“Farren, I-”
The paladin cut him off. “I no longer care. I know there’s nothing demonic about you. I know that your desire to fight and die alongside the Maruk Ghaash’kala is sincere, that the call of Kalok Shash is real to you. I want you to heed that call in a different way.”
“What?” After all Aric’s deception, Farren called him sincere?
Farren glanced at the door. “The Carrion Tribes will attack within the hour. We will hold them back as long as we can, but within a week Maruk Dar will fall. Then there will be nothing between Kathrik Mel and the eastern mountains. They’ll cross the mountains, and they won’t stop until a big enough army makes them stop.”
Aric thought of the Towering Wood in flames, the fields of Aundair razed. How far would the warlord go? South into Breland? He might be stopped by Scions Sound and the Mournland. But he might not-what was the Mournland to Kathrik Mel, used to life in the Demon Wastes?
“What is it you want me to do?” he asked.
“I want you to make sure that a big enough army meets him soon, before his evil can spread far.”
“But how-”
“You will flee Maruk Dar and leave the Labyrinth and go back across the mountains to warn the peoples of the east.”
“Leave the Labyrinth? But your vow-”
“Even sacred vows must sometimes be broken. I’ll let one man I know is mostly untainted escape into the Labyrinth if it means the greater taint of the Carrion Tribes can be contained.”
“Silence!” Durrnak cried. “You knowingly allowed a demon to escape the Labyrinth and enter the world beyond! There is nothing to discuss.”
“A pregnant woman, Durrnak!”
“Carrying the taint of evil in her womb as well as in her blood! You knew our holy command, and you disregarded it. Your sentence has been passed, and you will die here today.”
Mostly untainted, Farren had said. Yet it had been Kauth’s mace that staggered Farren’s own brother, a paladin who held so strictly to his vows. Kauth had led Vor, Sevren, and Zandar to their deaths-he had provoked Kathrik Mel into this eastward march!
What greater taint could I possibly bear? he wondered. “I don’t think you really know my heart,” Aric said. Farren looked directly into his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”
As he fastened the straps of his armor, Kathrik Mel could barely contain his excitement. He pulled each strap just a little too tight, savoring the exquisite nips of pain as leather and metal pressed into his skin. For far too long, his hordes had done his fighting for him, exterminating pockets of Ghaash’kala scouts long before they presented any serious threat. But they had reached the stronghold of the Maruk clan, and it promised to be a battle worthy of his involvement.
His armor on, he snatched the sword from Haccra’s hands. It was the sword he’d claimed from the dead shifter, who was not worthy of such a blade. “Bloodclaw,” he whispered. The sword had consented to reveal its name to him, but the secrets of its power were still a mystery. Perhaps when the Maruk had fallen, the blood-drenched sword would tell him more.
He strode from his pavilion, blinking in the unusually bright sunlight, and surveyed the walls of Maruk Dar. The orcs were sounding horns, calling their fellows to the city’s defense. His scouts had told him that all the Maruk were within-it was one of their gathering times. Haccra had warned him to wait until they had dispersed again, and he had cut out her tongue. With all the Maruk gathered in one place, he could destroy them all in a single blow.
It was time.
After making sure Aric was equipped with new armor, a new mace, and a pack full of food and water, Farren led him to the back of Maruk Dar, where the city nestled into the wall of the Labyrinth. Half a tower seemed to grow from the stone, reaching up the cliff face. Together they climbed a narrow stair, spiraling partly in the tower and partly through the cliff, until they reached a large room at the top. It, too, was a full circle, half embedded in the cliff, strengthening the impression that the tower had somehow sunk into the cliff or been partly engulfed by it. The room was bare.
“It’s over here,” Farren said, walking to the wall in the room’s cliff-facing side.
“What is?”
In answer, Farren passed his hand over the wall and tripped a catch Aric couldn’t see, and a section of wall detached from the rest and slid toward them. When it stopped moving, Farren pushed it to one side, revealing a tunnel descending into blackness.
“It’s a long tunnel. From time to time some burrowing creature stumbles upon it and uses it for a nest-we don’t patrol it very often. So be on your guard. When you come out, you’ll still be in the Labyrinth, but from that point, if you go left at every branch you will soon find yourself at the feet of the mountains.”
Aric nodded, peering down the tunnel.
“Aric. I have only shown this path to one person before, and I am still not sure I did the right thing. Please do not disappoint me.”
One person before-Aric knew in a flash of insight. “Vor,” he said. “Voraash. You helped him escape.”
Farren’s eyes shot wide and his mouth fell open. “How did you know?”
“I traveled here with Vor. He’s dead now-and Kalok Shash burns brighter. You did the right thing.”
Except that Vor killed your brother, Aric thought.
“I knew he had not truly fallen,” Farren said. “I knew his heart, just as I know yours. Go now.”
Aric struggled to find words, but Farren hurried him into the tunnel and closed the door behind him without another word.
It was time for a new face. He would emerge from the tunnel, and from the Labyrinth, a new person.
As he walked through the tunnel, he began by casting his memory over past identities. Haunderk, Faura, and Laurann-those were faces he had worn during his earliest training at Kelas’s brutal hands. They would not do. Laurann, though, whose grief at killing Kyra had been so strong, and who confessed to shame, made him think of other sympathetic women. There was Caura Fannam, the soldier who escaped Haldren’s camp with Jenns, then left him alone in the forest to die. No. Maura Hann, who had been a mother as well as a lover to so many foreign spies, coaxing secrets from them when she held them close. No. He thought of Rienne, the kindest and most caring woman he had known. But he had never been that kind of woman. He had bruised too many hearts.
Baunder Fronn. He could not believe that he had lived three months as a simple Aundairian farmer. No, Baunder was not the kind of man who would walk out of the Labyrinth alive. Auftane-no, he had betrayed Dania, taking the torc from her body. Dania ir’Vran-he had thought of her when he chose another name, Vauren Hennalan. Vauren infiltrated the Knights of Thrane and found their morality rubbing off on him-perhaps he’d started this whole mess, nurtured the first seeds of conscience in the changeling’s heart. Vauren had been unable to kill the unconscious dwarf, Natan Durbannek. But Vauren was still a spy, posing as a Knight while gathering intelligence about Thrane’s troop movements before Starcrag Plain. Still Kelas’s tool.
He had always been a tool in Kelas’s hand. It was time for a new face entirely-the face of a free man.
Tall-tall and proud. Like Kauth and Aric, but less bulky, less hard. Short, straight hair, dark but with a sprinkling of gray at the temples, distinguished. Brown eyes, warm-he would need a mirror to do those properly, but he sketched them in. Skin tanned from travel but not too weathered. He would retrieve a cache of money when he returned to civilization and use it to buy new armor and clothes, so his garb would match the nobility of his face and body. He liked this person already.
Now this noble figure needed a name. Haunderk Lannath, Auftane Khunnam, Darraun Mennar. Aura, Caura, Faura, Maura. He was not very creative when it came to names-they were all variations on his real name, with the AU in the first name and the double N in the last. Laurann only needed one name. Couldn’t he just be Aunn? No more secrets, no more lies?