
“They are a threat that could overthrow kings and devastate nations. That King Tyros and Queen Amvicta would even speak to them is the height of arrogance, for they despise royalty and seek to overthrow it.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of them.”
Jayden marched down the trail like a man pursued. “That’s not surprising. The Inspired make every effort to keep innocent people in the dark of the danger they pose. They are a secret society of wizards that seeks nothing less than world domination, with wizards as heads of state. No one knows how many of them there are, for they add and lose members constantly, but current theories claim they number over a hundred strong.”
Dana gasped. “I didn’t know there were that many wizards in the whole world. How could so many wizards turn evil?”
“Pride is a sin common to the profession. Every wizard has the power to do what is impossible for many. It is an easy step to believe they are superior to those who don’t use magic, and from there that they should be masters of nations instead of kings. The Inspired takes this presumption a step further, claiming that magic is inherited. They believe training only unlocks the ability to cast spells. Thus those who can use magic are born superior.”
“Is that true?”
“Never!” he said venomously. “There are many reasons why magic use isn’t widespread, but it is most certainly not a birthright. Take the two of us. I am the first spellcaster in my family’s history, a genealogy that can be traced back fifteen generations. If magic was in my family’s blood, why am I the first and only? I had training in the language of the old Sorcerer Lords, and when given the opportunity to study their spell tablets I learned their secrets. You could, too.”
Dana’s jaw dropped. “Wait, really?”
“Certainly. You’re an intelligent young woman, determined, literate. I’d need a few years to teach you the language of the Sorcerer Lords and further time to teach their spells. It would take perhaps five years uninterrupted time and a fair amount of gold, but you could learn. Most people can.”
“Then why aren’t there more wizards?”
“Part of the answer comes back to pride. Wizards are a secretive lot, giving up their knowledge only to those who please them. Many wizards train only those from their own race and social class, and even then are highly selective of their students. It is a rare wizard who trains more than five pupils in their lifetime.
“The rest of the answer is more mundane. I told you it would take five years to train you. I would dearly like to do so, but that is time neither of us have. Most people don’t have time to learn magic. They’re needed too badly working in the fields, mines, running businesses and the like. Others go into equally rigorous professions, such as healers, architects, engineers and more. Then there is the cost in gold. Training a wizard costs thousands of gold coins in books, lab supplies, raw materials and more, a price few can afford. As a result, less than one man in ten thousand becomes a wizard, and it is likely to remain so forever.”
Jayden scowled. “The Inspired use this scarcity as proof of their ludicrous claim. Worse, they let no evidence to the contrary sway their opinion. The Grand Conclave of Wizards once conducted an experiment where they selected twenty people at random and trained them in magic, none of whom had a history of spellcasters in their families. Twelve mastered the skill. That should have ended the absurd debate, but the Inspired claimed those twelve had hidden bloodlines of magic.”
He turned to her and said, “Let no one tell you the educated are better people. I have met too many with advanced degrees and training who were as base and vile as the worst criminals. Learning and goodness are not equal.”
“My father said people should keep learning new things until the day they die.”
“Wise words, but education without virtue merely gives the villainous better tools to do harm. Honor, virtue, love, wisdom, these must go hand in hand with education or the learning is for nothing, or worse, is used to do evil.”
“You’re a wizard who hates wizards who think they’re better than everybody else.” Dana smiled. “That is so you.”
Jayden frowned. “I think that was a compliment.”
“It was. Go on.”
“The sadly logical conclusion to this hideous line of thinking is that wizards should rule those who aren’t wizards. The Inspired seek domination but lack the means to do so, for even a hundred wizards is too few to match their ambitions. This limits the damage they can do, but they are forever looking for a kingdom to seize as a powerbase. Their arrogance and skill in magic means they inflict inexcusable harm to others.”
“And you think they’re here,” Dana said. “How much danger are we in?”
“That’s hard to judge. Most of the Inspired are weak, and they suffer frequent casualties. Plans are formed, attempted and fail, costing the lives of men and women who should know better, who could have done so much good. The Inspired are also hunted by the Grand Conclave of Wizards, the Guild of Heroes, the Brotherhood of the Righteous, the Servants of the Cause, the Square Pegs and many others.”
Jayden waved his hands at their surroundings. “The real question is how many of the Inspired are here. As I said, most of them are weak, no match for me, but their greatest strength is how many wizards they can field. We could face dozens of wizards with whatever magic items and guardians they could produce or steal. I am far stronger than I was a year ago, but if they came in numbers, I would be pulled down like a bison set upon by wolves.”
“Why would the king and queen want them here?” Dana demanded. “They’re as big a threat to Meadowland as to Bascal, Kaleoth and Zentrix.”
“King Tyros and Queen Amvicta may think they can use the Inspired and then betray them. Pay them gold to fight battles, promise them more funds, land to build wizard towers, followers and more, only to kill them when their usefulness has ended. The risk is incredible, and one the king and queen are underestimating. Both sides will seek to betray the other, making it a question of who will strike first.”
There was a rustling in the woods to their right. Dana and Jayden ducked and drew their swords as a surprised looking deer stared back before running off.
Jayden resheathed his sword and continued down the trail. “Meadowland’s armies are already a threat I can’t deal with. The best I can do is strike at their heels or tip the balance in the favor of their enemies. If the Inspired send only a few wizards I might be able to defeat them, but a kingdom weakened by war is the sort of opportunity they have long sought. I can’t face them and hope to win. I need to be vastly stronger, with a greater mastery of shadow magic.”
He stopped and looked at her. “I know where I can find what I seek.”
* * * * *
The game trail ended at the edge of farm fields dense with green wheat. Dana and Jayden picked their way around the edge of the field, trying to stay out of sight as they looked for another road. They soon found one leading to a village with a few dozen buildings. It was sparsely populated, but that wasn’t surprising when most of the people would be farming. Jayden studied the village from a distance.
“They don’t even have oxen,” Dana said as she watched farmers working. “Look, they’re pulling carts by hand.”
“Deplorable, and of no use to us. There may be an opportunity, though. I see a red flag outside the inn. That’s a sign for royal couriers, men who must be given whatever accommodations they need and aren’t subject to road tolls. That flag means one is here, and that means horses.”
“I’m not happy being a horse thief,” she told him.
“I wouldn’t ask this of you if there was another way, but if the Inspired are here then every hour counts. I should point out that we’ve committed enough offenses to get us both sentenced to hanging fifteen times over, so this is not a bridge too far.”
“That really didn’t help.”
“My apologies,” he said, sounding cheerful rather than sorry. “There are enough witnesses you should put on your disguise before we enter town.”
Dana grudgingly put on the cloth mask that hid her face in these situations. She wasn’t sure how much it helped if there were hostile wizards in the kingdom. Such a flimsy thing might protect her identity from a soldier who saw her, but what good was it against magic?
They walked fearlessly into the village. The few people present saw them and either fled or cowered. Dana hated seeing people afraid of her. Hopefully one day they would understand why she and Jayden were doing this.
Jayden led her to the inn and found an attached stable. Inside were three horses, one clearly exhausted while the others looked healthy. Two bored spearmen guarded the stable, a wise move when horses were so rare they attracted the attention from thieves. The spearmen perked up when Jayden entered the stable, and both took a step back.
“Gentlemen, how do you wish to handle this?” Jayden asked pleasantly.
“I am not getting paid enough to fight you,” one said. Both men backed away when Jayden approached the horses.
Jayden smiled. “A wise answer. Couriers typically have multiple horses to change mounts when one tires. These two must be his spares. I’ll leave you the third.”
Dana mounted one of the horses and pointed at the spearmen. “Don’t let the courier ride her until she’s had time to rest.”
Puzzled, a spearman asked, “You’re worried about the horse you aren’t stealing?”
“I like horses,” she said as she rode off.
Once they left the stable, they rode off quickly. A man dressed in a courier’s red uniform ran out of the inn and shouted, “You’ll hang for…oh, it’s you.”
“Give the king and queen my regards,” Jayden called back.
Dana waited until they were well outside town to remove her mask. They returned to seldom used trail for the rest of the day, riding at a brisk pace and covering many miles. As dusk approached, they stopped at a stream and let the horses drink and feed on grass growing along the shore.
“We can’t keep pushing them this hard,” Dana warned as she set up camp.
“Time works against us worse than normal, and hours wasted will cost us dearly.”
Dana pointed a finger at him. “Riding these animals into the ground doesn’t help us and hurts them. If we’re not careful they could go lame, or even die.”
“I don’t take these actions lightly, Dana. We have far to go and little time with such a great threat rising.”
“Where are we going, anyway? And if this place can make you a stronger wizard then why didn’t you go there before?”
Jayden gathered fallen branches off the ground to build a fire. “Both questions are fair. The power I seek is owned by the King Rascan of Bascal. Rascan fancies himself a coinsurer of art and culture, collecting paintings, statues, tapestries and antiquities. That includes spell tablets of the old Sorcerer Lords.”
Dana’s eyes opened wide. “Is he a Sorcerer Lord?”
“To the best of my knowledge, no. He has never been witnessed using shadow magic, nor has anyone in his kingdom. Given the threats he faces I would assume he’d use that power if he had it. I believe he gathered them because they are rare and ancient, which makes them valuable.”
Jayden set down the branches. “Two years ago I sent him a message requesting to buy a tablet from him. My offer included gold and jewels worth five thousand gold coins, no small sum even for a king.”
“What did he say?”
“My message went unanswered, a slight I take offense at.”
“Oh come on, Jayden, what did you expect him to do? He’s a head of state and you’re a wizard causing trouble for one of his neighbors, who is bigger and tougher than he is. He’d get into trouble if he sold you anything.”
“The transaction could have been handled discreetly,” he protested. “Bascal’s people are class conscious, which likely lessened my chances when he is a king. Still, the world’s only Sorcerer Lord should be granted some respect.”
Dana tethered the horses while Jayden lit the fire. “He said no once. Why ask again?”
“The last time I had only money to offer, and as you said he might have worried what the king and queen thought. This time the king and queen’s opinion is no longer an issue, and I can offer him the power of a Sorcerer Lord in a war he might not win.”
“So he’ll be motivated to take the deal, you hope. Please tell me if he says no you won’t try to rob him.” There was a long, awkward pause. “Jayden? No! Bad wizard!”
“I’m considering it for the same reasons I’m not as worried about our mounts’ health as I should be. I’ve learned many spells in the last year, but none strong enough to deal with armies or the Inspired. The Inspired could kill thousands unless I can stop them, and right now I can’t.”
Dana put her hands on her hips. “You’re treading on some very dangerous ground, mister. Taking these horses was bad, but we took them from a man working for the king and queen, who are doing terrible things to good people. This isn’t a bad person you’re talking about robbing. The only thing King Rascan did was not sell you things he owns, and he didn’t have to. If you do bad things to good people, even for good reasons, you’re taking a big step toward becoming your father.”
Jayden’s jaw dropped and he stared at her.
Dana instantly realized how insulting that was, but it was also true. She had to make him see that. “I saw your memories, how your father kept doing bad things, each one worse than the one before it because he was so desperate to keep Meadowland safe. That was a good goal, and he did terrible things to do it, until he was a bad person surrounded by bad people. He ruined what he was trying to save. That’s why you hate him. You can’t be like that. Meadowland needs you to be better than him. I need you to be better than him.”
Jayden said nothing in reply, instead looking into the fire. Dana took his hands. “We’re in deep trouble, worse than I thought if there might be a hundred power hungry wizards showing up, but we can’t fight this nightmare by becoming as bad as it is. When we fought Victory’s Edge an archer risked his life to help us. I don’t know if it was because he liked you or hated Victor’s Edge, but he helped us. More men might do the same, but only if they believe you’re worth following. You need to show them that you are.”
It took a moment for Jayden to find his voice. “I have rarely been hit that hard, and never have I deserved it more.”
“You’re a good person. Don’t let them change that.”
* * * * *
They broke camp the following morning in silence. Dana worried she’d gone too far last night, but she feared the consequences of Jayden failing far worse. She waited for hours before she spoke to him.
“I’m sorry about what I said. It’s just, so much of what we’ve been doing, even the criminal stuff, it’s beyond me. Growing up, horse stealing was something I saw my father dealing with. Families could be ruined if someone took their horse, and I know this is different, but it hit close to home.”
“Don’t apologize for trying to help me. Now more than ever I need someone to act as the voice of reason. I have trouble dealing with my anger and risk making more enemies than I need to.” He glanced at her and added, “I’m grateful it’s you being my conscious rather than others I’ve traveled with. Some of them would have been eager to participate.”
“Like Suzy Lockheart?
“Must you keep bringing her up?
Dana hesitated before asking, “Victory’s Edge was from another continent. How would he join up with the Inspired?”
“Victory’s Edge spent years moving from kingdom to kingdom, causing harm that the Inspired would have noticed and approved of. I have no trouble imaging them seeking him out and offering him membership.”
“They’d work with him?” Dana didn’t try to hide her shock.
“The Inspired have called necromancy a misunderstood branch of magic, so I think they’d welcome his unique brand of evil. I wonder if he came to Meadowland as an open member of the Inspired or under his own name. If he claimed to be on his own, he could do all manner of harm without damaging the Inspired’s reputation. Well, more than it was already damaged.”
“When we reach the border with Bascal, Meadowland’s army will be there trying to cross. How are we going to get around them?”
Jayden brought his horse to a stop when they came to a muddy patch on the road. It looked deep enough to give their horses trouble. “There are narrow passes into Bascal, too small to send an army through but the right size to sneak in spies and saboteurs. Guards there will be far fewer and easily dealt with. From there we can enter Bascal, go to the capital and barter our services for spell tablets. King Rascan knows the value of what he holds and will demand a heavy price.”
“He might want to keep you.”
“The thought had occurred to me. We will have to be careful dealing with him and show considerable diplomacy. I’ll need your help with that.”
Dana got off her horse and led it off the trail to go around the mud. “I don’t know anything about dealing with kings!”
“You know how to treat men with respect even when they don’t deserve it, a skill that died in me long ago.”
“What do you know about Rascan?”
Jayden led his horse around the mud. “King Tyros hates him with a passion.”
“Tyros doesn’t seem to like anyone.”
“True, but his hatred of Rascan’s family is massive.” Jayden guided his horse back onto a dry section of trail and resumed riding. “During the civil war, King Brent of Kaleoth sent food and clothing to suffering people in Meadowland. The royal family of Zentrix sold supplies to Tyros, causing a good deal of grumbling. Bascal’s leader did nothing, supporting neither the king or the rebels. This wasn’t surprising when the rebels blocked his way to loyalist held land. Any help would have had to go through hostile territory.”
Jayden hesitated before continuing. “When the rebellion started, King Tyros expected his neighbors to come to his aid with their armies. When military help didn’t come, he felt betrayed, which may be one reason for this idiotic war. The King of Bascal doing absolutely nothing drives Tyros into a rage even today. Never mind that Bascal, Kaleoth and Zentrix lacked strong armies or strong economies.”
“Has Rascan ever seen you? I mean the young you.”
“Rascan came to the throne four years ago after his father’s death. His father met Prince Mastram twice, but his son Rascan did not. For better or worse he won’t recognize me.”
“You’re pushing the horses too hard again,” Dana said, and Jayden slowed their pace. “If Rascan has been on his throne for four years, he had no say in what his father did during the civil war. You can’t blame him for his dad’s decisions.”
“I can’t. Tyros does. Rascan has been a snob in most diplomatic situations, but he’s done no serious wrongs. By all rights his rule has been relatively just and his people live well. That means nothing to Tyros, and as far as Queen Amvicta is concerned Rascan is a just another victim for her and her clan. Whatever his flaws, King Rascan risks losing everything he has if he can’t resist Meadowland’s invasion.”
Two more days traveling on horseback brought them to a river thirty feet across and flowing fast. The water was brown rather than blue, and carried small branches.
“An unexpected problem,” Jayden said. “This used to be a stream so shallow a man could walk across it without getting his knees wet. The recent heavy rains have clearly swollen it far beyond its normal dimensions.”
“It looks too deep to ford even for the horses,” Dana told him. “I’m not sure how well they could swim across, either.”
Jayden went through his belongings until he found a map. “This may work in our favor. This is a lesser tributary of the Not at All Magnificent Lemming River, which starts in Zentrix, flows through Meadowland and comes close to Bascal before emptying into a lake. It goes where we need it to through lightly populated forested lands. We’ll need a canoe or other small boat to take advantage of this opportunity. We’ll follow the river until we find one or a way across.”
That proved easier said than done. The ground was so waterlogged that the horses’ hooves sunk in, and they had to push through dense plant growth. It took hours until they saw the first sign of habitation. The river widened to forty feet but was no slower when they came across a hut and a small wood dock that stretched out onto the surging waters. A middle aged man gutted fish and threw the entrails to two waiting dogs. Jayden smiled and pointed to a beaten up, weathered rowboat tied to the dock.
“Fortune smiles upon us.”
“It looks cramped, but it’s better than riding the horses through this. It’s hard on them.”
“Speaking of hard,” Jayden began, and handed Dana her disguise.
“But we’re not stealing anything!”
“You’re mentioned on my wanted posters, even if it is as unidentified accomplice,” Jayden reminded her. “Trust me that men are actively seeking more information about you. It’s for the best that the fewest people possible know those details.”
They approached the man slowly but noisily as the horses squelched through the mud. He was so focused on cleaning fish that he didn’t notice them. They were within twenty feet when Jayden announced their presence.
“Greetings,” Jayden began. The man yelped and jumped back. “No need to worry. I come only with the best of intentions.”
The fisherman backed away from them. “I’ve heard about what you’ve done. You keep to yourself.”
“You wound me,” Jayden said. He dismounted and patted his horse. “I propose a simple transaction. I need your boat and will give you these horses in exchange.”
Fear turned into surprise, and the fisherman asked, “You’d give up two horses for an old rowboat?”
“I’d offer less, but I can’t take the animals with me when your boat is so small. As I must abandon them it seemed best to hand them on to a worthy owner. If you don’t need the horses, I’m sure you can find someone who does that can pay a fair price.”
The fisherman frowned as he studied the horses. “What if I say no?”
“You are the first fisherman I’ve met on this river. I doubt you are the only one. Others may be more willing to accept my bargain.”
The man hesitated a moment longer before saying, “Deal.”
“An excellent choice,” Jayden said as he helped Dana dismount. He walked over to the rowboat and untied it from the short dock. “I would advise not showing off your new property to more people than absolutely necessary. Best for all concerned if their original owner doesn’t learn where to find them.”
“I figured they were stolen when I saw you riding them,” the man said. “Don’t worry about me. They’ll be fifty miles away before nightfall.”
“Good man,” Jayden told him before boarding the rowboat and helping Dana onto it. They went out only a short distance onto the river before the current took them even faster than the horses had carried them. He looked at Dana and asked, “This would be a good time to ask if you can swim.”
“If I didn’t know how to swim, wouldn’t I have said so before we traded the horses?”
Jayden used an oar to steer them to the middle of the river. “Other people would, but you’re tragically polite.”
Dana stared at him. “Tragically?”
“Oh yes. I don’t think I’ve ever run into someone as well-meaning as you. I’m awed by how many times you should have slapped me and didn’t, or run away screaming. You’d be amazed how many people do that when they meet me.”
Traveling by water was faster and easier than Dana had hoped for. The rain swollen river raced along and was deep enough they didn’t have to worry about hitting rocks or other obstacles. Houses were few and each had their own boats. They came across dead trees floating downstream, and what had to be the largest turtle Dana had ever seen sitting on shore. She gasped as they drew closer to the monstrous creature, with a shell five feet long and long legs ending in claws. The monster’s neck was ten feet long and ended in a serpent’s head with blue scales, a fin on its brow and sharp teeth. It looked at them only briefly before dipping its head into the murky water.
Jayden saw her shocked expression and said, “Don’t worry, serpent fishers are only threatening to carp. I’m surprised to see one that large. Most are killed and eaten by men before they’re half that size.”
“People eat those?” Dana felt nauseous.
“I’m told their flesh is tough and unpleasant tasting, but there’s much a man can eat if he’s starving.” They saw two smaller serpent fishers, one choking down a live fish while the other tried to steal it. “It seems their population is rebounding. The locals must be fed well if they won’t resort to eating monsters.”
“Maybe there aren’t many people here.” Dana was glad to see the last of them. “We don’t have any where I’m from.”
“They used to be quite common in the region, but overhunting made them rare. I’m told you can find them throughout Bascal and Zentrix.”
Dana and Jayden covered many miles while doing little work. Here and there they saw houses and farms, but fewer than Dana expected. A few curious people watched them go by but did nothing more. That was less surprising. Jayden’s fierce reputation meant most people avoided him. Even those loyal to the king would run for help rather than face him, and there didn’t look like there was anyone here to turn to in an emergency. These people were on their own and looked only too happy to see Jayden leave quickly.
The river soon joined a far larger one, equally swollen by rainwater and brown from the mud it carried. There were more houses here, but still not many. Dana assumed a river would have settlements on it for fresh water and easy travel. When she asked Jayden about it, he answered while steering the rowboat.
“It’s another holdover from the civil war. Rebel forces sent raiding parties on rivers to strike undefended homes. They would seize food and prisoners, burning what they couldn’t take before fleeing. Many villages were lost and are only slowly being rebuilt.”
Dana shook her head. “It’s weird to think the damage from a war thirty years ago still hasn’t healed.”
“The king and queen’s inept leadership has greatly slowed the recovery. This war with neighboring kingdoms only adds to the time spent suffering.”
Jayden brought the rowboat to shore as dusk fell. That proved difficult when the river kept trying to pull them along, but with some effort he got them back on land. He pulled the rowboat out of the water and helped Dana set up a simple camp.
“The good news is this will take days off our travel time,” he announced. “That ends the good news. The river will turn away from our destination early tomorrow, forcing us to abandon our vessel. Given its poor condition I doubt we will find a buyer for it, and locating new mounts is unlikely. That means the rest of our journey is going to be on foot.”
“How long will it take?”
“Three days, perhaps four if we have to go around army patrols.”
Dana set down dead wood for Jayden to ignite when she heard a burbling noise coming from the water. They backed away and drew their swords as the water churned. A bulbous shape five feet across and covered in overlapping blue armor plates rose from the water. It opened a single purple eye as big as a grapefruit. Thick, segmented tentacles reached out of the water and wrapped around their rowboat.
“I Githas,” the monster announced. “My river. Pay for travel or I break boat.”
Jayden scowled. “Does Githas know who he faces?”
“Shadow wizard. Once many, now one. Not impressed.”
Dana put a hand on Jayden’s arm before he could issue a harsh reply. “Let me handle this. There’s a sunken living not far from my hometown, and I’ve dealt with it before.”
“That leaves the next traveler to pay its toll,” Jayden replied.
“If we fight him, either he breaks our boat on purpose or we will by accident,” she said. Jayden relented only grudgingly. Dana had met other sunken before. While dangerous if provoked, they traditionally made minor demands. She stayed back from the water and held up a handful of beef jerky. “Githas of the sunken, I wish to barter. I have no honey or jam. Will you accept salted meat for passage through your waters?”
The monster stared at her before answering, perhaps waiting for more. “Pay low, but acceptable. Bring better next time.”
She tossed the meat into the water and watched the monster gobble it up before sinking back into the river. “See, simple, cheap, nonviolent, and we want
nonviolent. The sunken are hard to kill and have long memories.”
“It’s the principle of the matter. Giving in to bullies encourages them to continue their ways, and what’s an affordable price for us may not be for the next person to cross that monster’s path. I know the sunken are more irritants than threats, and they don’t bother larger boats, but before the civil war they were driven off to rivers and lakes in the wilderness. If one has returned to the heart of the kingdom then more will follow, extorting tribute from those they think they can intimidate.”
“We can’t beat up everyone who deserves it, Jayden.”
“Not yet.”
* * * * *
“We need horses,” Jayden declared at noon.
“Good luck finding any,” Dana told him. “The army requisitioned everything with four legs months ago.”
“Then we need to steal some. Have you ridden before?”
“A little, but that’s not the point. The only men with horses can fight to keep them and are going to travel in groups bigger than we can take.”
Jayden frowned as he ate a quick meal. “Not always. The next town may have horses, either for the mayor or his sheriff. Those will have to do.”
“You’ve been spooked ever since we fought Victory’s Edge. That guy, if he was still a guy, was the scariest thing I’ve ever met, but he’s dead.”
Jayden headed down a narrow trail, likely made by poachers and smugglers trying to avoid notice. “Before his death, I asked Victory’s Edge what made him think he could work his evil here. He said it was an inspired idea. His choice of words could have been coincidental, but I fear it was deliberate. The necromancer Cimmox claimed the king and queen invited wizards of the Inspired to the kingdom. I took Victory’s Edge’s taunt as proof.”
“Who are these people?”
“They are a threat that could overthrow kings and devastate nations. That King Tyros and Queen Amvicta would even speak to them is the height of arrogance, for they despise royalty and seek to overthrow it.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of them.”
Jayden marched down the trail like a man pursued. “That’s not surprising. The Inspired make every effort to keep innocent people in the dark of the danger they pose. They are a secret society of wizards that seeks nothing less than world domination, with wizards as heads of state. No one knows how many of them there are, for they add and lose members constantly, but current theories claim they number over a hundred strong.”
Dana gasped. “I didn’t know there were that many wizards in the whole world. How could so many wizards turn evil?”
“Pride is a sin common to the profession. Every wizard has the power to do what is impossible for many. It is an easy step to believe they are superior to those who don’t use magic, and from there that they should be masters of nations instead of kings. The Inspired takes this presumption a step further, claiming that magic is inherited. They believe training only unlocks the ability to cast spells. Thus those who can use magic are born superior.”
“Is that true?”
“Never!” he said venomously. “There are many reasons why magic use isn’t widespread, but it is most certainly not a birthright. Take the two of us. I am the first spellcaster in my family’s history, a genealogy that can be traced back fifteen generations. If magic was in my family’s blood, why am I the first and only? I had training in the language of the old Sorcerer Lords, and when given the opportunity to study their spell tablets I learned their secrets. You could, too.”
Dana’s jaw dropped. “Wait, really?”
“Certainly. You’re an intelligent young woman, determined, literate. I’d need a few years to teach you the language of the Sorcerer Lords and further time to teach their spells. It would take perhaps five years uninterrupted time and a fair amount of gold, but you could learn. Most people can.”
“Then why aren’t there more wizards?”
“Part of the answer comes back to pride. Wizards are a secretive lot, giving up their knowledge only to those who please them. Many wizards train only those from their own race and social class, and even then are highly selective of their students. It is a rare wizard who trains more than five pupils in their lifetime.
“The rest of the answer is more mundane. I told you it would take five years to train you. I would dearly like to do so, but that is time neither of us have. Most people don’t have time to learn magic. They’re needed too badly working in the fields, mines, running businesses and the like. Others go into equally rigorous professions, such as healers, architects, engineers and more. Then there is the cost in gold. Training a wizard costs thousands of gold coins in books, lab supplies, raw materials and more, a price few can afford. As a result, less than one man in ten thousand becomes a wizard, and it is likely to remain so forever.”
Jayden scowled. “The Inspired use this scarcity as proof of their ludicrous claim. Worse, they let no evidence to the contrary sway their opinion. The Grand Conclave of Wizards once conducted an experiment where they selected twenty people at random and trained them in magic, none of whom had a history of spellcasters in their families. Twelve mastered the skill. That should have ended the absurd debate, but the Inspired claimed those twelve had hidden bloodlines of magic.”
He turned to her and said, “Let no one tell you the educated are better people. I have met too many with advanced degrees and training who were as base and vile as the worst criminals. Learning and goodness are not equal.”
“My father said people should keep learning new things until the day they die.”
“Wise words, but education without virtue merely gives the villainous better tools to do harm. Honor, virtue, love, wisdom, these must go hand in hand with education or the learning is for nothing, or worse, is used to do evil.”
“You’re a wizard who hates wizards who think they’re better than everybody else.” Dana smiled. “That is so you.”
Jayden frowned. “I think that was a compliment.”
“It was. Go on.”
“The sadly logical conclusion to this hideous line of thinking is that wizards should rule those who aren’t wizards. The Inspired seek domination but lack the means to do so, for even a hundred wizards is too few to match their ambitions. This limits the damage they can do, but they are forever looking for a kingdom to seize as a powerbase. Their arrogance and skill in magic means they inflict inexcusable harm to others.”
“And you think they’re here,” Dana said. “How much danger are we in?”
“That’s hard to judge. Most of the Inspired are weak, and they suffer frequent casualties. Plans are formed, attempted and fail, costing the lives of men and women who should know better, who could have done so much good. The Inspired are also hunted by the Grand Conclave of Wizards, the Guild of Heroes, the Brotherhood of the Righteous, the Servants of the Cause, the Square Pegs and many others.”
Jayden waved his hands at their surroundings. “The real question is how many of the Inspired are here. As I said, most of them are weak, no match for me, but their greatest strength is how many wizards they can field. We could face dozens of wizards with whatever magic items and guardians they could produce or steal. I am far stronger than I was a year ago, but if they came in numbers, I would be pulled down like a bison set upon by wolves.”
“Why would the king and queen want them here?” Dana demanded. “They’re as big a threat to Meadowland as to Bascal, Kaleoth and Zentrix.”
“King Tyros and Queen Amvicta may think they can use the Inspired and then betray them. Pay them gold to fight battles, promise them more funds, land to build wizard towers, followers and more, only to kill them when their usefulness has ended. The risk is incredible, and one the king and queen are underestimating. Both sides will seek to betray the other, making it a question of who will strike first.”
There was a rustling in the woods to their right. Dana and Jayden ducked and drew their swords as a surprised looking deer stared back before running off.
Jayden resheathed his sword and continued down the trail. “Meadowland’s armies are already a threat I can’t deal with. The best I can do is strike at their heels or tip the balance in the favor of their enemies. If the Inspired send only a few wizards I might be able to defeat them, but a kingdom weakened by war is the sort of opportunity they have long sought. I can’t face them and hope to win. I need to be vastly stronger, with a greater mastery of shadow magic.”
He stopped and looked at her. “I know where I can find what I seek.”
* * * * *
The game trail ended at the edge of farm fields dense with green wheat. Dana and Jayden picked their way around the edge of the field, trying to stay out of sight as they looked for another road. They soon found one leading to a village with a few dozen buildings. It was sparsely populated, but that wasn’t surprising when most of the people would be farming. Jayden studied the village from a distance.
“They don’t even have oxen,” Dana said as she watched farmers working. “Look, they’re pulling carts by hand.”
“Deplorable, and of no use to us. There may be an opportunity, though. I see a red flag outside the inn. That’s a sign for royal couriers, men who must be given whatever accommodations they need and aren’t subject to road tolls. That flag means one is here, and that means horses.”
“I’m not happy being a horse thief,” she told him.
“I wouldn’t ask this of you if there was another way, but if the Inspired are here then every hour counts. I should point out that we’ve committed enough offenses to get us both sentenced to hanging fifteen times over, so this is not a bridge too far.”
“That really didn’t help.”
“My apologies,” he said, sounding cheerful rather than sorry. “There are enough witnesses you should put on your disguise before we enter town.”
Dana grudgingly put on the cloth mask that hid her face in these situations. She wasn’t sure how much it helped if there were hostile wizards in the kingdom. Such a flimsy thing might protect her identity from a soldier who saw her, but what good was it against magic?
They walked fearlessly into the village. The few people present saw them and either fled or cowered. Dana hated seeing people afraid of her. Hopefully one day they would understand why she and Jayden were doing this.
Jayden led her to the inn and found an attached stable. Inside were three horses, one clearly exhausted while the others looked healthy. Two bored spearmen guarded the stable, a wise move when horses were so rare they attracted the attention from thieves. The spearmen perked up when Jayden entered the stable, and both took a step back.
“Gentlemen, how do you wish to handle this?” Jayden asked pleasantly.
“I am not getting paid enough to fight you,” one said. Both men backed away when Jayden approached the horses.
Jayden smiled. “A wise answer. Couriers typically have multiple horses to change mounts when one tires. These two must be his spares. I’ll leave you the third.”
Dana mounted one of the horses and pointed at the spearmen. “Don’t let the courier ride her until she’s had time to rest.”
Puzzled, a spearman asked, “You’re worried about the horse you aren’t stealing?”
“I like horses,” she said as she rode off.
Once they left the stable, they rode off quickly. A man dressed in a courier’s red uniform ran out of the inn and shouted, “You’ll hang for…oh, it’s you.”
“Give the king and queen my regards,” Jayden called back.
Dana waited until they were well outside town to remove her mask. They returned to seldom used trail for the rest of the day, riding at a brisk pace and covering many miles. As dusk approached, they stopped at a stream and let the horses drink and feed on grass growing along the shore.
“We can’t keep pushing them this hard,” Dana warned as she set up camp.
“Time works against us worse than normal, and hours wasted will cost us dearly.”
Dana pointed a finger at him. “Riding these animals into the ground doesn’t help us and hurts them. If we’re not careful they could go lame, or even die.”
“I don’t take these actions lightly, Dana. We have far to go and little time with such a great threat rising.”
“Where are we going, anyway? And if this place can make you a stronger wizard then why didn’t you go there before?”
Jayden gathered fallen branches off the ground to build a fire. “Both questions are fair. The power I seek is owned by the King Rascan of Bascal. Rascan fancies himself a coinsurer of art and culture, collecting paintings, statues, tapestries and antiquities. That includes spell tablets of the old Sorcerer Lords.”
Dana’s eyes opened wide. “Is he a Sorcerer Lord?”
“To the best of my knowledge, no. He has never been witnessed using shadow magic, nor has anyone in his kingdom. Given the threats he faces I would assume he’d use that power if he had it. I believe he gathered them because they are rare and ancient, which makes them valuable.”
Jayden set down the branches. “Two years ago I sent him a message requesting to buy a tablet from him. My offer included gold and jewels worth five thousand gold coins, no small sum even for a king.”
“What did he say?”
“My message went unanswered, a slight I take offense at.”
“Oh come on, Jayden, what did you expect him to do? He’s a head of state and you’re a wizard causing trouble for one of his neighbors, who is bigger and tougher than he is. He’d get into trouble if he sold you anything.”
“The transaction could have been handled discreetly,” he protested. “Bascal’s people are class conscious, which likely lessened my chances when he is a king. Still, the world’s only Sorcerer Lord should be granted some respect.”
Dana tethered the horses while Jayden lit the fire. “He said no once. Why ask again?”
“The last time I had only money to offer, and as you said he might have worried what the king and queen thought. This time the king and queen’s opinion is no longer an issue, and I can offer him the power of a Sorcerer Lord in a war he might not win.”
“So he’ll be motivated to take the deal, you hope. Please tell me if he says no you won’t try to rob him.” There was a long, awkward pause. “Jayden? No! Bad wizard!”
“I’m considering it for the same reasons I’m not as worried about our mounts’ health as I should be. I’ve learned many spells in the last year, but none strong enough to deal with armies or the Inspired. The Inspired could kill thousands unless I can stop them, and right now I can’t.”
Dana put her hands on her hips. “You’re treading on some very dangerous ground, mister. Taking these horses was bad, but we took them from a man working for the king and queen, who are doing terrible things to good people. This isn’t a bad person you’re talking about robbing. The only thing King Rascan did was not sell you things he owns, and he didn’t have to. If you do bad things to good people, even for good reasons, you’re taking a big step toward becoming your father.”
Jayden’s jaw dropped and he stared at her.
Dana instantly realized how insulting that was, but it was also true. She had to make him see that. “I saw your memories, how your father kept doing bad things, each one worse than the one before it because he was so desperate to keep Meadowland safe. That was a good goal, and he did terrible things to do it, until he was a bad person surrounded by bad people. He ruined what he was trying to save. That’s why you hate him. You can’t be like that. Meadowland needs you to be better than him. I need you to be better than him.”
Jayden said nothing in reply, instead looking into the fire. Dana took his hands. “We’re in deep trouble, worse than I thought if there might be a hundred power hungry wizards showing up, but we can’t fight this nightmare by becoming as bad as it is. When we fought Victory’s Edge an archer risked his life to help us. I don’t know if it was because he liked you or hated Victor’s Edge, but he helped us. More men might do the same, but only if they believe you’re worth following. You need to show them that you are.”
It took a moment for Jayden to find his voice. “I have rarely been hit that hard, and never have I deserved it more.”
“You’re a good person. Don’t let them change that.”
* * * * *
They broke camp the following morning in silence. Dana worried she’d gone too far last night, but she feared the consequences of Jayden failing far worse. She waited for hours before she spoke to him.
“I’m sorry about what I said. It’s just, so much of what we’ve been doing, even the criminal stuff, it’s beyond me. Growing up, horse stealing was something I saw my father dealing with. Families could be ruined if someone took their horse, and I know this is different, but it hit close to home.”
“Don’t apologize for trying to help me. Now more than ever I need someone to act as the voice of reason. I have trouble dealing with my anger and risk making more enemies than I need to.” He glanced at her and added, “I’m grateful it’s you being my conscious rather than others I’ve traveled with. Some of them would have been eager to participate.”
“Like Suzy Lockheart?
“Must you keep bringing her up?
Dana hesitated before asking, “Victory’s Edge was from another continent. How would he join up with the Inspired?”
“Victory’s Edge spent years moving from kingdom to kingdom, causing harm that the Inspired would have noticed and approved of. I have no trouble imaging them seeking him out and offering him membership.”
“They’d work with him?” Dana didn’t try to hide her shock.
“The Inspired have called necromancy a misunderstood branch of magic, so I think they’d welcome his unique brand of evil. I wonder if he came to Meadowland as an open member of the Inspired or under his own name. If he claimed to be on his own, he could do all manner of harm without damaging the Inspired’s reputation. Well, more than it was already damaged.”
“When we reach the border with Bascal, Meadowland’s army will be there trying to cross. How are we going to get around them?”
Jayden brought his horse to a stop when they came to a muddy patch on the road. It looked deep enough to give their horses trouble. “There are narrow passes into Bascal, too small to send an army through but the right size to sneak in spies and saboteurs. Guards there will be far fewer and easily dealt with. From there we can enter Bascal, go to the capital and barter our services for spell tablets. King Rascan knows the value of what he holds and will demand a heavy price.”
“He might want to keep you.”
“The thought had occurred to me. We will have to be careful dealing with him and show considerable diplomacy. I’ll need your help with that.”
Dana got off her horse and led it off the trail to go around the mud. “I don’t know anything about dealing with kings!”
“You know how to treat men with respect even when they don’t deserve it, a skill that died in me long ago.”
“What do you know about Rascan?”
Jayden led his horse around the mud. “King Tyros hates him with a passion.”
“Tyros doesn’t seem to like anyone.”
“True, but his hatred of Rascan’s family is massive.” Jayden guided his horse back onto a dry section of trail and resumed riding. “During the civil war, King Brent of Kaleoth sent food and clothing to suffering people in Meadowland. The royal family of Zentrix sold supplies to Tyros, causing a good deal of grumbling. Bascal’s leader did nothing, supporting neither the king or the rebels. This wasn’t surprising when the rebels blocked his way to loyalist held land. Any help would have had to go through hostile territory.”
Jayden hesitated before continuing. “When the rebellion started, King Tyros expected his neighbors to come to his aid with their armies. When military help didn’t come, he felt betrayed, which may be one reason for this idiotic war. The King of Bascal doing absolutely nothing drives Tyros into a rage even today. Never mind that Bascal, Kaleoth and Zentrix lacked strong armies or strong economies.”
“Has Rascan ever seen you? I mean the young you.”
“Rascan came to the throne four years ago after his father’s death. His father met Prince Mastram twice, but his son Rascan did not. For better or worse he won’t recognize me.”
“You’re pushing the horses too hard again,” Dana said, and Jayden slowed their pace. “If Rascan has been on his throne for four years, he had no say in what his father did during the civil war. You can’t blame him for his dad’s decisions.”
“I can’t. Tyros does. Rascan has been a snob in most diplomatic situations, but he’s done no serious wrongs. By all rights his rule has been relatively just and his people live well. That means nothing to Tyros, and as far as Queen Amvicta is concerned Rascan is a just another victim for her and her clan. Whatever his flaws, King Rascan risks losing everything he has if he can’t resist Meadowland’s invasion.”
Two more days traveling on horseback brought them to a river thirty feet across and flowing fast. The water was brown rather than blue, and carried small branches.
“An unexpected problem,” Jayden said. “This used to be a stream so shallow a man could walk across it without getting his knees wet. The recent heavy rains have clearly swollen it far beyond its normal dimensions.”
“It looks too deep to ford even for the horses,” Dana told him. “I’m not sure how well they could swim across, either.”
Jayden went through his belongings until he found a map. “This may work in our favor. This is a lesser tributary of the Not at All Magnificent Lemming River, which starts in Zentrix, flows through Meadowland and comes close to Bascal before emptying into a lake. It goes where we need it to through lightly populated forested lands. We’ll need a canoe or other small boat to take advantage of this opportunity. We’ll follow the river until we find one or a way across.”
That proved easier said than done. The ground was so waterlogged that the horses’ hooves sunk in, and they had to push through dense plant growth. It took hours until they saw the first sign of habitation. The river widened to forty feet but was no slower when they came across a hut and a small wood dock that stretched out onto the surging waters. A middle aged man gutted fish and threw the entrails to two waiting dogs. Jayden smiled and pointed to a beaten up, weathered rowboat tied to the dock.
“Fortune smiles upon us.”
“It looks cramped, but it’s better than riding the horses through this. It’s hard on them.”
“Speaking of hard,” Jayden began, and handed Dana her disguise.
“But we’re not stealing anything!”
“You’re mentioned on my wanted posters, even if it is as unidentified accomplice,” Jayden reminded her. “Trust me that men are actively seeking more information about you. It’s for the best that the fewest people possible know those details.”
They approached the man slowly but noisily as the horses squelched through the mud. He was so focused on cleaning fish that he didn’t notice them. They were within twenty feet when Jayden announced their presence.
“Greetings,” Jayden began. The man yelped and jumped back. “No need to worry. I come only with the best of intentions.”
The fisherman backed away from them. “I’ve heard about what you’ve done. You keep to yourself.”
“You wound me,” Jayden said. He dismounted and patted his horse. “I propose a simple transaction. I need your boat and will give you these horses in exchange.”
Fear turned into surprise, and the fisherman asked, “You’d give up two horses for an old rowboat?”
“I’d offer less, but I can’t take the animals with me when your boat is so small. As I must abandon them it seemed best to hand them on to a worthy owner. If you don’t need the horses, I’m sure you can find someone who does that can pay a fair price.”
The fisherman frowned as he studied the horses. “What if I say no?”
“You are the first fisherman I’ve met on this river. I doubt you are the only one. Others may be more willing to accept my bargain.”
The man hesitated a moment longer before saying, “Deal.”
“An excellent choice,” Jayden said as he helped Dana dismount. He walked over to the rowboat and untied it from the short dock. “I would advise not showing off your new property to more people than absolutely necessary. Best for all concerned if their original owner doesn’t learn where to find them.”
“I figured they were stolen when I saw you riding them,” the man said. “Don’t worry about me. They’ll be fifty miles away before nightfall.”
“Good man,” Jayden told him before boarding the rowboat and helping Dana onto it. They went out only a short distance onto the river before the current took them even faster than the horses had carried them. He looked at Dana and asked, “This would be a good time to ask if you can swim.”
“If I didn’t know how to swim, wouldn’t I have said so before we traded the horses?”
Jayden used an oar to steer them to the middle of the river. “Other people would, but you’re tragically polite.”
Dana stared at him. “Tragically?”
“Oh yes. I don’t think I’ve ever run into someone as well-meaning as you. I’m awed by how many times you should have slapped me and didn’t, or run away screaming. You’d be amazed how many people do that when they meet me.”
Traveling by water was faster and easier than Dana had hoped for. The rain swollen river raced along and was deep enough they didn’t have to worry about hitting rocks or other obstacles. Houses were few and each had their own boats. They came across dead trees floating downstream, and what had to be the largest turtle Dana had ever seen sitting on shore. She gasped as they drew closer to the monstrous creature, with a shell five feet long and long legs ending in claws. The monster’s neck was ten feet long and ended in a serpent’s head with blue scales, a fin on its brow and sharp teeth. It looked at them only briefly before dipping its head into the murky water.
Jayden saw her shocked expression and said, “Don’t worry, serpent fishers are only threatening to carp. I’m surprised to see one that large. Most are killed and eaten by men before they’re half that size.”
“People eat those?” Dana felt nauseous.
“I’m told their flesh is tough and unpleasant tasting, but there’s much a man can eat if he’s starving.” They saw two smaller serpent fishers, one choking down a live fish while the other tried to steal it. “It seems their population is rebounding. The locals must be fed well if they won’t resort to eating monsters.”
“Maybe there aren’t many people here.” Dana was glad to see the last of them. “We don’t have any where I’m from.”
“They used to be quite common in the region, but overhunting made them rare. I’m told you can find them throughout Bascal and Zentrix.”
Dana and Jayden covered many miles while doing little work. Here and there they saw houses and farms, but fewer than Dana expected. A few curious people watched them go by but did nothing more. That was less surprising. Jayden’s fierce reputation meant most people avoided him. Even those loyal to the king would run for help rather than face him, and there didn’t look like there was anyone here to turn to in an emergency. These people were on their own and looked only too happy to see Jayden leave quickly.
The river soon joined a far larger one, equally swollen by rainwater and brown from the mud it carried. There were more houses here, but still not many. Dana assumed a river would have settlements on it for fresh water and easy travel. When she asked Jayden about it, he answered while steering the rowboat.
“It’s another holdover from the civil war. Rebel forces sent raiding parties on rivers to strike undefended homes. They would seize food and prisoners, burning what they couldn’t take before fleeing. Many villages were lost and are only slowly being rebuilt.”
Dana shook her head. “It’s weird to think the damage from a war thirty years ago still hasn’t healed.”
“The king and queen’s inept leadership has greatly slowed the recovery. This war with neighboring kingdoms only adds to the time spent suffering.”
Jayden brought the rowboat to shore as dusk fell. That proved difficult when the river kept trying to pull them along, but with some effort he got them back on land. He pulled the rowboat out of the water and helped Dana set up a simple camp.
“The good news is this will take days off our travel time,” he announced. “That ends the good news. The river will turn away from our destination early tomorrow, forcing us to abandon our vessel. Given its poor condition I doubt we will find a buyer for it, and locating new mounts is unlikely. That means the rest of our journey is going to be on foot.”
“How long will it take?”
“Three days, perhaps four if we have to go around army patrols.”
Dana set down dead wood for Jayden to ignite when she heard a burbling noise coming from the water. They backed away and drew their swords as the water churned. A bulbous shape five feet across and covered in overlapping blue armor plates rose from the water. It opened a single purple eye as big as a grapefruit. Thick, segmented tentacles reached out of the water and wrapped around their rowboat.
“I Githas,” the monster announced. “My river. Pay for travel or I break boat.”
Jayden scowled. “Does Githas know who he faces?”
“Shadow wizard. Once many, now one. Not impressed.”
Dana put a hand on Jayden’s arm before he could issue a harsh reply. “Let me handle this. There’s a sunken living not far from my hometown, and I’ve dealt with it before.”
“That leaves the next traveler to pay its toll,” Jayden replied.
“If we fight him, either he breaks our boat on purpose or we will by accident,” she said. Jayden relented only grudgingly. Dana had met other sunken before. While dangerous if provoked, they traditionally made minor demands. She stayed back from the water and held up a handful of beef jerky. “Githas of the sunken, I wish to barter. I have no honey or jam. Will you accept salted meat for passage through your waters?”
The monster stared at her before answering, perhaps waiting for more. “Pay low, but acceptable. Bring better next time.”
She tossed the meat into the water and watched the monster gobble it up before sinking back into the river. “See, simple, cheap, nonviolent, and we want
nonviolent. The sunken are hard to kill and have long memories.”
“It’s the principle of the matter. Giving in to bullies encourages them to continue their ways, and what’s an affordable price for us may not be for the next person to cross that monster’s path. I know the sunken are more irritants than threats, and they don’t bother larger boats, but before the civil war they were driven off to rivers and lakes in the wilderness. If one has returned to the heart of the kingdom then more will follow, extorting tribute from those they think they can intimidate.”
“We can’t beat up everyone who deserves it, Jayden.”
“Not yet.”
* * * * *
Duel part 2
**This is the conclusion to Duel**
Jayden’s prediction for the following day proved accurate. The river abruptly turned away from their destination, forcing Jayden to beach the rowboat and then abandon it. It took hours traveling through dense forests before they came across a road, but it was too well traveled for them to use without drawing attention and possibly attacks. They crossed it quickly and continued through the woods until they found a game trail going more or less where they wanted.
“It’s weird how there are so many tiny trails like this,” Dana said. “There can’t be that many poachers and smugglers trying to stay hidden.”
“There are, but they rarely make such paths,” Jayden told her. “Most are made by hunters and loggers. Others are made by men taking the shortest route to their destinations. After all, there aren’t many roads in Meadowland compared with other kingdoms.”
“Why not?”
Jayden formed his black magic sword to hack through plants growing onto the trail. “The king and queen are legally responsible for maintaining only a few roads. The rest are the responsibility of local nobles, who often lack the money and manpower to build and maintain roads in their lands. The lack of proper roads makes life difficult for visiting merchants, back when there were visiting merchants, and slows travel within the kingdom. It makes trails like this a critical if poorly mapped and constructed necessity. Sadly it also adds to our travel time, as this road is not going in a straight line where we want to go.”
Dana smiled at him. “Feel like making your own trail?”
“Tempting, but doing so would leave obvious signs we’d been here.”
“Kind of late to worry about that when so many people saw us on the river.”
Jayden cut through a tree branch blocking the trail. “They saw us only briefly and wouldn’t know where we were going. Most wouldn’t tell the authorities, as love for the king and queen is low and dropping.”
There was a snap ahead of them, and they stopped talking. Jayden got off the trail and waved for Dana to join him. Silence followed until a voice called out, “We both know the other is there. I think we can go our separate ways, no harm done.”
Jayden’s eyes narrowed. “You place a good deal of trust in my good nature.”
“Most folks I meet leave well enough alone. Chances are good you’ll do the same.”
Dana put on her mask. “If they were with the king and queen, they’d run from us or attack. Let’s trust them.”
“They could be dangerous and have nothing to do with the royal couple, but it’s encouraging that they seek peace.” Jayden called out, “Fair warning, if our meeting ends badly, you will regret it more than I will.”
“I don’t doubt it.” The stranger approached slowly. He was young with mud stained clothes and a heavily loaded backpack. Three more men followed him, all four armed with swords they kept sheathed. They looked nervous like they would run if they could, but their backpacks looked too heavy for a swift escape. They were also about the age where they could be conscripted, and might be on the run from pressgangs.
The man in front studied Jayden carefully. “I’ve heard about you. Didn’t think we’d ever meet.”
“You’re a smuggler if ever I’ve seen one,” Jayden said. “What are you carrying?”
The smuggler opened his backpack to show jars filled with brown powder, and the others did the same. “Sweet bark, paid for in advance. I’d just as soon we not fight.”
Jayden stepped aside to let them pass. “Go.”
The smuggler nodded and led his group away. Jayden watched them leave before leading Dana down the trail. He frowned before saying, “Many such men carry what would be legitimate cargo anywhere else, merely trying to avoid being taxed or having their goods seized, but it’s still a bad sign. Smugglers can carry dangerous cargo as easily as not. That the profession has become so common is a serious inditement against the king and queen.”
Dana took off her mask. “That’s why you checked what they had.”
“I’ve destroyed smugglers’ cargos when I found them carrying poison, combat drugs or wyvern eggs. I imagine I’ll do so again before the year is out. It annoys me that I must do the authorities’ jobs for them.”
* * * * *
It took another two days to reach the border with Bascal, a mountainous and heavily wooded region. Dana and Jayden had to avoid large, heavily armed army patrols, and towns fortified with walls and barricades until they looked like small fortresses. For a change Jayden showed the caution the situation deserved. He picked his way through game trails and along streams, moving ever closer to their destination. They finally came upon a wide grassy clearing with a road running through it.
“Almost there,” he promised. “Getting my prize may prove harder than reaching it, but I know of nowhere else I am certain to find Sorcerer Lord spell tablets. It is this or nothing.”
“Then we’ll be sure to be on our best behavior,” she teased him.
“You consistently ask the impossible of me.”
“It’s only impossible until you do it,” she told him.
“Hello!” a cheerful voice called out. Dana froze and Jayden drew his sword. There was a pause before the voice called out, “Come, come, let’s not waste each other’s time, Sorcerer Lord. We both have places to be and things to do.”
“Sounds friendly,” Dana said.
“He does,” Jayden agreed.
“Good chance he’ll try to kill us?”
“Perceptive of you. Mask on and sword out, Dana.”
Jayden led her onto the grassy clearing, where they spotted a large carriage pulled by four horses parked in a shady spot nearby. The carriage had no windows and a single large door held shut by locks and chains. The carriage’s driver was equally odd, a white haired gnome half Dana’s height. He wore obnoxiously bright clothes with feathers around his shoulders, and carried only a thin wood cane.
“Phineas Bargle, at your disservice,” the gnome said. “I thought we’d talk one wizard to another.”
“Charming,” Jayden said as he came to a stop fifty feet from the carriage. “I must admit to being curious. I use potent magic to prevent men from finding me, yet you have done just that.”
Phineas took a pipe from his pocket and tapped tobacco from a pouch into the end. “Your magic is effective. I spent weeks trying to locate you with spells that should have been able to find a specific flea on a horse five hundred miles away. You can imagine my frustration when they didn’t work.”
Jayden’s eyes narrowed. “Yet here you are.”
“When magic didn’t work, I used logic. You were seen assassinating a foreign wizard assigned to General Vander. I was nearby when it happened.”
“It wasn’t an assassination,” Jayden correct the gnome.
Phineas shrugged. “Call it what you will. I don’t judge. I picked up your trail and lost it nearly as fast, but I found people who’d seen you. I could have torn the information from their minds, but they answered me with only the slightest prompting and a few coins for their words. Many of them described you going in the same direction and at some speed.” The gnome snapped his fingers and formed a flame to light his pipe. “Once I knew that, I made logical deductions on where you could be going and followed you.”
“How did you get ahead of us?” Dana asked.
Phineas smirked and tapped his cane on his carriage. The carriage rocked in response, as whatever was inside stirred. “I move faster than you on roads you can’t set foot on without bringing a hundred soldiers down on your heads.”
“That still doesn’t make sense,” Dana said. “We traveled by water for a while.”
“Where men saw you.” Phineas took a deep breath from his pipe and exhaled a smoke ring. “Men here aren’t loyal to the king and his meddlesome queen, but most have little love for you, or are so desperate for coins that they’d sell you out. Why, one time I learned what I needed to know for a jar of strawberry jam.”
Jayden scowled. “The sunken. I should have expected it to betray me.”
“Betrayed?” Phineas asked. “The way he tells it, you bartered for safe transit only. You should have paid for secrecy, too. Anyway, once I had enough information, I narrowed down your possible destinations to three places. This was the leading candidate. It was simple enough to get ahead of you and wait. If you hadn’t come in another day or so I would have tried the other two, but that’s proven unnecessary.”
“I likely know the answer already, but who do you work for?” Jayden asked.
“Now that’s an interesting question, with many possible answers,” the gnome replied. “On paper I work for King Tyros and Queen Amvicta. Is it just me, or is it odd how her name keeps getting attached to his decisions?”
“It’s not just you,” Dana told him.
“Didn’t think so.” The gnome took another breath from his pipe and blew smoke through his nose. “They hired me and assigned me to work with a few other individuals to find and kill you.”
Jayden swept his arms out. “We seem to be alone.”
“I abandoned them a week ago. We’d have ended up killing each other if I hadn’t. Bloody psychopaths. Back to my original topic, we were promised a dukedom for killing you.” Phineas leaned forward. “The same dukedom you ruined.”
“If I’m supposed to feel ashamed, I’m not.”
Phineas waved his pipe in front of him. “Shame? Don’t know the meaning of the word. The manor house is gone along with a largish warehouse, the servants and soldiers ran off, and what little remained was looted. It would cost a fortune just to make it livable. I suppose the land would generate money to do the job, except the last duke earned his fortune through trade. I don’t have his business connections.”
“The prize isn’t worth having,” Jayden said.
“Exactly. If I kill you, I’ll be stuck being in charge of ruined property. Would humans take orders from someone half their size? I’d rather not find out. My coworkers were willing to take the chance it would work, or at least provide a steady supply of victims, but I know a bad bet when I see one.”
Puzzled, Dana asked, “Why are you here if you don’t want what they’re paying?”
“I’m getting to that.” Phineas leaned back and tapped his cane on the carriage. Again it rocked as its passenger responded to the tap. “I’ve been in Meadowland for a month, long enough to see the kingdom is going to fail. Whether they win or lose the war doesn’t matter. Victory means trying to hold onto more land than they can control. Losing means decades of rebuilding or worse. It’s bad business, but a clever fellow can profit from disaster.”
Jayden frowned. “If you expect something from me, prepare yourself for disappointment.”
Phineas shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no. I’m going to make you an offer I think you’ll take. You want King Tyros’ invasions to fail and soon. My departure from Meadowland helps that process. One thousand gold coins in cash or treasure and my associate in the carriage and I leave, never to return, and we won’t tell anyone where you are.”
“Will your clan be satisfied with so little?” Jayden asked.
Phineas chuckled and added more tobacco to his pipe. “I parted ways with them long ago. A thousand gold coins will allow me to live a life of debauchery for years to come, reward enough for me.”
“I don’t have that much money,” Jayden told him.
“But you’ve found Sorcerer Lord spell tablets,” Phineas countered. “I doubt you’ve parted company with those. Your escapades have generated quite a bit of interest in shadow magic. Men will pay gold for those in the hopes they can learn their secrets.”
Jayden eyed the gnome with undisguised anger. It didn’t take Dana long to realize why. Jayden was risking much in the hopes of getting more spell tablets, not losing the ones he had. Dana figured he didn’t need the ones he already owned after learning the spells, but to give them to a stranger meant risking evil men might learn how to use them. There was no telling how much damage a wicked man could do if he could make a black whip or giant hand. Jayden would be responsible for the damage.
“No,” Jayden said firmly. “My secrets are mine and mine alone. If others want them, they will have to earn them. We might be able to bargain, Phineas, but my magic isn’t on the table and never will be.”
“I thought you might say that,” Phineas said casually. “Have you heard of Braxton Bix?”
“Braxton the Betrayer?” Jayden asked. “Also called the Burglar and the Butcher.”
“That’s a lot of nicknames,” Dana said.
“All of them well earned,” Jayden told her. “Braxton hasn’t been seen in twenty years, a loss to no one.”
“He hasn’t been seen because I have him.” Phineas took a puff from his pipe. “He’s not the man he used to be. Technically he’s not a man at all. He stole secrets of troll magic used to permanently enhance their people. If you’ve ever wondered why trolls are so strong, that’s why. The fool experimented on himself. It’s delicate magic, not to be handled by the greedy, impatient and inept. Braxton equals an adult troll in strength, endurance and health, but at a cost to him that frightens even me. Dominating what little remained of his mind was child’s play. He follows my orders, generally, and is brutal in battle. My mind spells may not be an equal to your shadow magic, but Braxton tips the scales in my favor.”
“So it’s armed robbery,” Jayden said.
Phineas emptied out his pipe onto the ground. “Call it what you will, but be careful judging your chances against me. I know what you’re capable of, and I’m confident of victory. Lose some of what you have or all of it. Your choice.”
Jayden’s answer was as vengeful as Dana expected. “You claim to know my measure yet make a demand I’d never give in to. Only recently I gave a petty, hateful being what it had no right to, a move that clearly backfired. I showed the sunken mercy by not killing it. I’m out of mercy. You are a pathetic, hateful, greedy excuse for a person, and I will give you nothing except the beating you so clearly deserve. Whatever monster rides inside your carriage, unleash it and you will leave alone and empty handed, or not at all.”
“I see,” Phineas replied.
“I suspect the Inspired have come to Meadowland,” Jayden continued. “I don’t know if you’re part of that arrogant cabal or merely a parasite happy to snatch what you can. Whether you work alone as you claim or are a part of a larger group doesn’t matter. My decision is final.”
Phineas put his pipe into a coat pocket. “I hadn’t heard the Inspired were here. It’s another reason to leave, but I won’t leave poor. Pity you weren’t more reasonable.”
Phineas raised his cane, and screamed in terror as a javelin missed his head and sank deep into the top of his carriage.
“Traitor!”
The shout echoed across the clearing, startling Phineas as much as it did Dana and Jayden. The trio that came from the woods to the north must cause nightmares among any who saw them. The first was a wild eyed man wearing leather armor with blue spiraling marks running down the arms and legs. He carried another javelin and a longsword. The second was wrapped head to toe in badly stitched together black leather and carried a sickle that glowed red. The last person was wrapped in dirty silk, and Dana saw things moving inside of it.
“Your associate?” Jayden asked as he cast a spell to form his black magic sword.
“Loosely speaking, yes,” Phineas admitted. “Immortal has died hundreds of times and keeps coming back, Ghost Hunter is as brutal as he looks, and Web, well, less said the better.”
“You thought to kill the Sorcerer Lord alone and leave us out of the reward,” Immortal snarled as he prepared to throw another javelin. The blue markings on his leather armor kept moving, sometimes spelling hateful words before changing again. The man practically exuded rage, spitting as he yelled, “Filthy, stinking, stunted gnome, I’ll skin you!”
Phineas raised his cane. “Gentlemen, I found our target and kept him here for you.”
Ghost Hunter raised his sickle. “Save your lies for someone who believes them.”
Web was even more disgusting as it came close enough to see clearly. Its entire body was made up of spiders crawling around inside of web spun to look like a man. A large red eye slid around inside it, pushing spiders aside or running over them and crushing them. “Found, kill, eat.”
“How did they find us?” Dana asked Jayden.
“No idea,” he admitted.
“I spent days outside my body looking for you when you left in the night,” Ghost Hunter told Phineas. His uniform was made of scraps of leather sewn together with coarse thread, and had no holes for his eyes, nose or mouth. Here and there bits of leather stuck out from his body and gave him a careless, disheveled look. “No one cheats me and lives.”
“No one who spends time near you lives for long,” Phineas countered.
Jayden glanced at Phineas as their enemies approached. “If they live, they’ll report your treachery to the king and queen. Work with us and that won’t happen.”
“I’m on no one’s side but my own,” Phineas told him, and rapped his cane against the the door to his carriage. Locks snapped open, chains fell loose, and the door opened to release a revolting mockery of a man eight feet tall with bulging muscles, clawed hands, a head that was mostly mouth and wearing nothing except a loincloth. He reeked of body odor and rotting meat, and had long yellowed fangs in place of teeth. Caked in mud and covered in scars, the brute stepped out of the carriage.
Phineas waved his cane across the clearing. “Kill them all.”
For a few precious seconds Dana thought she and Jayden wouldn’t have to do anything except watch. The brute galloped across the grassy clearing on his hands and feet before leaping at Immortal. The two fought like mad dogs, snarling and shouting, but Ghost Hunter and Web ignored their ally’s peril. Web came for Dana, its limbs moving unnaturally and hissing, “Enemy, victim, food!”
“That one’s yours,” Dana told Jayden.
He stepped in front of her. “Agreed.”
“Then the girl’s head is mine!” Ghost Hunter yelled as he charged Dana. She had no idea how he could see when his uniform had no eye slits, but the lack didn’t bother him as he lashed out with his sickle. Dana blocked it with Chain Cutter, but didn’t cut through the sickle. The two met with a shower of sparks and enough force to shake her arm. Ghost Hunter swung again, this time aiming low at her knees. Dana blocked him again.
“Die, you miserable cow!” Ghost Hunter yelled at her.
“That’s just rude!” Dana wasn’t impressed with her opponent. He was strong and fast, but far from the strongest or fastest she’d fought, and his fighting style was sloppy. She’d been studying under Jayden for half a year and was a match for Ghost Hunter.
Ghost Hunter aimed for her head with his next attack and she ducked under his sickle. She swung upwards trying to hit his weapon and knock it out of his hands. Her aim was too good, or Ghost Hunter was more incompetent than she’d though, and Chain Cutter sliced off his right hand.
Dana jumped back in horror. “Oh my God! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! You’re, you’re bleeding sawdust?”
Dry sawdust poured from the wound, and Ghost Hunter’s right arm sagged and fell limp at his side like an empty shirt sleeve. Shock froze Dana for a second as Ghost Hunter snatched up his weapon with his left hand. Immortal, still fighting the brute, yelled to Ghost Hunter, “Walk it off, kid!”
“I did not see that coming,” Dana admitted.
“It didn’t hurt,” Ghost Hunter snarled. “It will hurt when I do the same to you.”
Their duel ended when Web ran between them, screaming, “Flee, escape, survive!”
Jayden followed the nightmarish monster with his shield of spinning black blades and magic sword. Web had four deep gashes in its back and arms, and live spiders spilled out of them. It tried to reach the forest and the cover the trees would provide. Jayden struck Web across the right heel with his sword, and when the monster fell he ran through it with the spinning blades. His shield of blades ended, but not before shredding Wed. Bits of webbing and spiders flew through the air like confetti. Jayden stomped on the creature’s large red eye when it landed on the ground. He looked at Ghost Hunter and announced, “Next.”
“You think this is a game?” Ghost Hunter yelled. “You think this is funny?”
“Moderately amusing. I’m curious what will happen if you suffer a head wound. You’ll be empty headed in every sense of the word.”
Ghost Hunter howled in outrage, a cry cut short when Immortal flew through the air to hit him in the back, sending them both tumbling to the ground. The brute lumbered after them and casually took a swipe at Jayden. Jayden tried to run but was a second too slow, and he was knocked alongside his two enemies. The brute seized Immortal by the heels before the man could get up and swung him into the ground. Dana tried to help Jayden up, but Ghost Hunter got between them.
“Die, you stinking wench!” Ghost Hunter clearly wasn’t ambidextrous, because his swings were even wilder and easier to block than before. He tried to kick her and even made an attempt to headbutt her, missing both times. “You think you’re better than me! You’re trying to make me look stupid! Die!”
“Shut up!” she yelled back. Ghost Hunter made a powerful overhead swing and she stepped out of the way. The swing left his sickle near the ground for a second, too far down to block her attacks. Dana didn’t want to hurt Ghost Hunter any more than she already had, but he wasn’t stopping. She slashed Chain Cutter across his chest, slicing through his leather clothes and spilling gallons of sawdust. He struggled to lift his sickle before she brought her sword back the other way to cut off his left arm at the elbow. Sawdust flew from the wounds as Ghost Hunter fell over.
Then he got up, no longer a menacing figure in black, but a translucent ghost, a boy a year or two younger than Dana. For a second she felt pity for him. Was this who he really was, a spirit occupying a fake body? Her pity vanished when the ghost looked at her with such loathing she stepped back. His lips formed the words, “I’ll get you,” before he vanished.
“Dana, a little help,” Jayden called.
She turned away from Ghost Hunter’s remains to see Jayden and Immortal trying to stop the brute. The lumbering monster moved faster than she would have expected, and suffered only cuts from what should have been killing blows. Jayden’s enhanced speed from his magic sword helped him land a shallow blow before the brute seized Immortal with both hands and crushed him. Dana screamed as Immortal crumbled to dust and a glowing orb burst from his remains. The light shot into the sky until it was lost to sight.
“Pity he won’t stay dead,” Phineas said from on top of his carriage.
Dana ignored the brute and charged the gnome instead. The brute howled and ran after her. She raced up to the carriage and hacked off its back left wheel with Chain Cutter. The wagon nearly tipped over and Phineas was thrown screaming to the ground. Dana stood over him with her sword raised.
“Call him off!”
“I can’t,” the gnome said. “He won’t stop fighting while enemies stand.”
The brute caught up with her and landed a blow strong enough to send her flying ten feet. She cried out in pain when she landed, a cry nearly as great as the brute’s when a giant black hand rammed into him and threw him into the damaged carriage. The carriage tipped over and the horses panicked as they were pulled down with it.
Phineas swore bitterly as he got up. Dana winced as she staggered to her feet and went after the gnome. She didn’t know what spells he could cast, and had no desire to learn. The gnome saw her coming, and he uttered strange words as he pointed his cane at her.
Dana cried out in surprise as the world spun around her. She couldn’t tell which way was up and staggered like a drunk before falling to her knees. Phineas chuckled and say, “I’d heard you were dangerous. How disappointing.”
“Shouldn’t have done that,” Dana said as she shook her head.
“Pray tell, why not?”
“No one hurts my friends!” Jayden yelled. He sent his magic hand hurling into the brute, knocking him onto Phineas. The gnome screamed and tried to get out from beneath his monstrous slave. “No one!”
Dana’s senses returned to normal, and she got up. “That’s why.”
The brute got up and lunged at Jayden, only for the giant magic hand to swing down from above onto the brute, sending him to the ground again. Jayden and Dana both charged and struck before their foe could rise. Magic swords struck with terrifying results. The brute made one last effort to stand before falling to his knees, and then to the ground.
Phineas scrambled to his feet and pointed his cane at Jayden. He uttered the same words as before, but the Sorcerer Lord stood firm. Phineas gasped. “No.”
“It seems my mind cloud is sufficient defense against your attempts to influence me,” he snarled at the gnome. “Without your protector you’re no threat to us, and shortly you’ll be a threat to no one. I gave you fair warning, gnome. You’ve only yourself to blame for what comes next.”
A look of horror crossed Phineas’ face as he backed up to his carriage. Dana wasn’t sure if she should stop Jayden when the gnome had tried to kill them, and may have killed others with his pet monster. The matter was taken out of her hands when Phineas cast another spell. To their amazement the brute stood up, his movements jerky as he stumbled after Dana and Jayden. Dana drove Chain Cutter into the brute from one side and Jayden attacked from the other. Their swords left terrible wounds as the brute staggered like a badly handled puppet. The brute tried to club them with his massive forearms, but was so clumsy they had no trouble dodging him.
They struck again, finally dropping the brute before turning to Phineas. The gnome had used his distraction to cut loose one of his horses from its harness. The frightened animal struggled to its feet with the gnome holding onto its mane, and it galloped away. Jayden sent his giant magic hand after the gnome, but the horse ran faster than the hand could fly, and Phineas escaped into the woods.
“No!” Jayden ran a few steps after them before realizing the effort was fruitless. Snarling mad, he hacked the damaged carriage apart. Noise from the battle brought a pair of Meadowland spearmen to investigate. They stared at Jayden as he chopped the carriage in half, then turned his menacing gaze on them. Both men ran for their lives.
His fury spent, Jayden returned to Dana. She stared at their fallen foes. The brute was dead, his misshapen body horribly damaged. Immortal was a pile of ashes. Ghost Hunter’s spirit was gone, his false body reduced to tattered black leather and piles of sawdust. There was even less left of Web.
“Was that necromancy when the body got back up?” Dana asked hesitantly.
Jayden looked at the fallen brute. “No. I’ve heard of this spell before. Bodies die in stages. Phineas used his magic to control what little of the brute remained alive. The spell could have kept his body moving for a few minutes until even that was impossible.”
“How many,” Dana began, but found it hard to go on. She took a deep breath and asked, “How many more monsters like this did the king and queen bring into Meadowland? Cimmox the necromancer, Victory’s Edge, these, these things? How many more are in the kingdom?”
Jayden sheathed his magic sword and picked up Ghost Hunter’s magic sickle. “I don’t know. Cimmox claimed the royal couple weren’t discriminating when they sought help for their war. There could be dozens like these villains here or on their way.”
“That spider thing wanted to eat us! What will happen to people living here with monsters like that on the loose? People could get hurt, killed!”
Jayden struggled to rein in his anger. “The risk to Meadowland’s people is staggering.”
Feeling lost and scared, she asked, “How do we save them?
“We seek help from any who will give it.” Jayden bent down to comfort the horses Phineas had left behind. All three were terrified from the battle, and their fear only slowly ebbed. “If nothing else we now have proper mounts and no need to relinquish them. Come, Dana, let us see if King Rascan is willing to bargain with us.”
Jayden’s prediction for the following day proved accurate. The river abruptly turned away from their destination, forcing Jayden to beach the rowboat and then abandon it. It took hours traveling through dense forests before they came across a road, but it was too well traveled for them to use without drawing attention and possibly attacks. They crossed it quickly and continued through the woods until they found a game trail going more or less where they wanted.
“It’s weird how there are so many tiny trails like this,” Dana said. “There can’t be that many poachers and smugglers trying to stay hidden.”
“There are, but they rarely make such paths,” Jayden told her. “Most are made by hunters and loggers. Others are made by men taking the shortest route to their destinations. After all, there aren’t many roads in Meadowland compared with other kingdoms.”
“Why not?”
Jayden formed his black magic sword to hack through plants growing onto the trail. “The king and queen are legally responsible for maintaining only a few roads. The rest are the responsibility of local nobles, who often lack the money and manpower to build and maintain roads in their lands. The lack of proper roads makes life difficult for visiting merchants, back when there were visiting merchants, and slows travel within the kingdom. It makes trails like this a critical if poorly mapped and constructed necessity. Sadly it also adds to our travel time, as this road is not going in a straight line where we want to go.”
Dana smiled at him. “Feel like making your own trail?”
“Tempting, but doing so would leave obvious signs we’d been here.”
“Kind of late to worry about that when so many people saw us on the river.”
Jayden cut through a tree branch blocking the trail. “They saw us only briefly and wouldn’t know where we were going. Most wouldn’t tell the authorities, as love for the king and queen is low and dropping.”
There was a snap ahead of them, and they stopped talking. Jayden got off the trail and waved for Dana to join him. Silence followed until a voice called out, “We both know the other is there. I think we can go our separate ways, no harm done.”
Jayden’s eyes narrowed. “You place a good deal of trust in my good nature.”
“Most folks I meet leave well enough alone. Chances are good you’ll do the same.”
Dana put on her mask. “If they were with the king and queen, they’d run from us or attack. Let’s trust them.”
“They could be dangerous and have nothing to do with the royal couple, but it’s encouraging that they seek peace.” Jayden called out, “Fair warning, if our meeting ends badly, you will regret it more than I will.”
“I don’t doubt it.” The stranger approached slowly. He was young with mud stained clothes and a heavily loaded backpack. Three more men followed him, all four armed with swords they kept sheathed. They looked nervous like they would run if they could, but their backpacks looked too heavy for a swift escape. They were also about the age where they could be conscripted, and might be on the run from pressgangs.
The man in front studied Jayden carefully. “I’ve heard about you. Didn’t think we’d ever meet.”
“You’re a smuggler if ever I’ve seen one,” Jayden said. “What are you carrying?”
The smuggler opened his backpack to show jars filled with brown powder, and the others did the same. “Sweet bark, paid for in advance. I’d just as soon we not fight.”
Jayden stepped aside to let them pass. “Go.”
The smuggler nodded and led his group away. Jayden watched them leave before leading Dana down the trail. He frowned before saying, “Many such men carry what would be legitimate cargo anywhere else, merely trying to avoid being taxed or having their goods seized, but it’s still a bad sign. Smugglers can carry dangerous cargo as easily as not. That the profession has become so common is a serious inditement against the king and queen.”
Dana took off her mask. “That’s why you checked what they had.”
“I’ve destroyed smugglers’ cargos when I found them carrying poison, combat drugs or wyvern eggs. I imagine I’ll do so again before the year is out. It annoys me that I must do the authorities’ jobs for them.”
* * * * *
It took another two days to reach the border with Bascal, a mountainous and heavily wooded region. Dana and Jayden had to avoid large, heavily armed army patrols, and towns fortified with walls and barricades until they looked like small fortresses. For a change Jayden showed the caution the situation deserved. He picked his way through game trails and along streams, moving ever closer to their destination. They finally came upon a wide grassy clearing with a road running through it.
“Almost there,” he promised. “Getting my prize may prove harder than reaching it, but I know of nowhere else I am certain to find Sorcerer Lord spell tablets. It is this or nothing.”
“Then we’ll be sure to be on our best behavior,” she teased him.
“You consistently ask the impossible of me.”
“It’s only impossible until you do it,” she told him.
“Hello!” a cheerful voice called out. Dana froze and Jayden drew his sword. There was a pause before the voice called out, “Come, come, let’s not waste each other’s time, Sorcerer Lord. We both have places to be and things to do.”
“Sounds friendly,” Dana said.
“He does,” Jayden agreed.
“Good chance he’ll try to kill us?”
“Perceptive of you. Mask on and sword out, Dana.”
Jayden led her onto the grassy clearing, where they spotted a large carriage pulled by four horses parked in a shady spot nearby. The carriage had no windows and a single large door held shut by locks and chains. The carriage’s driver was equally odd, a white haired gnome half Dana’s height. He wore obnoxiously bright clothes with feathers around his shoulders, and carried only a thin wood cane.
“Phineas Bargle, at your disservice,” the gnome said. “I thought we’d talk one wizard to another.”
“Charming,” Jayden said as he came to a stop fifty feet from the carriage. “I must admit to being curious. I use potent magic to prevent men from finding me, yet you have done just that.”
Phineas took a pipe from his pocket and tapped tobacco from a pouch into the end. “Your magic is effective. I spent weeks trying to locate you with spells that should have been able to find a specific flea on a horse five hundred miles away. You can imagine my frustration when they didn’t work.”
Jayden’s eyes narrowed. “Yet here you are.”
“When magic didn’t work, I used logic. You were seen assassinating a foreign wizard assigned to General Vander. I was nearby when it happened.”
“It wasn’t an assassination,” Jayden correct the gnome.
Phineas shrugged. “Call it what you will. I don’t judge. I picked up your trail and lost it nearly as fast, but I found people who’d seen you. I could have torn the information from their minds, but they answered me with only the slightest prompting and a few coins for their words. Many of them described you going in the same direction and at some speed.” The gnome snapped his fingers and formed a flame to light his pipe. “Once I knew that, I made logical deductions on where you could be going and followed you.”
“How did you get ahead of us?” Dana asked.
Phineas smirked and tapped his cane on his carriage. The carriage rocked in response, as whatever was inside stirred. “I move faster than you on roads you can’t set foot on without bringing a hundred soldiers down on your heads.”
“That still doesn’t make sense,” Dana said. “We traveled by water for a while.”
“Where men saw you.” Phineas took a deep breath from his pipe and exhaled a smoke ring. “Men here aren’t loyal to the king and his meddlesome queen, but most have little love for you, or are so desperate for coins that they’d sell you out. Why, one time I learned what I needed to know for a jar of strawberry jam.”
Jayden scowled. “The sunken. I should have expected it to betray me.”
“Betrayed?” Phineas asked. “The way he tells it, you bartered for safe transit only. You should have paid for secrecy, too. Anyway, once I had enough information, I narrowed down your possible destinations to three places. This was the leading candidate. It was simple enough to get ahead of you and wait. If you hadn’t come in another day or so I would have tried the other two, but that’s proven unnecessary.”
“I likely know the answer already, but who do you work for?” Jayden asked.
“Now that’s an interesting question, with many possible answers,” the gnome replied. “On paper I work for King Tyros and Queen Amvicta. Is it just me, or is it odd how her name keeps getting attached to his decisions?”
“It’s not just you,” Dana told him.
“Didn’t think so.” The gnome took another breath from his pipe and blew smoke through his nose. “They hired me and assigned me to work with a few other individuals to find and kill you.”
Jayden swept his arms out. “We seem to be alone.”
“I abandoned them a week ago. We’d have ended up killing each other if I hadn’t. Bloody psychopaths. Back to my original topic, we were promised a dukedom for killing you.” Phineas leaned forward. “The same dukedom you ruined.”
“If I’m supposed to feel ashamed, I’m not.”
Phineas waved his pipe in front of him. “Shame? Don’t know the meaning of the word. The manor house is gone along with a largish warehouse, the servants and soldiers ran off, and what little remained was looted. It would cost a fortune just to make it livable. I suppose the land would generate money to do the job, except the last duke earned his fortune through trade. I don’t have his business connections.”
“The prize isn’t worth having,” Jayden said.
“Exactly. If I kill you, I’ll be stuck being in charge of ruined property. Would humans take orders from someone half their size? I’d rather not find out. My coworkers were willing to take the chance it would work, or at least provide a steady supply of victims, but I know a bad bet when I see one.”
Puzzled, Dana asked, “Why are you here if you don’t want what they’re paying?”
“I’m getting to that.” Phineas leaned back and tapped his cane on the carriage. Again it rocked as its passenger responded to the tap. “I’ve been in Meadowland for a month, long enough to see the kingdom is going to fail. Whether they win or lose the war doesn’t matter. Victory means trying to hold onto more land than they can control. Losing means decades of rebuilding or worse. It’s bad business, but a clever fellow can profit from disaster.”
Jayden frowned. “If you expect something from me, prepare yourself for disappointment.”
Phineas shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no. I’m going to make you an offer I think you’ll take. You want King Tyros’ invasions to fail and soon. My departure from Meadowland helps that process. One thousand gold coins in cash or treasure and my associate in the carriage and I leave, never to return, and we won’t tell anyone where you are.”
“Will your clan be satisfied with so little?” Jayden asked.
Phineas chuckled and added more tobacco to his pipe. “I parted ways with them long ago. A thousand gold coins will allow me to live a life of debauchery for years to come, reward enough for me.”
“I don’t have that much money,” Jayden told him.
“But you’ve found Sorcerer Lord spell tablets,” Phineas countered. “I doubt you’ve parted company with those. Your escapades have generated quite a bit of interest in shadow magic. Men will pay gold for those in the hopes they can learn their secrets.”
Jayden eyed the gnome with undisguised anger. It didn’t take Dana long to realize why. Jayden was risking much in the hopes of getting more spell tablets, not losing the ones he had. Dana figured he didn’t need the ones he already owned after learning the spells, but to give them to a stranger meant risking evil men might learn how to use them. There was no telling how much damage a wicked man could do if he could make a black whip or giant hand. Jayden would be responsible for the damage.
“No,” Jayden said firmly. “My secrets are mine and mine alone. If others want them, they will have to earn them. We might be able to bargain, Phineas, but my magic isn’t on the table and never will be.”
“I thought you might say that,” Phineas said casually. “Have you heard of Braxton Bix?”
“Braxton the Betrayer?” Jayden asked. “Also called the Burglar and the Butcher.”
“That’s a lot of nicknames,” Dana said.
“All of them well earned,” Jayden told her. “Braxton hasn’t been seen in twenty years, a loss to no one.”
“He hasn’t been seen because I have him.” Phineas took a puff from his pipe. “He’s not the man he used to be. Technically he’s not a man at all. He stole secrets of troll magic used to permanently enhance their people. If you’ve ever wondered why trolls are so strong, that’s why. The fool experimented on himself. It’s delicate magic, not to be handled by the greedy, impatient and inept. Braxton equals an adult troll in strength, endurance and health, but at a cost to him that frightens even me. Dominating what little remained of his mind was child’s play. He follows my orders, generally, and is brutal in battle. My mind spells may not be an equal to your shadow magic, but Braxton tips the scales in my favor.”
“So it’s armed robbery,” Jayden said.
Phineas emptied out his pipe onto the ground. “Call it what you will, but be careful judging your chances against me. I know what you’re capable of, and I’m confident of victory. Lose some of what you have or all of it. Your choice.”
Jayden’s answer was as vengeful as Dana expected. “You claim to know my measure yet make a demand I’d never give in to. Only recently I gave a petty, hateful being what it had no right to, a move that clearly backfired. I showed the sunken mercy by not killing it. I’m out of mercy. You are a pathetic, hateful, greedy excuse for a person, and I will give you nothing except the beating you so clearly deserve. Whatever monster rides inside your carriage, unleash it and you will leave alone and empty handed, or not at all.”
“I see,” Phineas replied.
“I suspect the Inspired have come to Meadowland,” Jayden continued. “I don’t know if you’re part of that arrogant cabal or merely a parasite happy to snatch what you can. Whether you work alone as you claim or are a part of a larger group doesn’t matter. My decision is final.”
Phineas put his pipe into a coat pocket. “I hadn’t heard the Inspired were here. It’s another reason to leave, but I won’t leave poor. Pity you weren’t more reasonable.”
Phineas raised his cane, and screamed in terror as a javelin missed his head and sank deep into the top of his carriage.
“Traitor!”
The shout echoed across the clearing, startling Phineas as much as it did Dana and Jayden. The trio that came from the woods to the north must cause nightmares among any who saw them. The first was a wild eyed man wearing leather armor with blue spiraling marks running down the arms and legs. He carried another javelin and a longsword. The second was wrapped head to toe in badly stitched together black leather and carried a sickle that glowed red. The last person was wrapped in dirty silk, and Dana saw things moving inside of it.
“Your associate?” Jayden asked as he cast a spell to form his black magic sword.
“Loosely speaking, yes,” Phineas admitted. “Immortal has died hundreds of times and keeps coming back, Ghost Hunter is as brutal as he looks, and Web, well, less said the better.”
“You thought to kill the Sorcerer Lord alone and leave us out of the reward,” Immortal snarled as he prepared to throw another javelin. The blue markings on his leather armor kept moving, sometimes spelling hateful words before changing again. The man practically exuded rage, spitting as he yelled, “Filthy, stinking, stunted gnome, I’ll skin you!”
Phineas raised his cane. “Gentlemen, I found our target and kept him here for you.”
Ghost Hunter raised his sickle. “Save your lies for someone who believes them.”
Web was even more disgusting as it came close enough to see clearly. Its entire body was made up of spiders crawling around inside of web spun to look like a man. A large red eye slid around inside it, pushing spiders aside or running over them and crushing them. “Found, kill, eat.”
“How did they find us?” Dana asked Jayden.
“No idea,” he admitted.
“I spent days outside my body looking for you when you left in the night,” Ghost Hunter told Phineas. His uniform was made of scraps of leather sewn together with coarse thread, and had no holes for his eyes, nose or mouth. Here and there bits of leather stuck out from his body and gave him a careless, disheveled look. “No one cheats me and lives.”
“No one who spends time near you lives for long,” Phineas countered.
Jayden glanced at Phineas as their enemies approached. “If they live, they’ll report your treachery to the king and queen. Work with us and that won’t happen.”
“I’m on no one’s side but my own,” Phineas told him, and rapped his cane against the the door to his carriage. Locks snapped open, chains fell loose, and the door opened to release a revolting mockery of a man eight feet tall with bulging muscles, clawed hands, a head that was mostly mouth and wearing nothing except a loincloth. He reeked of body odor and rotting meat, and had long yellowed fangs in place of teeth. Caked in mud and covered in scars, the brute stepped out of the carriage.
Phineas waved his cane across the clearing. “Kill them all.”
For a few precious seconds Dana thought she and Jayden wouldn’t have to do anything except watch. The brute galloped across the grassy clearing on his hands and feet before leaping at Immortal. The two fought like mad dogs, snarling and shouting, but Ghost Hunter and Web ignored their ally’s peril. Web came for Dana, its limbs moving unnaturally and hissing, “Enemy, victim, food!”
“That one’s yours,” Dana told Jayden.
He stepped in front of her. “Agreed.”
“Then the girl’s head is mine!” Ghost Hunter yelled as he charged Dana. She had no idea how he could see when his uniform had no eye slits, but the lack didn’t bother him as he lashed out with his sickle. Dana blocked it with Chain Cutter, but didn’t cut through the sickle. The two met with a shower of sparks and enough force to shake her arm. Ghost Hunter swung again, this time aiming low at her knees. Dana blocked him again.
“Die, you miserable cow!” Ghost Hunter yelled at her.
“That’s just rude!” Dana wasn’t impressed with her opponent. He was strong and fast, but far from the strongest or fastest she’d fought, and his fighting style was sloppy. She’d been studying under Jayden for half a year and was a match for Ghost Hunter.
Ghost Hunter aimed for her head with his next attack and she ducked under his sickle. She swung upwards trying to hit his weapon and knock it out of his hands. Her aim was too good, or Ghost Hunter was more incompetent than she’d though, and Chain Cutter sliced off his right hand.
Dana jumped back in horror. “Oh my God! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! You’re, you’re bleeding sawdust?”
Dry sawdust poured from the wound, and Ghost Hunter’s right arm sagged and fell limp at his side like an empty shirt sleeve. Shock froze Dana for a second as Ghost Hunter snatched up his weapon with his left hand. Immortal, still fighting the brute, yelled to Ghost Hunter, “Walk it off, kid!”
“I did not see that coming,” Dana admitted.
“It didn’t hurt,” Ghost Hunter snarled. “It will hurt when I do the same to you.”
Their duel ended when Web ran between them, screaming, “Flee, escape, survive!”
Jayden followed the nightmarish monster with his shield of spinning black blades and magic sword. Web had four deep gashes in its back and arms, and live spiders spilled out of them. It tried to reach the forest and the cover the trees would provide. Jayden struck Web across the right heel with his sword, and when the monster fell he ran through it with the spinning blades. His shield of blades ended, but not before shredding Wed. Bits of webbing and spiders flew through the air like confetti. Jayden stomped on the creature’s large red eye when it landed on the ground. He looked at Ghost Hunter and announced, “Next.”
“You think this is a game?” Ghost Hunter yelled. “You think this is funny?”
“Moderately amusing. I’m curious what will happen if you suffer a head wound. You’ll be empty headed in every sense of the word.”
Ghost Hunter howled in outrage, a cry cut short when Immortal flew through the air to hit him in the back, sending them both tumbling to the ground. The brute lumbered after them and casually took a swipe at Jayden. Jayden tried to run but was a second too slow, and he was knocked alongside his two enemies. The brute seized Immortal by the heels before the man could get up and swung him into the ground. Dana tried to help Jayden up, but Ghost Hunter got between them.
“Die, you stinking wench!” Ghost Hunter clearly wasn’t ambidextrous, because his swings were even wilder and easier to block than before. He tried to kick her and even made an attempt to headbutt her, missing both times. “You think you’re better than me! You’re trying to make me look stupid! Die!”
“Shut up!” she yelled back. Ghost Hunter made a powerful overhead swing and she stepped out of the way. The swing left his sickle near the ground for a second, too far down to block her attacks. Dana didn’t want to hurt Ghost Hunter any more than she already had, but he wasn’t stopping. She slashed Chain Cutter across his chest, slicing through his leather clothes and spilling gallons of sawdust. He struggled to lift his sickle before she brought her sword back the other way to cut off his left arm at the elbow. Sawdust flew from the wounds as Ghost Hunter fell over.
Then he got up, no longer a menacing figure in black, but a translucent ghost, a boy a year or two younger than Dana. For a second she felt pity for him. Was this who he really was, a spirit occupying a fake body? Her pity vanished when the ghost looked at her with such loathing she stepped back. His lips formed the words, “I’ll get you,” before he vanished.
“Dana, a little help,” Jayden called.
She turned away from Ghost Hunter’s remains to see Jayden and Immortal trying to stop the brute. The lumbering monster moved faster than she would have expected, and suffered only cuts from what should have been killing blows. Jayden’s enhanced speed from his magic sword helped him land a shallow blow before the brute seized Immortal with both hands and crushed him. Dana screamed as Immortal crumbled to dust and a glowing orb burst from his remains. The light shot into the sky until it was lost to sight.
“Pity he won’t stay dead,” Phineas said from on top of his carriage.
Dana ignored the brute and charged the gnome instead. The brute howled and ran after her. She raced up to the carriage and hacked off its back left wheel with Chain Cutter. The wagon nearly tipped over and Phineas was thrown screaming to the ground. Dana stood over him with her sword raised.
“Call him off!”
“I can’t,” the gnome said. “He won’t stop fighting while enemies stand.”
The brute caught up with her and landed a blow strong enough to send her flying ten feet. She cried out in pain when she landed, a cry nearly as great as the brute’s when a giant black hand rammed into him and threw him into the damaged carriage. The carriage tipped over and the horses panicked as they were pulled down with it.
Phineas swore bitterly as he got up. Dana winced as she staggered to her feet and went after the gnome. She didn’t know what spells he could cast, and had no desire to learn. The gnome saw her coming, and he uttered strange words as he pointed his cane at her.
Dana cried out in surprise as the world spun around her. She couldn’t tell which way was up and staggered like a drunk before falling to her knees. Phineas chuckled and say, “I’d heard you were dangerous. How disappointing.”
“Shouldn’t have done that,” Dana said as she shook her head.
“Pray tell, why not?”
“No one hurts my friends!” Jayden yelled. He sent his magic hand hurling into the brute, knocking him onto Phineas. The gnome screamed and tried to get out from beneath his monstrous slave. “No one!”
Dana’s senses returned to normal, and she got up. “That’s why.”
The brute got up and lunged at Jayden, only for the giant magic hand to swing down from above onto the brute, sending him to the ground again. Jayden and Dana both charged and struck before their foe could rise. Magic swords struck with terrifying results. The brute made one last effort to stand before falling to his knees, and then to the ground.
Phineas scrambled to his feet and pointed his cane at Jayden. He uttered the same words as before, but the Sorcerer Lord stood firm. Phineas gasped. “No.”
“It seems my mind cloud is sufficient defense against your attempts to influence me,” he snarled at the gnome. “Without your protector you’re no threat to us, and shortly you’ll be a threat to no one. I gave you fair warning, gnome. You’ve only yourself to blame for what comes next.”
A look of horror crossed Phineas’ face as he backed up to his carriage. Dana wasn’t sure if she should stop Jayden when the gnome had tried to kill them, and may have killed others with his pet monster. The matter was taken out of her hands when Phineas cast another spell. To their amazement the brute stood up, his movements jerky as he stumbled after Dana and Jayden. Dana drove Chain Cutter into the brute from one side and Jayden attacked from the other. Their swords left terrible wounds as the brute staggered like a badly handled puppet. The brute tried to club them with his massive forearms, but was so clumsy they had no trouble dodging him.
They struck again, finally dropping the brute before turning to Phineas. The gnome had used his distraction to cut loose one of his horses from its harness. The frightened animal struggled to its feet with the gnome holding onto its mane, and it galloped away. Jayden sent his giant magic hand after the gnome, but the horse ran faster than the hand could fly, and Phineas escaped into the woods.
“No!” Jayden ran a few steps after them before realizing the effort was fruitless. Snarling mad, he hacked the damaged carriage apart. Noise from the battle brought a pair of Meadowland spearmen to investigate. They stared at Jayden as he chopped the carriage in half, then turned his menacing gaze on them. Both men ran for their lives.
His fury spent, Jayden returned to Dana. She stared at their fallen foes. The brute was dead, his misshapen body horribly damaged. Immortal was a pile of ashes. Ghost Hunter’s spirit was gone, his false body reduced to tattered black leather and piles of sawdust. There was even less left of Web.
“Was that necromancy when the body got back up?” Dana asked hesitantly.
Jayden looked at the fallen brute. “No. I’ve heard of this spell before. Bodies die in stages. Phineas used his magic to control what little of the brute remained alive. The spell could have kept his body moving for a few minutes until even that was impossible.”
“How many,” Dana began, but found it hard to go on. She took a deep breath and asked, “How many more monsters like this did the king and queen bring into Meadowland? Cimmox the necromancer, Victory’s Edge, these, these things? How many more are in the kingdom?”
Jayden sheathed his magic sword and picked up Ghost Hunter’s magic sickle. “I don’t know. Cimmox claimed the royal couple weren’t discriminating when they sought help for their war. There could be dozens like these villains here or on their way.”
“That spider thing wanted to eat us! What will happen to people living here with monsters like that on the loose? People could get hurt, killed!”
Jayden struggled to rein in his anger. “The risk to Meadowland’s people is staggering.”
Feeling lost and scared, she asked, “How do we save them?
“We seek help from any who will give it.” Jayden bent down to comfort the horses Phineas had left behind. All three were terrified from the battle, and their fear only slowly ebbed. “If nothing else we now have proper mounts and no need to relinquish them. Come, Dana, let us see if King Rascan is willing to bargain with us.”
