To satisfy what he already suspected, he asked, “Why did you attack Lord Marshal Otaker without my leave?”
They stared at him, expressionless.
“Lady Danara,” he said, irritated than no one offered an explanation, “why did you attack your husband without my leave to do so?”
She was a handsome woman of middle years with only a few threads of silver in her black hair. Her dark eyes lost some of that emptiness and regarded him with something unreadable, as if she held a secret within her. “Life Giver,” she said, her voice a grating sigh, “you did give us leave. It was in your heart that we should destroy him.”
Varis turned away from her, excited. Somehow, he shared a deep bond between the people that he had delivered from death. They had read the desires of his consciousness, then acted on those emotions. The why and how of it did not matter to Varis, but-
I must guard my mind, he thought suddenly, lest his followers take action on his behalf when he did not necessarily want them to. Half dead or half alive, he saw straight away that his Chosen could be used as the perfect weapons and tools to further his dominance. Unlike a sword, they were living extensions of himself. With a mere thought, he could send them against an enemy, or bring them to his side should he face danger.
He smiled as plans and future campaigns formed in his mind. Soon, Aradan would be his, and after, the world.
Chapter 18
Under the pall of dense smoke, breathing was difficult. Overhead, the sun shone an angry red. Kian halted his diminished company some distance from the dilapidated walls of Fortress El’hadar, sitting atop a low hill. Of all the western border fortresses, it was the closest to the Qaharadin Marshes, and the denizens had need to constantly trim back and burn the surrounding lands in order to keep the vegetation from overrunning the walls. By the looks of it, Lord Marshal Bresado Rengar had failed in overseeing the execution of that chore for several years.
Daubing sweat from his brow, Kian supposed he could not blame the man for that. Given a choice, he would have burned the fortress to the ground, rather than tend it. Men have tried before and failed to raze the fortress, he thought nervously, considering the many stories he had heard of this accursed place.
In truth, El’hadar was little more than an outpost, with its rickety timber palisade surrounding a disproportionately large keep of ancient black stone. It was a place of dark mystery and strange, disturbing tales. When men spoke of Fortress El’hadar, they did so in uneasy whispers. A thousand years gone, the Suanahad Empire sent an expeditionary force across the Sea of Drakarra to explore the virgin territories of what would become Tureece in the south and Aradan to the north. Those legions pushed deep into the uncharted wilds searching for anything of value, from gold to silver to arable lands. They found all those things and more. As well, they discovered the Black Keep.
At that time, the only inhabitants of the nearby lands were the pale-skinned nomads of the Grendahl clans-Kian’s own ancestors. Even then, his forbearers had been more eager to fight than talk of treaties. What was readily apparent at the time to the Suanahad explorers was that instead of occupying the keep, the clans shunned it, naming it a place of death to be avoided.
But the Aradaners had not avoided it, Kian mused, looking over its sad state of disrepair. A place better suited for nightmares than habitation, it was said that no matter what work was done to its grounds and walls, Fortress El’hadar always looked unkempt. Tales told that stone and mortar crumbled and wood rotted, all too fast. And yet the Black Keep itself stood resolute, an undying blight upon the land. It had never shone forth in glory, yet it seemed that neither would it ever decay to ruin.
“I can see why Aradaner kings have always sent irredeemable rabble to fill El’hadar’s barracks,” Azuri said, his nose wrinkled in distaste.
The Asra a’Shah looked about with tired expressions, perhaps feeling as Kian did, that it was simply a relief to see something made by the hands of men.
The dirty haze hugged the wilted crops below the fortress, smelling strongly of burning green wood and leaves. The night before, after they had finally broken free of the clinging grasp of the marshes, they had ridden as hard as their horses could manage, before setting up camp some leagues from anything that resembled a bog. When they looked back the way they had come, a dull orange glow stretched across the western horizon, indicating the heart of a great fire.
Kian could only guess that the inferno in the marshes had something to do with the streaks of flame that raced across the heavens by night. But all of that paled in comparison to his first glimpse of a night sky lacking two of its three moons, and the third moon, a waning crescent though it was, looking as if it had been cast into a raging fire and burned to ash. Two of the Three, Attandaeus and Memokk, had perished, while Hiphkos had been scorched unto death. Kian, like most northern-born peoples, followed the Silent One, the Creator of All, Pa’amadin, but he could not dismiss the death of the Three. No good, he was sure, would come of their demise.
“You would think someone would have hailed us by now,” Hazad said, scratching at his unruly beard braids.
Kian nodded in agreement, looking for but not finding any indication of activity. The fortress had the aspect of long abandonment. A trio of vultures perched on the eastern wall, while at the base of the same wall others vultures had gathered around and were fighting over something under a bush.
“What is that there, on the ground?” Azuri said, pointing to something just outside the gates. There was no agitation in his voice, but his eyes were hard and searching. Though it had taken a full fortnight longer and countless leagues farther than Kian had expected to get out of the marshes, Azuri alone, as usual, had somehow managed to stay relatively clean.
“Let’s find out,” Kian said, fighting the urge to kick his horse into a northward gallop. Izutar called him home like never before. Nothing in all of Aradan seemed right, and he did not feel up to stumbling across more of the kingdom’s troubles. Ever since Prince Varis had come out of that damnable temple, Kian and his company had been surrounded by difficulty. While no one had spoken of it since, battling the demon that had taken Fenahk’s body for its own seemed to only be the beginning. The beginning of what, however, left Kian guessing, and he hated uncertainties.
A few moments later, sitting astride his horse with Azuri and Hazad on either side of him, and close to twenty Asra a’Shah arrayed to their rear, Kian knew he should have listened to his instinct to forsake anything of Aradan and headed north.
“How long do you suppose he has been dead?” Hazad said, holding the back of his hand to his nose to ward against the sickly reek of decaying flesh.
“First off,” Kian said, “it is impossible to say if this was a man or a woman.” All that remained of the corpse was a skeleton loosely cloaked in tatters of skin and maggots, a roiling mass of them deep in the chest cavity. “As to how long, I would lay gold that they died soon after Varis stepped out of that temple.”
Unperturbed, Azuri leaned over and studied the remains and the nearby ground. “Whoever they were, they tried to flee from the fortress … apparently without a stitch of clothing on their back.”
“I do not see any reason we should refit here,” Hazad said abruptly, taking a long drink of jagdah. “The sooner we depart, the sooner we reach Izutar. Cut these Geldainians loose, and let’s be on our way.”