“Come,” the boy urged, waving them forward in a slow and exaggerated manner. When the trio obeyed, he trotted ahead of them, as indifferent to the corpses as he was to the feasting rats.
Each new turn led into another corridor smelling more strongly of rank meat than the last, and every set of stairs led downward. The continual descent and absence of any outward-facing windows told Kian they were moving deeper into the Black Keep.
The final corridor, low and sloping sharply downward, was free of death, but the reek of slime and mold was nearly suffocating. When Hazad, who was taller than either Kian or Azuri, smacked his skull against a support beam, they all hunched over as a precaution. In short order, the corridor ended at a broad, circular landing. To one side a heavy door stood open. Faintly, Kian could make out a steep stairway falling into utter darkness.
The boy gazed at them. Up close, his eyes seemed devoid of not just emotion, but of any hint of life. He placed the candle on the floor, then turned and shambled back the way they had come. Before he vanished into gloom, he called over his shoulder, “Follow the stairs. My master is waiting.”
The trio stared after him, none willing to take the first step.
Visibly shaken by the degree of grime and corruption all around them, Azuri said, “This is madness. Why would Bresado be down there?”
“I have heard it told that Bresado favors tormenting captured Bashye in the bowels of the keep,” Hazad offered with a shrug.
“So you think,” Azuri said sarcastically, “that while the fortress was being assaulted by gods know what, Bresado would have retired to the cellar to persecute prisoners, instead of defending his people?”
“From what I’ve heard of the man,” Kian said, “I can believe it.”
“See there?” Hazad said accusingly.
Azuri’s eyes narrowed at Hazad. “You are nothing but a great, hairy child.”
“By now, Bresado is most assuredly dead,” Kian said, stooping to retrieve the candle. “While I doubt he retreated to torture anyone, I am more sure that he would have fled the lost battle to secure his hoard. Such is the way with most Aradaner highborn who value gold more than their lives. The sooner we find out what happened here, the sooner we can depart-but after we collect whatever treasures Bresado has tucked away.”
“Right now,” Azuri said, “it seems to me that you are saying gold is more important than our lives.”
“We will need coin to refit anywhere we go,” Kian said. “Besides, the dead are no threat.”
“Demons are,” Azuri retorted.
“Stay here if you will,” Kian said with a stubborn set to his mouth, trying not to consider how often Azuri was right about most everything. In truth, he only pressed on because he felt compelled to understand what was happening.
He crossed the landing to the stairs and started down. Despite Azuri’s reservations, the man followed, with Hazad hard on his heels. The air grew cooler with each downward step. After a hundred steps, dampness began to collect in the joints between undressed stone, and leaked over niter-crusted walls. Soon after, the trio were easing themselves down crumbling steps made treacherous with pallid slime. Kian did not have to look over his shoulder to know that Azuri was pinching his shoulders together to avoid touching the walls, and wincing in abhorrence at every step.
After another hundred steps, the stairwell ended at a low archway. Beyond, a long double line of torches ran through a chamber so vast that the light failed under an oppressive murk. At the end of the torches, an array of oil lamps set haphazardly on a trestle table held open a wide gap in the darkness. Within that space sat the bulk of a man thrice the size of Hazad.
“Is that Bresado?” Azuri asked.
“If not,” Kian said in a hushed voice, “then he has a twin matching the descriptions I have heard of him.”
“So much for him being dead,” Hazad said.
“And so much for collecting his gold,” Azuri said under his breath. “Unless you plan to do murder for it?”
Kian did not answer. He was suddenly wondering whether he should turn himself and his friends around and leave. Bresado took that option away.
“Join me,” Lord Marshal Bresado Rengar ordered, his voice sounding more clogged with phlegm than the boy’s had been. Clad in robes of black and red leather, Bresado slouched in a throne of a chair behind the table.
Footsteps echoing, Kian led his companions, unconsciously hurrying from one set of torches to the next. On either side of the guttering flames, just seen in the gloom, rusted chains and manacles hung from the ceiling. Barrels, their staves ruptured with decay, spilled all manner of rusted, wicked-looking irons and pincers. The misery of old suffering hung in the air like a stench. Kian was almost happy to come into the greater light offered by Bresado’s lamps. Almost. The problem was that Bresado was somehow worse than anything they had yet seen, even counting Varis and the demon within Fenahk.
“My lord-”
“I’ve been expecting you, Kian Valara,” Bresado interrupted in his clogged, wheezy voice.
“Expecting me?” Kian muttered under his breath, his blood going cold. He did not wonder how the man had named him, for along with wealthy merchants many Aradaner highborn knew of him, as his services were widely sought. But Bresado would have had no idea he was coming to El’hadar, for coming here had been happenstance prompted by Varis’s attack. Thinking it safest, he chose not to respond to the lord marshal’s claim.
Despite the chilly air, Bresado’s shaven scalp glinted like a large wet egg, from which hung a thin, greasy black top-lock. Just out of reach of his thick fingers, in the center of the tabletop, was an inlay of the charging boar of House Rengar. Its ruby eye, Kian concluded at once, held more reason than did the lord marshal’s own squinty black stare.
“My lord,” Kian said, “what has happened here?”
Bresado grinned, rotted teeth leaning in all directions. “Death has happened here.”
“What manner of death?” Kian insisted.
Bresado squinted. “After the world shook and the faces of the Three died, the heavens began to burn. From that burning, death came on a foul breath out of the Qaharadin. Creatures, the mahk’lar, nightmares of shadow and hate, scaled the walls. In all their weakness, men fought, but in the end the mahk’lar glutted themselves on the living blood of the savaged.”
With a madman’s bemused stare, Bresado studied Kian and the others, offering no further explanation. He suddenly began to chuckle, then doubled over in a fit of retching. After a moment, he cleared his throat and spat on the floor. As he straightened, Bresado licked his lips slowly, like a drunkard savoring the taste of his own vomit.
“It is again as it once was,” he said mysteriously, “as it should have always been. But we were betrayed by the most high, and too, by our own makers.”
“We?” Kian asked, decidedly uneasy.
“Yes,” Bresado sighed, glazed eyes surveying the darkest shadows as if he could see into them. “We are the first race of creation, come again to these ancient lands. We who once died in the flesh have reawakened and been loosed from Geh’shinnom’atar.” His stare refocused abruptly, and turned on the three men before him. He smiled. “It is the place of men to serve or die, as the old order-the First Order-is rebirthed.”
“We will get no answers from this madman,” Azuri said in a gasping whisper.
Kian was not so sure Bresado was mad, and he suddenly found himself thinking of Fenahk. He knew he should order a retreat, but a disquieting uncertainty had ensnared him. He was not a man for prayers, but he could not help but send a plea to Pa’amadin asking for protection.